The Hidden Herstories of The Welsh Suffragettes

Welsh Suffragettes at  the 1911 Coronation Procession

Women's suffrage in Wales has historically been marginalized due to the prominence of societies and political groups in England which led the reform for women throughout the United Kingdom. Due to differing social structures and a heavily industrialized working-class society, the national suffrage movement in Wales grew but then stuttered in the late nineteenth century in comparison with that of England and Scotland. Nevertheless, distinct Welsh groups and many individuals rose to prominence and were vocal in the rise of suffrage in Wales.

Militant action was not a hallmark of the movements in Wales and many Welsh members, who identified themselves as suffragists, sought Parliamentary and public support through political and peaceful means rather than the destruction of property. 

In Wales there were only two narrow bands of wealthy society in the Anglicised north and south coastal areas.  Much of the female population of an emerging 19th century Wales was based in the low-waged, densely-populated, industrial valleys of the south. 

Women did work in metalworking and coal industry in the early 19^th Century, but they then faced mass unemployment after the 1842 Mines and Collieries Act had prohibited them from working underground. The coal mining industry, with its absence of pithead baths, led to unpaid women's employment as the need to keep both their homes and the family's menfolk clean became a never ending task. This led to the stereotypical image of the stoic Welsh matriarch of the home, but little could be further from the truth in a society controlled by men.

The increase of wealth created by the mining and metalworking industries saw the creation of new upper-class families who often built their wealthy homes in the centre of the community from which they prospered. Whereas the pit and foundry owners were initially men, many of whom had political ambitions; their wives sought more charitable activities often connected to improving the lives of the women and children of their husband's workers.

Rose Mary Crawshay

In Dowlais, the heart of the ironworking industry of Wales, Rose Mary Crawshay, (1828–1907) the well-to-do English-born wife of Robert Thompson Crawshay, last of the Merthyr Tydfil ironmasters, whom she married in 1846, passed her time in such charitable work when she became the mistress of Cyfarthfa Castle. 

She set up soup kitchens, gave to the poor and established no less than seven libraries in the area, but apart from this philanthropical work, which she would be expected to do, she was also a staunch feminist.  Living under the rule of a notoriously tyrannical husband, for whom she bore five children, she showed a strong-will and was known in feminist circles in London from the 1850s. In 1866 she and 25 other signatories, all based in Wales, signed the country's first women's Suffrage Petition.

Rose Mary Crawshay in 1886

In June 1870, Rose Crawshay held a public meeting at her home, probably the first in Wales to discuss women's suffrage, but she was later taken to task by the local newspaper for disturbing the peace and leading Wales' women astray. 

March 1872, Mrs. Crawshay held a second meeting, in Merthyr Tydfill, which resulted in a new petition being delivered, the effect of which saw the signing of petitions from Glamorgan, Monmouthshire, Denbighshire and Cardiganshire. Later that year the Bristol & West of England Society for Women's Suffrage sent two of their female members, on a sponsored speaking tour of south Wales which took in Pontypool, Newport, Cardiff and Haverford west.  Despite the actions of several prominent Welsh women, no real suffrage movements took hold in the 1870s and the country was reliant on speaking tours from members of English societies, predominantly from Bristol, London and Manchester.

On 25 February 1881, a meeting was held in Cardiff Town Hall to "consider means of promoting interest in Cardiff" towards female voting rights. This was a preliminary to a larger meeting that was held on 9 March which was attended by local dignitaries, and was chaired by the Mayor of Cardiff. Despite there being a great deal of suffrage activity in the lead up to the Third Reform Act of 1884, there was little campaigning in Wales during the early 1880s. One act of significant importance that did occur during this period was the decision in late 1884 by the delegates of the Aberdare, Merthyr and Dowlais District Mine Association to support a series of talks by Jeanette Wilkinson on the right of women's votes. This is the first recorded instance of interest by Welsh working men supporting female suffrage.

Gwyneth Vaughn AKA Ann Harriet Hughes

The organisation of women in the Liberal Party in Wales began around 1890 supported by prominent members like Gwyneth Vaughan AKA Ann Harriet Hughes (1852 – 25 April 1910) who was a Welsh language novelist. Hughes was born at Talsarnau in Merionethshire, the daughter of a miller, and had a basic school education. In 1876 she married John Hughes Jones, a doctor but they later dropped the "Jones". They lived in London and later in Treherbert and Clwt-y-bont. Left to bring up four children on her husband's death in 1902, she moved to Bangor, Gwynedd, and took up writing as a career. Hughes completed three novels, and a left a fourth unfinished work. She also  wrote verse in Welsh and edited the woman's page in the Welsh Weekly (1892), Yr Eryr (1894–95) and Y Cymro (1906–07).

In 1891 an Aberdare branch of the Women's Liberal Foundation was founded and it quickly began advocating votes for women and began leafleting in both English and Welsh. By 1893 there were said to be 7,000 members of the Welsh Union of Women's Liberal Associations which had risen to 9,000 by 1895. At a meeting of the North Wales Liberal Foundation in 1895 it was decided that Women's Liberal Federation would merge with Cymru Fydd, a political pressure group for home rule, to form a new Welsh Liberal Federation and equal rights for women were written into the objects of the organisation. Despite some early successes Liberal organisation floundered as they headed into the new century and apart from the Cardiff branch which achieved some successes.

1897 saw the foundation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) under the leadership of Millicent Fawcett. This non-political organisation was formed out of the seventeen strongest societies throughout England.  In 1907 the first branch of the NUWSS was formed in Wales at a meeting at the Llandudno Cocoa House.  Other branches soon began forming across Wales, with the creation of the Cardiff and District branch in 1908 followed by Rhyl, Conwy and Bangor in 1909.

The more militant arm of the suffrage movement, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), was not strong in Wales.  In 1913 it had five branches in Wales compared to 26 for the NUWSS. That said the WSPU had been active in promoting itself in Wales long before this with Emmeline Pankhurst and Mary Gawthorpe holding meetings throughout Wales in 1906. In 1908 both the WSPU and the NUWSS were active in Pembrokeshire to campaign at a by-election. Their slogan of 'Keep the Liberals Out', would not have resonated with the Welsh voters, as in the election of 1906 not a single Tory had won a seat in Wales.  Nonetheless, their main political target was Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith who was vehemently opposed to the enfranchisement of women.

Attitudes towards the suffragette movement as a whole were badly affected by the militant actions of members of the WSPU. In Bristol in 1908, Winston Churchill had been threatened by WSPU members, and the widespread anger after the event led to a Cardiff meeting being abandoned. In Merthyr the speakers were drowned out and herrings and tomatoes thrown at them. 

Despite being a 'favoured son of Wales' and outwardly pro-women's suffrage, Liberal MP David Lloyd George was often a target of suffragette activity. Although Lloyd George always stated his support of the suffrage movement in public speeches, the failure of the Liberal Government to make any progress on implementing change led Christabel Pankhurst to believe him to be a secret anti-suffragist.  Pankhurst was quoted in the Times in November 1911 declaring "'Lloyd Georgitis' was a disease which afflicted men with very few exceptions. 

The year 1912 saw a marked increase in militant action in Wales. Anger at the defeat of the Conciliation Bills saw the WPSU disrupt a speech by Lloyd George at the Pavilion in Caernarfon. The protesters - male and female - were treated harshly with clothes torn and hair ripped out. They were also beaten with sticks and umbrellas.  

Lloyd George speaking at Llanystumdwy

Later that year Lloyd George was again heckled by suffragettes whilst delivering a speech at the National Eisteddfod. Just two weeks later one of the most notorious events in the history of suffrage in Wales took place, when Lloyd George returned to his home town of Llanystumdwy to open the village hall. No sooner had he started speaking than he was interrupted by the cries of 'Votes for Women!' The hecklers were violently assaulted by the crowd.  One was stripped to the waist before being rescued and another was almost thrown off a bridge to be dashed on the rocks of the River Dwyfor below. As trouble was anticipated the national press was present and the Daily Mirror and Illustrated London News devoted a full page of photographs to the incident. The local press not only attacked the suffragettes, but poured scorn on the crowd for tarnishing the image of a peaceful, Nonconformist, chapel-going Wales. The event is seen as the most dramatic event in the history of Women's suffrage in Wales.

In the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War the NUWSS spent its time in north Wales organising educational and propaganda campaigns.  In south Wales friction was caused by a shift in political views pushed onto the country from the central office. 1912 saw the NUWSS switch its policy as a non-party organisation to set up the Election Fighting Fund (EFF) to support the newly burgeoning Labour Party. Wales had traditionally been a Liberal heartland and the South Wales Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies was opposed to this new policy. There was a sense that there was a disjoint between the central 'English feminist agenda' pushed by the militant headquarters and the needs of Welsh social, cultural and political views. The strains existed between the two organisation until the EFF was abandoned in 1914.

1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage

In 1913 a Suffrage Pilgrimage was organised, to end with a rally in Hyde Park, London on 26 July. It was an attempt to remind the public of the larger constitutional and non-militant wing of the movement, and routes were planned from 17 British towns and cities, including Wales. Twenty-eight members from Welsh NUWSS branches left from Bangor on 2 July travelling through Wales where they were met with both support and hostility.  A further branch left Cardiff on 7 July.

1913 also saw a continuation of more hard-line methods, with the WPSU firebombing a house which was being built for Lloyd George.  Between April and September 1913, hoax bombs were set at both Cardiff and Abergavenny, and at Llantarnam, telegraph wires were cut. 

Margaret Haig Mackworth

This period also saw the actions of one of Wales' most notable suffragettes, Margaret Haig Mackworth, and her mother Sybil Thomas, Viscountess Rhondda, DBE who was a British suffragette, feminist, and philanthropist. Born in Brighton, the daughter of George Augustus Haig, a merchant and landowner from Pen Ithon, Radnorshire, on 27 June 1882 Sybil Haig married David Alfred Thomas, a wealthy Welsh industrialist who later became Liberal Member of Parliament for Merthyr Boroughs. 

In the 1890s Sybil Thomas became president of the Welsh Union of Women's Liberal Associations, which was strongly feminist and pro-female suffrage. She was also a prominent moderate in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Her sisters Janetta and Lotty were also prominent suffragettes and both went to prison for acts of violence in the name of the cause. Under their influence, Sybil joined the more militant Women's Social and Political Union. In 1914 she was sentenced to one day's imprisonment after holding a public meeting outside the Houses of Parliament.

Sybil Thomas, Lady Rhondda

In 1916 her husband was ennobled as Baron Rhondda. During the First World War, Lady Rhondda served as chairman of the Women's Advisory Committee of the National War Savings Committee and turned part of Llanwern into a military hospital, as well as assisting her husband in his war work as Food Controller from 1917-18. In 1918 her husband became Viscount Rhondda but died shortly afterwards.  Lady Rhondda devoted the rest of her life to feminist and philanthropic projects. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours for her work with the National War Savings Committee. She died on 11 March 1941.

Her daughter, Margaret Haig Mackworth, went on to become one of the most prominent British feminists of the inter-war years. Mackworth had been recruited into the WPSU in 1908 and organised the group’s first meeting at Newport, much to the disapproval of her fox-hunting husband, Humphrey Mackworth. Its members were prepared to smash plate-glass windows, cut telegraph wires, attack places of male recreation such as cricket pavilions, golf-courses and boat-houses, and leap out from concealed places to confront surprised cabinet ministers.

In 1913 Margaret was convicted of setting fire to a post box in Risca Road, Newport with a home-made incendiary bomb.  She refused to allow the £10 fine imposed for her action to be paid by her husband and was sent to prison at Usk. She was released after a five day hunger strike under the 'Cat and Mouse Act'.

Margaret Mackworth

Referred to at the time as The Welsh Boadicea Margaret sold the organisation’s newspaper, Votes for Women, on Newport High Street, spoke on public platforms including that of Merthyr Liberal Club, where she was pelted with herrings and tomatoes and once jumped on the running-board of Prime Minister Asquith’s car.

In 1922 Margaret divorced her husband and set up home with her female lover Helen Archdale. She also founded the feminist magazine Time and Tide, which was initially edited by Archdale.

In 1921 Margaret launched the Six Point Group of Great Britain, which focused on what she regarded as the six key issues for women which included satisfactory legislation for the widowed mother, equal pay for teachers and equal opportunities for men and women in the civil service.

After breaking up with Helen Archdale she moved in with Theodora Bosanquet, the secretary of the International Federation of University Women. She would campaign for women’s rights up to the time of her death.

When her father, the first Viscount Rhondda died, she tried to take her seat in the House of Lords but was prevented from doing so by the Lords’ Committee of Privileges which allowed only male heirs this right. After a long campaign, she lived to see the passing of the Life Peerages Act in 1958, but died just months before the first women took their seats as life peers in the Lords in October the same year. It was only in 2011 that a portrait of her finally went on display in the House of Lords.

Newpory W.S.P.U Banner

By 1914 the non-militant elements of the suffrage movement had built up a steady presence and, although damaged by the bad press violent action brought, they also gained from the publicity. A summer school had been set up by the NUWSS in the Conwy Valley the previous year and now their members were benefitting from the training in public speaking that was given. 

 In south Wales signs of working-class involvement in the suffrage cause took shape through the Women's Co-operative Guild, with a branch opening in Ton Pentre in the Rhondda in 1914 run by Elizabeth Andrews.

With the outbreak of the First World War, all WSPU activity came to a halt and the NUWSS turned much of their focus to relief work. The WPSU, reformed as the Women's Party from 1917, sent members across Wales, no longer to rally for suffrage but to encourage male volunteers to join the British Army.  In 1915 Scottish Suffragette, Flora Drummond attended a rally in Merthyr to demand that men leave occupations that women could undertake, and to stop 'hiding behind the petticoats'. Women in Wales took up employment en masse, especially in newly opened munitions factories, and in 1918 the Newport Shell Factory had a female workforce of 83 per cent while the Queensferry factory was 70 per cent.

The militant suffragettes, who were at one point public enemies, were now seen as fierce nationalist and patriots.  Old foes became allies and vice versa. Lloyd George was now referred to as 'that great Welshman' while Labours' Kier Hardie, the WSPU's staunchest defender before the war, was lambasted for his pacifist stance. There were still those in the suffragette movement who wished to keep pushing the agenda of emancipation. Some members of the WSPU broke away to form the Suffragettes of the WSPU (SWSPU), amongst their members were Conway-born Helena Jones, who continued to campaign for women's votes and was a columnist in the Suffragists News Sheet.

The Representation of the People Act was finally passed in 1918. It gave women over the age of 30, who owned property, the right to vote. Several factors led to the passing of the Act, including the efforts of working women, the dilution of anti-suffrage rhetoric and political change in London, where Asquith had been replaced as Prime Minister by Lloyd George. 

During the First World War, relief work had helped keep the women's societies in Wales active, though membership numbers began to fall. After the People's act of 1918, many of the regional branches began to wither. The Llangollen WSS resolved to disband in December 1918, handing their marching banner to the National Council, believing their work was done. While others, such as the Newport branch, revised their aims to form a Women's Citizen Association taking an active interest in welfare and social issues. Other branches continued the political vision of equal suffrage, notably Bangor, while the Cardiff WSS busied itself by attempting to secure the election of women to local government posts. The fact that the terms of enfranchisement were not equal to men ensured that the surviving suffragist societies still had a focus, and the first point of order was the bill to admit women as MPs.

Millicent Mackenzie

This was passed in October 1918 and seventeen women stood at the 1918 General Election. There was one female candidacy in Wales, Millicent Huges Mackenzie.  It took until 1929 for Wales to return its first female MP, Megan Lloyd George, the youngest daughter of the former Prime Minister.

Millicent Mackenzie had been the first female professor in Wales and the first woman appointed to a fully chartered university in the United Kingdom. She wrote on the philosophy of education, founded the Cardiff Suffragette branch, became the only woman Parliamentary Candidate in Wales in 1918, and was later a key initiator of Steiner-Waldorf education in the United Kingdom.

Equal franchise was eventually won with the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1928. This was not achieved through a matter of course, but through a constant campaign of organised pressure. The NUWSS reorganised into the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC), taking on a broader range of issues to secure more widespread support. The Women's Freedom League (WFL), which was formed in 1907 out of schism caused by Emmeline Pankhurst's desire for a more authoritarian style of leadership within the WSPU, was a vocal advocate of equal rights throughout the 1920s. In 1919 there were four WFL branches in Wales, and, although the Aberdovey and Cardiff branches had disbanded by 1921, both Montgomery Boroughs and Swansea remained staunchly active throughout the decade.

Suffragettes marching for the Vote

The women's suffrage movement in Wales has historically been held in poor regard with little research undertaken before the end of the twentieth century. Initial impressions of women's voting rights in the country can appear to suggest apathy or even hostility towards suffrage, but historians such as Kay Cook and Neil Evans writing in 1991, and built upon by Dr. Kirsti Bohata, argue specific cultural environments led to a more cautious and considered political ideology. The type of militancy advocated by Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union appears to have been rejected by the majority of Welsh suffrage campaigners, especially in the north of Wales.

Jane Aaron in 1994 described how the desire for Welsh womanhood to be seen as respectable endured even when their English counterparts had decided to take up an aggressive or 'unwomanly' mantle to achieve their goals of female emancipation. Bohata builds on this hypothesis stating that the "idealised Welsh woman, inspired by England’s middle-class angel of the house, would represent Welsh respectability long after English women had abandoned their haloes in favour of bicycles."

An argument exists that the women's suffrage movement in Wales was not truly 'Welsh', based on the fact that it was organised and orchestrated by an Anglicised, English-speaking, middle-class movement that had little bearing on the true voice of the country. As it has been shown, the first people to embrace the suffrage movement were English-born and wealthy. 

Welsh Suffragettes

In addition, the societies that sprang up in the wealthier coastal towns of the north and south were run by middle-class women, normally of English background with little or no understanding of the Welsh language.

 Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, writing in 2000, linked support for women's suffrage from an earlier campaigning group, the temperance movement, and although the temperance movement reached out through Welsh-language periodicals such as Y Frythones and Y Gymraes,  she too concluded that the cross-over was "dominated by immigrant middle-class women".

Cook and Evans argue that, despite suffrage in Wales being introduced by a new generation of immigrant middle-class women, there was still a definite 'Welshness' to the ideology fostered by the nation, which was at loggerheads with their English counterparts.

Edith Mansell Moulin

On 17 June 1911, 40,000 women marched in the "Great Demonstration" sponsored by the Women’s  Edith Mansell Moullin helped organize the Welsh contingent of the parade and encouraged the Welsh participants to wear the national costume In 1911. After this, Mansell Moullin, who was fiercely proud of her Welsh roots, formed the Cymric Suffrage Union, a Welsh society based in London.  It attempted to link women's suffrage with Wales and “Welshness” and sought to unite both Welsh men and women living in the capital to their cause.
Suffrage Union, as part of the coronation procession for George V.

They distributed hand-bills written in Welsh to the Welsh chapels in London and translated pamphlets of the Conciliation Bill. The Union also expressed their nationality through dressing in traditional Welsh costume during parades and unlike many unions in Wales actually addressed their membership in Welsh as well as the English language at meetings.

 Edith Mansell Moullin had previously taken part in the 1910 demonstration held in Hyde Park, in which she shared the stage with Emmeline Pankhurst and had made several speaking tours in northern Wales to promote suffrage. 

Welsh Suffragettes

After completing her education as a young woman, she had worked in the Bethnal Green slums and had continued to do so after her 1885 marriage to the well-known surgeon, Charles William Mansell Moullin, who worked at the Royal London Hospital. She had witnessed the Match Girl's Strike in 1888 and had also assisted dock workers in a soup kitchen during the London Dock strike of 1889. She had continued this type of work until around 1906, when she joined the Women's Industrial Council and became chair of the Investigation Committee of the council. She also joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) around 1907 and became the first treasurer of the Church League for Women's Suffrage. Both Mansell Moullins and her husband were suffragists. The doctor belonged to the Men's League for Women's Suffrage and served as a vice president.

Part of the more militant British suffrage movement, Moullin was among the 200 women arrested in 1911 for dissidence. She was charged with disturbing the peace and attempting to break the police lines, which she denied. She was sentenced and spent five days in Holloway Prison. She also refused to stop government agitation during World War I. In 1912 after Lloyd George scuppered the third Conciliation Bill, Mansell Moullin formed the Forward Cymric Suffrage Union, which had a more militant policy. Members wore red dragon badges with the motto 'O Iesu, n'ad Gamwaith' ('Oh Jesus do not allow unfairness')

in October 1912. She and her husband spoke out against force-feeding suffrage prisoners and the Mansel Moullin's home became a meeting centre for discussing strategy. In 1913 Mansel Moullin became the honorary secretary of the group Sylvia Pankhurst formed to gain the repeal of the Cat and Mouse Act. This act replaced force-feeding by releasing prisoners when they became ill from lack of food, but then re-imprisoned them as soon as they had sufficiently recovered. That same year, Dr. Mansel Moullin performed surgery on Emily Davison after she was trampled by King George V's horse at The Derby, though he was unable to save her life.

Edith Mansel Moullin resigned from the WSPU in part because of its decision to suspend anti-government protests during the war. As a pacifist, Mansel Moullin neither supported the war, nor believed that social responsibility should be suspended. Disturbed by the practice of arresting German mine workers who were working in Welsh mines, causing the minor's families hardship, Mansel Moullin sent appeals on their behalf and collected funds through the FCSU to assist them. She also sent protests about the low wages being paid to women during the war, requesting that public funds be used to supplement the wages of women doing relief work. She resigned from her positions in the FCSU in 1916 due to health concerns, though she continued to work in social programs and with pacifist organizations. In 1931, she chaired the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR and worked as a volunteer at St Dunstan's, which operated a home for blind veterans.

Although the suffrage movement in Wales attempted to show a level of independence, it was always following rather than leading a national agenda. It depended deeply in its embryonic years on celebrated suffragists from outside its borders to bring crowds to town meetings, but still relied on a network of now forgotten non-militant supporters who organised and campaigned on the ground level. And, although failing to significantly draw a rural Welsh-speaking heartland to its cause, it still embraced a national sense of pride and values that contrasted to their neighbours in England.

Amy Dillwyn

Welsh suffragette Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn (16 May 1845 – 13 December 1935) is remembered more for her connections outside the sphere of women's suffrage, but she was still an important Welsh activists for the cause. She was a novelist, businesswoman, social benefactor and one of the first female industrialists in Britain. 

Born in Swansea, She was the daughter of Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn and his wife Elizabeth.  Her father became a Liberal MP (1855-1892), and was the owner of the Dillwyn Spelter Works at Swansea. In 1864 her fiancé, Llewelyn Thomas of Llwynmadog, died shortly before their planned wedding. Research into Amy Dillwyn's life has also shown a close relationship with Olive Talbot through letters, who she called her 'wife' in diaries. From this, some theorize the unrequited love in her novels was inspired by this real relationship. In 1866 her mother died. Between 1880 and her father's death in 1892 she had six novels published.

Amy Dillwyn & brother Harry

Following the deaths of her brother Harry in 1890 and her father Lewis in 1892 Amy Dillwyn lost the family home at Hendrefoilan, but rescued her father's spelter works, which she managed herself and thus saved 300 jobs. She was a strong supporter of social justice and gave her support to striking seamstresses.

 Her unorthodox appearance, her habit of smoking cigars and unconventional lifestyle made her a well-known figure in the local community. When the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies was formed at the turn of the century, Dillwyn joined as one of the earliest supporters in Wales. Although rejecting the militant actions of some members, she was still a staunch member of the movement. She died in Swansea on 13 December 1935, at the age of ninety.

Dr Kirsti Bohata, is writing a study of Amy Dillwyn as part of a research project at the Richard Burton Centre of Swansea University. She identifies recurring themes in Dillwyns novels of crusading social reform, unrequited love, and criticism of the upper class. Feminist concerns predominate, however, and many of her stories had tomboyish women as protagonists. Dillwyn also anonymously contributed to the Spectator regularly in the 1880s.

Alice Abadam

Alice Abadam, a renowned speaker and activist, was the daughter of the High Sherriff of Carmarthenshire. She was born in London in 1856 to Edward Ab Adam and his wife Louisa (née Taylor). Her father was the eldest son of Edward Hamlin Adams, a Jamaican-born banker and merchant who made his money overseas before settling in Britain. In 1825 Edward Hamlin Adams bought Middleton Hall in Carmarthanshire following the death of its owner, Sir William Paxton. The Hall was passed down to his son Edward, who added the old Welsh patronym, Ab, to the family name.

Abadam, by her own account, had a happy childhood and was educated by a governess at Middleton Hall. She was the youngest of seven children, and saw little of her mother who suffered ill-health brought about by post-natal depression. By 1861 her mother was living away from the family in Brighton, and in 1871 was living back at her paternal home in Dorset. Despite living apart, her parents remained married until the death of Edward in 1875. Despite her father having strict anti-

clerical views, Abadam converted to Catholicism in 1880 and a musical upbringing led her to becoming the organist and choir master at St Mary's Church on Union Street in the heart of Carmarthen.

In 1905 Abadam subscribed to the Central Society for Women's Suffrage. She became a well-known speaker on many social issues and addressed a variety of suffrage societies. She later became the chairperson of the Federated Council of Suffrage Movements.

Rachel Barrett

Rachel Barrett (12 November 1874 – 26 August 1953) was a suffragette and newspaper editor born in Carmarthen, Wales. She grew up in the town of Llandeilo and was educated at a boarding school in Stroud, along with her sister. She won a scholarship to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and graduated in 1904 with an external London BSc degree. She then became a science teacher and taught in schools in Llangefni, Carmarthen and Penarth.

 In 1906 after hearing Nellie Martel speak on women's suffrage; she then became a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Barrett spoke on behalf of the WSPU at many meetings, often in Welsh, which conflicted with her role as a schoolteacher as her headmistress disapproved of the publicity, especially after news of Barrett being flour-bombed at a rally in Cardiff Docks made the local papers. 

In July 1907 Barrett resigned as a teacher and enrolled at the London School of Economics, intending to study economics and sociology and to work towards her DSc.  That August she was heavily active for the WSPU, campaigning at the Bury St Edmunds by-election with Gladice Keevil, Nellie Martel, Emmeline Pankhurst, Aeta Lamb and Elsa Gye. Barrett was also active with Adela Pankhurst at Bradford, Cardiff and Barry, sometimes sharing the stage with her as one of the speakers. 

Barrett spent 1908 first organising a campaign in Nottingham and then working on the by-elections in both Dewsbury and Dundee.  In June of that year she was the chairman of one of the platforms at the Hyde Park rally, but the work took its toll on her health and shortly afterwards she was forced to temporarily step down from her position to recuperate, which included a period of time at a sanatorium.

After recovering she moved closer to home, volunteering for Annie Kenney in Bristol.  She soon agreed to resume her role as a paid organiser for he WSPU and was sent to Newport in south-east Wales to continue her duties.

In 1910 Barrett was chosen to lead a group of women to talk to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, regarding the Liberal Party's role in supporting the first Conciliation Bill. The meeting lasted two and a half hours, and by its end she was convinced that Lloyd George had been insincere over his support for equal voting rights and believed him to be against women's suffrage. By the end of the year her post was changed to organising all WSPU activities in Wales and she was relocated to the country's headquarters in Cardiff. 

According to Ryland Wallace, writing in 2009:

"No individual worked harder than Rachel Barrett to promote the campaign in Wales."

In 1912, despite having no journalistic background, she was put in charge of the newly formed newspaper The Suffragette. Writing in her autobiography Barrett described becoming an editor as "an appalling task as I knew nothing whatever of journalism".

 

By taking on the job she also took on the risks connected with the increasingly militant WSPU. Over the next two years Barrett was a key figure in keeping the newspaper in print despite the Home Secretary's efforts to suppress it.

Welsh Suffragettes with Cardiff Banner

 In April 1913 the offices of The Suffragette were raided by the police and the staff were arrested on charges of conspiring to damage property. Barrett was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment at Holloway. She immediately went on hunger strike, was transferred to Canterbury Prison, and after five days she was released under the "Cat and Mouse Act". She moved into "Mouse Castle", 2 Campden Hill Square, home of the Brackenbury family who were sympathetic suffragists. After three weeks at the house, Barrett emerged and was re-arrested. She went back on hunger strike and after four days was again released to "Mouse Castle". This time she was smuggled out of the house in disguise to allow her to speak at meetings, before being re-arrested for a second time. For the third time Barrett was released after a hunger strike, but this time she successfully eluded the authorities and fled to a nursing home in Edinburgh where she remained until December 1913. On leaving Scotland she returned in secret to London; she hid at Lincoln's Inn House where she lived in a bedsit.

 Barrett continued to edit The Suffragette, but she travelled to Paris to discuss the future of the newspaper with Christabel Pankhurst after its offices were raided in May 1914. When speaking to Pankhurst  on the phone she recalled how she "could always hear the click of Scotland Yard listening in."

The result of their meeting in Paris was the relocation of The Suffragette to Edinburgh where the printers were at less risk of arrest. Barrett moved to Edinburgh and assumed the pseudonym "Miss Ashworth". Barrett continued to publish the paper until its final edition on the week after the First World War was declared.  During the war Barrett was a vocal supporter of British military action, as were the majority of the suffragette movement.  She was a contributor to the WSPU 'Victory Fund' which was launched in 1916 to sponsor campaigns against "a compromise peace" and industrial strikes.

After the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918, in which some women within the United Kingdom were first given the right to vote, Barrett busied herself in continuing the fight for full emancipation. When full voting rights were won in 1928 she helped raise funds for commemorations and was an important figure in raising the money needed to erect a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens, near the Palace of Westminster in London.

 Barrett understood the international connections of suffrage and contacted important Canadian and American campaigners for financial support.  In Barrett's obituary in the Women's Bulletin it read that the raising of the statue "...stands as a permanent memorial to Rachel's organising ability." In 1929 Barrett was appointed secretary of the Equal Political Rights Campaign Committee, an organisation that sought equality between men and women in all political spheres.

I.A.R. Wylie

During her time editing The Suffragette, Barrett struck up a friendship with the Australian author I. A. R. Wylie, who contributed to the paper in 1913. The two women started a relationship and became lovers. In 1919 both Barrett and Wylie travelled to the United States, where they bought a car and spent over a year travelling the country. They stayed in New York and San Francisco and were recorded in the 1920 census as living in Carmel-By-The-Sea in California, where Wylie is classed as the head of the household and Barrett her friend.The two women remained close for some time, and in 1928 were supporters of their close friend Radclyffe Hall, during the trial for her book The Well of Loneliness. When Barrett died she left the residue of her estate to Wylie. 

In her later life Barrett joined the Suffragette Fellowship and was particularly close to Kitty Marshall who lived nearby.  She attempted to publish a memoir of Marshall in the late 1940s, but it was turned down for publication.  Barrett moved to Sible Hedingham in Essex in the early 1930s where she lived at Lamb Cottage. She joined the Sible Hedingham Women's Institute in 1934, remaining a member until 1948. Barrett died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 26 August 1953 at the Carylls Nursing Home in Faygate, Sussex. She was seventy-eight years old.

In the period between 1918 and 1928, the WFL in Swansea produced two prominent activists in Emily Phipps and her close friend Clara Neal, who were founder members of their branch.

Emily was a headmistress, a feminist, a barrister and an important figure in the National Union of Women Teachers.

Emily Phipps

Emily was the oldest of five children, was born on 7 November 1865 at 9 South Hill Buildings, Stoke Damerel, Devonport, England. Her father, Henry John Phipps was a coppersmith at Devonport Dockyard. She became a teacher, initially as a pupil-teacher in an elementary school, then following training in Homerton College, Cambridge, became head teacher of the infants’ school attached to the college. Probably returning to Devonport for the time being, she continued to teach, latterly in a higher grade school, while studying for an external London University degree. After obtaining a first-class degree in 1895, she successfully applied for the headship of Swansea Municipal Secondary Girls School, which she quickly transformed from a poorly performing school into one of the most successful in Wales.

A committed feminist, she, together with fellow West Country woman and lifelong friend Clara Neal, joined the Women's Freedom League in 1908 following an anti-suffrage meeting in Swansea, and set up a local branch. The meeting had been attended by Lloyd George who claimed that women were being paid to disrupt the meeting, and that they should be forcibly removed. Emily Phipps (and Clara Neal) were so disgusted with this injustice that they immediately became militant suffragettes.

Emily Phipps

Like many other members of the Women’s Freedom League Emily Phipps and Clara Neal, together with two training college lecturers and a business woman, staged a boycott on the night of the 1911 Census, staying overnight in a sea cave on the nearby Gower Peninsula. At the NUWT dinner called to celebrate full female suffrage she explained the reason for the action:

 "Many women had determined that since they could not be citizens for the purposes of voting, they would not be citizens for the purpose of helping the government to compile statistics: they would not be included in the Census Returns."

Emily Phipps was an active member of the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT), which was formed as part of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in 1906, following on from the Equal Pay League. Emily was elected President for three successive years from 1915–17 and was the first editor of the NUWT journal, Woman Teacher, from 1919–30, which she ensured was forthright and political in tone unlike those journals aimed at women teachers which included columns on fashion, cookery and similar domestic issues. She was tasked with writing the History of the NUWT.

The 1918 general election was the first in which women could both vote in parliamentary elections and stand as candidates, and Emily Phipps was one of the 17 women who took the opportunity to stand, becoming Independent Progressive candidate for Chelsea constituency with the backing of the NUWT. All the women candidates were heavily defeated, but she retained her deposit in a straight contest (with a low turnout) with the sitting Conservative MP, Sir Samuel Hoare.

While still a head-teacher, Emily Phipps studied for the bar in the evenings and was admitted as a barrister in 1925. Following this, she gave up her teaching position and moved from Swansea to London, but although increasing ill health prevented her from practicing in the courts for long, she remained as standing counsel to the National Union of Women Teachers.  Clara Neal also resigned her own Swansea headship (she was initially head of Terrace Road School followed by Head of Glanmor Girls School from 1922) and moved to London sharing a house with Emily Phipps and former London teacher Adelaide Jones (amongst others) who had helped Emily Phipps with her 1918 election campaign and who was full-time financial secretary to the NUWT from 1918.

Clara Neal died in 1937 but Emily Phipps continued to live with Adelaide Jones and at the start of World War 2 in 1939 they were living in retirement in Eastbourne. The last few months of Emily Phipps’ life were spent (with Adelaide Jones) at her brother’s house near Newbury, Berkshire, where Adelaide Jones remained after Emily Phipps death.

Emily died on 3 May 1943 of complications from a heart condition. In the entry on Emily Phipps in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Hilda Kean describes her versatility:

 "she had a working knowledge of French, German, Italian and Welsh… she enjoyed part-singing, embroidery, reading and gardening. Known for her sparkling personality, wit and strong tongue she inspired a generation of women teachers. Her belief was ‘if you make yourself a doormat, do not be surprised if people tread on you."

Annie Mullin

Annie Mullin was a Liberal councillor in Roath, Cardiff, and suffragist. She is described by historian Ursula Masson as having put “women before party”.

Annie was a member of the Women’s Liberal Association and was ward secretary for Cathays and Cardiff vice president between 1898 and 1901. She was an active social worker and was a founder member for the Cardiff Women’s Local Government Association.

When she stood for Roath in February 1898, her platform was for “greater humanity” in the care of the poor.  Her stance was founded on the time she had spent on the continent.

In 1910, she stood on the platform at the Cardiff conference of Welsh Liberal women and voted to boycott any candidates who were anti-suffrage. Her name is recorded as treasurer of the suffragist Cardiff Progressive Liberal Women’s Union and in the Cardiff and District Women’s Suffrage Society.

Her 2x great granddaughter is Elizabeth Clark is now a Liberal Democrat councillor in the city:

“Annie got involved with the suffragist movement and also encouraged other people to get involved in politics. Her stance to boycott anti-suffrage candidates was no doubt controversial, but she stood up for her beliefs for women’s rights against her political party and she wouldn’t compromise. She knew that women just had to have the vote and at the same time was cultivating relationships to spread that message”.

The family also know that she had the ear of those in power. Keir Hardie and Philip Snowden were guests at her Pontcanna home. Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell was another guest to the house.

Annie Mullin and her children

Elizabeth Clark only discovered her great great grandmother’s role in suffrage with the publication of a new book about the history of Cathays Cemetery, where Annie is buried.

Annie Mullins' daughter was encouraged to go to university and she received a double first class honours. Elizabeth Clark is particularly proud of the impact Annie had on two of her granddaughters. Eileen Clark was a Japanese code breaker at Bletchley Park during WW2 and Sybil Clark was a British and Commonwealth representative of the Italian film industry.

All of these fascinating stories prove that Welsh women were not willing to sit idly by in a man’s world, but were just as prepared to shape it and change it as their suffragette sisters in England and Scotland were - perhaps they were less militant in their actions - but their huge contribution helped women all over the UK to have the right to vote.