The #MonthofMillie & Processions 2018 - Celebrating Women's Suffrage in London

SELFIE TIME AT PROCESSIONS 2018

As 2018 is the centenary of some women in the UK getting the vote, I decided I wanted to get involved in the celebrations and learn much more about the history of the women's suffrage movement.

I wanted to add to the things I thought I already knew and discover some of the lesser known stories that I didn't know. As a self-employed woman of 53, whose offspring have all flown the nest, I was fortunate enough to have time to devote to this personal project. The positive things I have gained from doing it, have far exceeded my expectations and have inspired me to do much more in the future.

As June marked Suffragist Millicent Fawcett's birthday, completing some of these things during the #MonthOfMillie was also part of the "Votes for Women" Suffragette challenge I had set myself.

Through my blog I researched and told the stories of many lesser known Suffragettes and Suffragists from Essex, Wales, and Scotland. Ireland is coming in a future blog post!

MILLICENT FAWCETT STATUE

I discovered many stories of women whose names are not as well remembered as The Pankhursts or Millicent Fawcett. I learned that  refusing to pay taxes or not filling in a census form was just as much a part of the fight for suffrage as smashing windows, planting bombs and slashing works of art.

I read Dr Fern Riddell's superb biography of Kitty Marion - Death in 10 Minutes. I read Sarah Jackson's fascinating book on the East End Suffragettes. I read Jenni Murray's  History of Britain in 21 Women and then gave it to my daughter for holiday reading as instructed! I read Anita Annad's biography of Sophia Duleep Singh alongside Emmeline Pankhurst's own autobiography to get a fuller, more rounded view of events.

I studied the iconic suffragette photography of Britain's first female press photographer, Christina Bloom, and fell in love with it so much that I bought a coffee table book!

PANKHURST MEMORIAL

I watched all the TV shows on the BBC that were
dedicated to telling the stories of the fight for women's suffrage. There was Lucy Worsley's exciting drama-documentary on militant suffragettes to soak up, Sally Lindsay's 30 minute biographical study of Emmeline Pankhurst, the Suffragettes Forever series presented by Amanda Vickery and special editions of Antiques Roadshow and the genealogy show Who do You Think You Are.

As a dedicated life long leaner, I signed up for a free online course on the Suffragettes and I also volunteered to help with spreading the word on social media about Snapping The Stiletto - a brilliant local women's community history project in Essex that celebrates strong women and offers free training on how to research archives in conjunction with local museums and Essex Records Office.


I went to see the free Museum of London suffragette collection and attended the talk 'How the Vote was won' hosted by the Fawcett Society with key speakers Elizabeth Crawford and Sumita Mukherjee - two very knowledgeable historians that I have followed on Twitter for some time

WOMEN'S HALL EXHIBITION POSTER

With my daughter, I visited Millicent Fawcett's statue - and also the Pankhurst statue nearby. I also took her to The Women's Hall re-creation in Tower Hamlets Local History Libray - just a stones throw from where she attended university at Queen Mary's over 12 years ago and also where my grandmother's working class family grew up in the East End in the 1900's through to the 1940's.

My daughter was only the second woman in our family to get a degree after me, but her grandmother and her great grandmother left school at 16 and 14, and their only option was factory or office work before marriage and having children. The significance of all of this was not lost on my daughter who, in her 30's has become a strong, focused, independent, politically aware woman who is not afraid to express her own opinions and fight for what she believes in.

Although spending quality time with my daughter was really special, the highlight of my suffragette fest, and the most immersive, uplifting and inspiring part of the experience was taking part in Processions 2018 in London,

It's not everyday that you get the chance to participate in a nationwide event, creating a living piece of art, that commemorates one of the most important moments in women's history! I grabbed that opportunity with both hands, after watching the build up to Processions 2018 on social media. I registered online and looked forward to attending my first ever "March" but I really wasn't sure what to expect!

I was staying with friends on the South Coast on the Saturday evening, and was stopping off in London to take part in Processions on my way home to Essex on the Sunday.

I did the whole walk from Hyde Park to Parliament Square carrying a large handbag AND an overnight bag. Thanks to Processions I more than met my daily step count on the Samsung Health App. I learned that history can keep you healthy physically as well as mentally fit - really important for a 50 something blogger like me who spends a LOT of time sitting in front of a laptop screen!

I had arranged to meet another woman from Essex at the entrance to Hyde Park. After connecting on social media a few days before the event, we had decided to keep each other company rather than walk by ourselves. We made our way to the start to collect our scarves. We were in with the Purple contingent. We remarked to each other that connecting with a random stranger was quite a radical thing for us both to do - but we had a lot of interests in common, and a friendship was quickly formed which I hope will continue.

 As we both waited with bated breath for the procession to get underway, the atmosphere was electric and full of happy, positive vibes. Hundreds of colourful banners with great women's suffrage slogans were being waved and carried aloft  as thousands of women gathered at the starting point, wearing green, purple or white clothing.

People were cheering, laughing, linking arms, sharing the experience together, and taking pictures and videos on their phones.


 As we moved en-mass through the streets of London past Trafalgar Square, towards the houses of parliament, we truly were a great and wonderful spectacle to behold! To hear younger women, some less than half my age leading chants

demanding "equal pay" made me realize how far we have come since the 1970's and how far we still have to go to close the gender pay gap for our daughters and granddaughters.

For just one moment, when we stopped for a short break, I took a minute to frame a lasting image of Processions in my mind - rather than on my phone. I let the reality of what was happening wash over  for posterity. I studied the people behind me, in front of me, and all around me and it made me proud.

There were women of all ages, shapes, colours and sizes. Marching side by side with radical
feminists and LGBT community leaders, and political groups, were ordinary mothers and grandmothers like myself. Sisters walked besides sisters. Best friends strode arm in arm and bought their daughters along. Students, teenage girls, children of both genders, babies in buggies sleeping soundly through it all  - and even few MEN showing their support too!

There were people from every single social, religious and ethnic group  - ALL with a scarf either around their shoulders, tied upon heads or held aloft overhead. The beautiful thing was that regardless of our own lives and backgrounds, we all joined together as one  -for a just few hours - to do a positive, creative, memorable respectful thing in celebration of women's achievements  - and that can only bring hope for a better future and lead to a fairer, more equal society for all the coming generations.

As I marched beside a host of women dressed in full suffragette outfits - one actually had a model of the houses of Parlimament on her head -it was almost like being transported back 100 years! I felt a shiver go down my spine as the ghosts of all those women who fought for the right to vote marched beside us in spirit. It bought it home to me how hard that battle had been and how every single woman in the UK should use her vote to bring about change and never ever take it for granted.

The Suffragette battle cry was DEEDS NOT WORDS - but as a blog writer I think I fulfilled my suffragette challenge with both deeds AND words. At times it was hard, but never the less - I persisted!



When I got home, my feet were aching, I was really tired but I'd had such a totally amazing time, I really didn't care. I spent the rest of the evening watching the excellent coverage of the event on BBC iplayer - and kept thinking to myself, "I was actually there - that will be something to tell people about when I am older and greyer!". Getting more involved with history, sometimes mean that you also end up making it too.

The whole experience has given me the confidence to take the #HiddenHerStories blog to the next level. I am now really excited about working with a female business mentor and self-publishing my first collection of women's biographies later this year.

I am connecting with more and more historians, writers, women's history bloggers & podcasters. I am going to be hosting and collating the first #WomensHistoryHour on Twitter next Sunday (1st June) from 7pm-8pm GMT.

Please feel free to join us online for this brand new online discussion hour.

Thank you Processions for giving me a wonderful opportunity to take part in something really creative that I will cherish for the rest of my life. I am keeping the purple scarf
safe in my box of memories.


You can find other stories, photo's and videos from Processions as well as souvenir merchandise at
www.processions.co.uk/

Here are some other useful links to places and organizations mentioned in the blog:

THE FAWCETT SOCIETY

MUSEUM OF LONDON

SNAPPING THE STILETTO

WOMENS HALL EXHIBITION 

Enjoy my personal video and images of Processions 2018. 

Christina Broom: Britain's 1st Female Press Photographer

Christina Broom - Museum of London Collection

Christina Broom was credited as being "the UK's first female press photographer" and yet, despite her many achievements, her incredible life and work remain relatively unknown. “Historically she has been seen as an eccentric amateur, which has meant her work hasn’t seen the light of day in quite the way it should have done,” says Anna Sparham, who has curated a large exhibition of Broom’s photography, at the Museum of London.

Christina’s maiden name was Livingston and her parents were Scottish, although she was born at 8 King's Road, Chelsea, London, the seventh of eight children on 28 December 1862. Her father was Alexander Livingston, a master bootmaker and her mother was Margaret Fair Livingston. 

Her parents were well-off, but She must have rather exaggerated their worth, because when Christina told her fiancee, Albert, that she was not quite the heiress he thought she was, he asked her not to tell his mother. Christina’s brother Robert had already squandered much of the family inheritance at the gaming tables in Monaco, and her only income was the rent from a small house on nearby Oakley Street, which Oscar Wilde let from her to house his mother in – Broom would later testify at his trial.

Christina married Albert Edward Broom in 1889 and they had a daughter Winifred Margaret, who was born 7 August 1890. In 1903 the failure of the family ironmongery business was due to a cricketing accident which left her husband Albert an invalid after being struck on the shin by a ball. The injury was serious, causing necrosis of the tibia and fibulae bones. On the advice of a friend, the Brooms opened a small stationery shop in the middle-class suburb of Streatham. Although it never generated the income they hoped for, it was here that Christina noticed the booming trade in postcards which were all the rage. There were seven reliable postal deliveries a day; it was possible to send a card to someone in the same town and receive an answer within hours.

Christina Broom's Postcard Stall in London

Forced to become the main breadwinner for her family, Christina borrowed a box camera and taught herself the rudiments of photography when it was still very much in its infancy. She set up a stall in the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, selling postcards of photographs that she had taken. She maintained this stall from 1904 until 1930. 

Because newspapers were for the most part still unable to reproduce photographs, postcards were also used as a means of disseminating news, and Broom’s enterprise happened to coincide with a period of great upheaval in British history – she captured both the Suffragette movement and the First World War with an unusual, almost maternal intimacy.

She also turned her lens on the more humdrum details of city life, producing many streetscapes and informal portraits in which her sitters appear wonderfully unguarded.

Even though, by the turn of the century, photography had passed muster as a “suitable” pastime for women, most of Broom’s female cohorts preferred to operate from the safety of a studio, and to focus only on friends and family. Broom lugged her camera through the city instead, jostling for space among the male photographers of the press.

Anna Sparham says: “The testing circumstances in which she found herself stimulated her independent and resourceful qualities, but there were plenty of obstacles to overcome… conquering the apparatus was only one; having the nerve and ability to take these skills into the street, publicly projecting herself as a ‘professional photographer’, and most significantly as a woman, was another.”

When the family moved to a new house in Burnfoot Avenue, she used the coal cellar as her dark room. She was assisted by her daughter Winifred, who had left school to help and was extremely devoted for all of her life, both to the photography work and to her mother. Albert wrote the captions for the postcards in his neat script. The postcards sold well: in one night-time session Broom printed 1000.

Chelsea Barracks from Museum of London Collection

Christina was appointed official photographer to the Household Division of the Army from 1904 to 1939 and had her own darkroom in the Chelsea Barracks; she also took photographs of local scenes, including those at Buckingham Palace, as well as The Boat Race and Suffragette marches. Her portraits included  leading suffragettes such as Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Wilding Davidson. Although Broom’s photography is immersed in an Edwardian era of grandeur and tradition,  it also conveys and acknowledges change.

Suffragettes - Museum of London Collection

 It is in her coverage of the suffragette movement that we glimpse most of her character. Although she always sought to retain a respectable impartiality in her work, here we sense a fascination and a growing appreciation. In its bright, early days the ideas must have chimed particularly with Christina’s own struggles.

When Albert Broom died in 1912, Christina and Winifred moved to Munster Road, Fulham where she took the professional name of Mrs Albert Broom. Her daughter Winnie became a VAD nurse during the First World War.

Courtesy of Museum of London

By 1915 Broom had become firmly established, selling photographs to many newspapers and magazines which featured the images of her soldier friends. Her er wartime photographs cover a huge range of subject matter from Soldiers leaving to for the front, right through to those returning wounded. She also took a rare shor of Rudyard Kipling's son John who was killed in 1915 aged 18.

Her portraits were purchased in the hundreds by soldiers who sent them home to their families; she did more for conscription, Field Marshall Frederick Roberts said, than his prayers for new recruits ever had. He was so impressed by Broom’s work that he recommended her to the King.

She attended a tea party at Buckingham Palace held for wounded soldiers in 1916 and her meetings with King George V, both before, during and after the war, would prove fruitful for her career as a press photographer. The increasingly close relationship she enjoyed with the royal family led to some of her most impressive scoops.

She was allowed great privileges and had special access to major royal events and occasions. Broom was given an exclusive commission with the Prince of Wales and produced a lovely portrait of the young prince.

Broom was the only person allowed in to see King Edward VII when he died and was lying in state. She was allowed into Westminster Abbey to photograph him at 4am in the morning. In the 1920s and 1930s her work was featured in top publications such as the Illustrated London News, The Tatler, The Sphere, and Country Life.

Christina Broom's Portrait of Pankhurst - Museum of London

   Letters and journals from the time point to Broom being accepted and respected by many of her male peers. One of the royal photographers, Ernest Brooks, gave Broom a few tips. In one note he wrote: “I am extremely sorry for you having so much worry… Hope you will soon be all right. It warrants a good nerve I know.”

The physical strain of carrying around 40 pounds worth of camera equipment across London caught up with Broom, and eventually she was confined to a wheelchair. However, if Broom found herself with crippling back pain, her daughter Winfred would push her to the barracks or the Royal Mews in her wheelchair, so that she was still able to use her camera. By the Thirties, she had closed her stall selling postcards and begun to spend more time in Margate, where she and Winnie liked to fish. 

Christina Broom died on 5 June 1939 and was buried in Fulham old cemetery. 

With the outbreak of the 2nd World War, restrictions on military photography had tightened considerably, and, despite her best efforts, Winnie found she could no longer continue running the family business. She eventually retired in Margate, where she died in 1973, but not before Queen Mary had personally recommended she save her mother’s plates for the nation. Winifred was instrumental in safeguarding Christina's negatives by having them housed in various public institutions and museums. 

Collections of Christina Broom’s photographs are held at the Museum of London, the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, London, the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, the Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the Guards Museum, London; the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Local Studies Library; the Hammersmith and Fulham Archive and the National Army Museum; Maidstone Art Gallery, Kent; and the Harry Ransom Center and the Gernsheim Collection, University of Texas, both at Austin, Texas

On 17 December 2009 a collection of some 2,000 of her photographs, mainly of military subjects, was to be offered for sale by auction at Sotheby's in London. The collection was expected to make up to £35,000. It failed to sell and was acquired privately by the Museum of London.  In June 2015, the museum opened an exhibition of her photographs entitled Soldiers and Suffragettes.

Anna Sparham for the Museum of London said: 

'Bearing in mind she's this small-framed lady working in this quite often male-dominated environment, she has this ability to really pull people together to form lovely compositions.

'She seizes their attention and you always get a sense of her relationship with her subjects, whether that's the suffragettes or powerful soldiers going off to war.'

Broom, would have needed to be quite the character herself, as well as determined, as she pursued a career that was a far cry from the trajectory expected of a woman at the beginning of the 20th Century.

 

'Christina would have had to have been quite a determined lady,she is described as quite formidable and I think to embrace the world of photography, which within her world was fairly unique, it would have been quite a brave thing to do.'

VIDEO ON CHRISTINA BROOM FROM THE MUSEUM OF LONDON