Author: Jennifer Godfrey
Full Title: Missions of the Suffragettes: Glass Breakers and Safe Houses
Publisher: Pen and Sword (2024)
Building on the success of her previous book, Suffragettes of Kent, Jennifer Godfrey extends her research to encompass a wider narrative of suffragette militancy – the history of glass breaking (begun on 1 March 1912) and the ever more headline grabbing activism that characterised the suffrage campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
The mass window-smashing events the militants organised were highly successful in bringing public attention to the women’s suffrage cause, as was the targeting of the Royal Mail and the explosives placed in the environs of certain public buildings, and indeed near the homes of parliamentarians across the country. Godfrey, in an extremely well researched book, has packed her account with illustrations, maps, photographs and other primary source material which relate these events, giving depth and interest to her work. The reader can really become engaged in the narrative, and the stories of the militants, both well-known, such as Charlotte Marsh and Christabel Pankhurst and others less celebrated, such as the Glaswegian McPhun sisters, Margaret and Frances. I was particularly struck to see, included in the visual images, letters from Frances McPhun written from Holloway prison during her four-month sentence for window smashing – and successfully smuggled out by compatriots. At the time of her protest she had also been using an alias, Miss Fanny Campbell!
Godfrey notes that others imprisoned at the same time as McPhun had received lighter sentences than the four women from Scotland who had come before the court. Women’s Social and Political Union leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, had instructed members to be militant “each in her own way”, and as their hearts and consciousness dictated. Thus no two suffragette stories are the same. Recent scholarship has shown the breadth and complexity of the pre-1918 women’s movement and noted that it was not simply the campaign of middle-class women such as Pankhurst, but also of aristocrats (such as Lady Constance Lytton) and labouring women too. Godfrey highlights this eclectic mix well, but importantly ponders on the lighter sentences given to women such as “the Brackenbury family” (p.72), whose wealth and influence had, seemingly, contributed to a lighter touch when sentencing them to goal – 14 days instead of McPhun’s 4 months.
Nevertheless, camaraderie and cross-class friendships between militants flourished in the ranks of the “women’s army”, as Mrs. Pankhurst termed her followers. Women worked together regionally as well as in the heart of London, the seat of political power. Godfrey stresses this regionality with strongly focussed chapters on Scottish activism and through the actions of overseas supporters including Lily Lindsay from Germany and American sculptor Alice Morgan Wright. These new characters highlight the continuing development in mapping international suffrage connections, a particularly significant development in twenty-first century scholarship.
Missions of the Suffragettes is divided into two main sections. The first emphasises the “Great Militant Protest” of glass breaking and its significance for the WSPU membership, who had grown increasingly angry as efforts at conciliation with the government in 1911 met with no result. As well as adding the important geographical perspectives outlined above, Godfrey includes significant accounts of the punishments meted out to the suffragettes by the judiciary, their life in prison, hunger striking experiences and the systemic, state-sanctioned torture of forcible feeding. Activist Kathleen O’Kell, for example, penned witty poems such as The Suffragette ABC to pass the hours, and many others worked on other styles of writing, or crafts such as embroidery from inside prison walls. Yet there was a dark cloud that hung over them all, the prospect of forcible feeding, which had been legal practice for hunger-striking militant prisoners since 1909.
Scottish glass-breaker Margaret Macfarlane wrote an account of her experience in Holloway where, held down by four wardresses (one of whom was over 5ft 10 inches tall) she was forcibly fed a thin gruel mixture via a cup. Struggling as she was, most of the drink was wasted (p.122). After her ordeal Macfarlane (who lost a stone in weight during her incarceration) had the courage and dignity to complain to the prison doctor about her treatment, and how futile it was to even try it!
The second part of the book offers three chapters focussing on the ways in which the suffragettes sought to outwit the officers of law enforcement – and they had some notable successes in their endeavours. They applied sophisticated evasion techniques (various ladies impersonated Emmeline Pankhurst as she slipped out from crowded meeting halls) and, as already noted, by adopting an alias, both on arrest and in prison. Militancy, in the years 1912-14 was often undertaken at great personal risk. Serious injury could be sustained in battles with police and anti-suffragists determined to oppose their demands for political change. As a consequence, some of the most fearless of militants took lessons in jujitsu and set up a route of safe houses where women could safely flee and hide out. These chapters also extend recent approaches by, for example, Emelyne Godfrey’s Mrs. Pankhurst’s Bodyguard (2023).
Overall, Missions of the Suffragettes brings to readers a multitude of new sources and stories that increasingly widen the scope of the history of the militant suffragette movement. Firmly established heroines of ‘the cause’ (as the women defined their campaign) are given equal place with new figures, those known best for their work in local or regional contexts, but no less important to the overall history for that. I firmly recommend this book to both scholars and interested general readers of British suffragism. It tells of the increasingly desperate struggle of a multitude of women of all classes who united to push forward their claim to citizenship “on the same terms as is, or as it shall be given to men”. Godfrey sustains the reader’s interest to the end. Missions of the Suffragettes can only add to our appreciation of the women who risked everything to gain their right to the parliamentary vote.