Here's the report that went with the previously posted pictures.
Leeds Mercury, Monday July 27, 1908.
SUFFRAGETTES IN LEEDS
Great Crowd on Woodhouse Moor
SPEECHES FROM TEN PLATFORMS
There was a great gathering on Woodhouse Moor yesterday afternoon, when the Suffragettes held a demonstration. how many assembled one must not be betrayed into venturing to estimate, and so it may be left as many thousands. The weather was favourable, and the public prepared to make the best of it.
A procession was formed and proceeded to the Moor, headed by bands playing stirring airs. On the Moor were arranged ten conveyances by way of platforms, and from these prominent members of the cause held forth more or less strenuously.
The speakers included such well-known adherents as Mrs Pankhurst, Miss Annie Kenney, Miss Mary Gawthorpe, Mrs Pethick Lawrence, Miss Gladys Keevil, Mrs Baines, Miss Adela Pankhurst, and Mrs Drummond. The crowd was undoubtedly swelled by many who went out of curiosity and a desire to see if there were any disturbance. A band performance was in progress also, and on the skirts of the demonstration the Salvation Army and others made the most of the opportunity by holding meetings.
SODS SETTLE AN ARGUMENT
there was no serious disturbance. Here and there one or two noisy spirits elbowed their way into the crowd and ventured upon an occasional interruption. In one instance, too, a man proceeded from reviling the Suffragettes to reviling women in general, with the result that he was made to beat a speedy retreat by means of chaff, mingled with the more substantial persuasion of sods.
Miss Gladys Keevil, a young lady with a winning smile and a most becoming hat, exerted a distinct influence upon her hearers. She admitted that some of the doings of the Suffragettes had not been quite lady-like, but she pleaded that they had done nothing unwomanly.
FOR WOMEN ONLY
There were some things that only women could do. Men, she said, were actually debating in the House of Commons as to whether a mother should have her young child with her in bed or in a cot by her side.
"Why," she said, with a smile, "the stupidest woman knows more about children and their training than the wisest of men."
They did not want the Liberal party to be deprived of power, because they looked to the Liberals to give them the vote. What they were doing was to shake the party, just as a mother might shake a naughty child.
Mrs Pankhurst was as clever as usual in dealing with questions. The adult suffragist meets with scant consideration at her hands. One such was told that if he was sincere he would not use his vote until his wife got one. They were not going to wait until everybody could have the vote. Man wanted woman to pull some more chestnuts out of the fire for him.
As for a programme, said Mrs Pankhurst, they were political dark horses, and they were not going to declare any political programme until they could vote on one.
MAN AND MOTHERING
"Are there not more women than men?" asked a fearful male, trembling as before the wrath to come.
"There are more men born than women," said Mrs Pankhurst, triumphantly, "but fewer survive. It seems to me you men want mothering." And the abashed man looked as if he did.
A resolution advocating "Voted for Women" was put, and carried by a huge majority. At Mrs Pankhurst's platform, for instance, there were but three hands, and one stick with a hat upon it, held up in opposition.
28 November 2009
18 November 2009
Suffragette rally photos
As I've mentioned before, on 26 July 1908 100,000 people attended a suffragette demonstration on Woodhouse Moor, organised by the Womens Social and Political Union.
Their northern organiser was Woodhouse-born Mary Gawthorpe, although I'm told that the Yorkshire end of things was often done by Adela Pankhurst. Adela was the youngest of the Pankhurst daughters, and seems to have suffered some kind of burnout soon after, emigrating to Australia and not seeing her family again.
But anyway, on Monday 27 July 1908 the demonstration was reported in the local press. The Yorkshire Post took a snooty Daily Telegraph-esque tone, but the Leeds Mercury had a larger and wittier article, and some photos too.
I'll type up the prose and post it here soon, but here's the photos to be getting on with.
To see a larger version, click here.
= = = = =
To see a larger version, click here.
Their northern organiser was Woodhouse-born Mary Gawthorpe, although I'm told that the Yorkshire end of things was often done by Adela Pankhurst. Adela was the youngest of the Pankhurst daughters, and seems to have suffered some kind of burnout soon after, emigrating to Australia and not seeing her family again.
But anyway, on Monday 27 July 1908 the demonstration was reported in the local press. The Yorkshire Post took a snooty Daily Telegraph-esque tone, but the Leeds Mercury had a larger and wittier article, and some photos too.
I'll type up the prose and post it here soon, but here's the photos to be getting on with.
To see a larger version, click here.
Suffragette Demonstration.
Local suffragettes, reinforced by some of the leaders of the movement, demonstrated in Leeds yesterday in favour of "Votes for Women". After a procession from the Leeds Town Hall, speeches were delivered from several platforms on Woodhouse Moor, and in the photograph Mrs Pethick Lawrence is seen advocating the cause with some earnestness.
= = = = =
To see a larger version, click here.
A Scene on Woodhouse Moor.
On Woodhouse Moor a crowd of some dimensions had gathered to approve or gratify their curiosity. Our photograph shows Miss Adela Pankhurst addressing a crowd from one platform. The insets are - (1) Mrs P Lawrence, (2) Miss Keevil, (3) Mrs Pankhurst, and (4) Miss Kenney.
12 October 2009
52 Harold Mount photos
The house Henry Rollins lived and worked in is a back-to-back terrace of the sort that was very common in Leeds but largely demolished in the 1960s and 70s.
28 September 2009
John Freeborn, 27 Broomfield Crescent
WW1 and WW2 hold particular attention historically. Not only were ordinary people conscripted en masse but literacy was newly widespread, so they could communicate what they experienced. For the first time it wasn’t just the preserve of the upper classes and official historians.
In 1940 nations had fallen to the Nazis all across Europe, and Britain, standing alone without American support at that time, faced imminent invasion. The German air force and army were far superior to the British. We were expecting invasion, road signs had been taken down so the invaders wouldn’t easily find their way around. One of the great unsung stories, the British Resistance, were readied. The coin was flipped and it came down in its edge, teetering.
The Battle of Britain – aircraft fighting over the skies of Southern and Eastern England flown by young men, mostly in their late teens and early twenties - decided it.
Once Battle of Britain was over, invasion wasn’t going to happen, the US and Soviet Union came in, the Nazis were eventually going to lose, fate was sealed. The defeat of the Nazis - and beyond that government fascism in Europe and the disintegration of its deep-rooted militarism - begins there.
But at that point in mid-1940, the Nazis were still very much on the ascendant. Not only was it ordinary people fighting but in this case it wasn’t a mass action, it came down to a very small band of people, so few that you read a list of their names. That makes it a unique event in history.
Churchill nailed it at the time. For all the evil deeds in his career before the war and the abhorrence of many of his views, his clarity in the build-up to war and during wartime was crucial. He clearly saw, in the immediate aftermath, what had happened in the Battle of Britain. ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.
Twenty year old John Freeborn, of 27 Broomfield Crescent, Leeds 6, flew more operational hours in the Battle of Britain than any other pilot. Even among such an elite and respected band as The Few, John Freeborn stood out.
Born in 1919 in Middleton - an area that was then open farmland rather than today's housing estates near the ring road - the family moved to Broomfield Crescent when John was a boy. To this day he's a proud Northerner and frequently asserts that Yorkshire supplied more pilots to the Battle of Britain than any other county.
He attended Leeds Grammar School beside Woodhouse Moor on the corner of Moorland Road and Clarendon Road (the building is now the University of Leeds Business School). Once he was an air ace he came back to the school in and did a display of aerobatics before landing on the cricket pitch. It amused him that in a few short years the masters had gone from thrashing the crap out of him to fawning over him at lunch.
John was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross twice. For the first one, in recognition of his service during the Battle of Britain, his parents accompanied him to the investiture. The first biography of him, A Tiger's Tale: The Story of Battle of Britain Fighter Ace Wg. Cdr. John Connell Freeborn, has pictures of the invitation.
Here's John with his mother Jean in Leeds shortly after receiving his DFC.
Most of his comrades have died, but John is one of the few of The Few who is still alive. He has co-authored a new biography, Tiger Cub: The Story of John Freeborn DFC*.
In 1940 nations had fallen to the Nazis all across Europe, and Britain, standing alone without American support at that time, faced imminent invasion. The German air force and army were far superior to the British. We were expecting invasion, road signs had been taken down so the invaders wouldn’t easily find their way around. One of the great unsung stories, the British Resistance, were readied. The coin was flipped and it came down in its edge, teetering.
The Battle of Britain – aircraft fighting over the skies of Southern and Eastern England flown by young men, mostly in their late teens and early twenties - decided it.
Once Battle of Britain was over, invasion wasn’t going to happen, the US and Soviet Union came in, the Nazis were eventually going to lose, fate was sealed. The defeat of the Nazis - and beyond that government fascism in Europe and the disintegration of its deep-rooted militarism - begins there.
But at that point in mid-1940, the Nazis were still very much on the ascendant. Not only was it ordinary people fighting but in this case it wasn’t a mass action, it came down to a very small band of people, so few that you read a list of their names. That makes it a unique event in history.
Churchill nailed it at the time. For all the evil deeds in his career before the war and the abhorrence of many of his views, his clarity in the build-up to war and during wartime was crucial. He clearly saw, in the immediate aftermath, what had happened in the Battle of Britain. ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.
Twenty year old John Freeborn, of 27 Broomfield Crescent, Leeds 6, flew more operational hours in the Battle of Britain than any other pilot. Even among such an elite and respected band as The Few, John Freeborn stood out.
Born in 1919 in Middleton - an area that was then open farmland rather than today's housing estates near the ring road - the family moved to Broomfield Crescent when John was a boy. To this day he's a proud Northerner and frequently asserts that Yorkshire supplied more pilots to the Battle of Britain than any other county.
He attended Leeds Grammar School beside Woodhouse Moor on the corner of Moorland Road and Clarendon Road (the building is now the University of Leeds Business School). Once he was an air ace he came back to the school in and did a display of aerobatics before landing on the cricket pitch. It amused him that in a few short years the masters had gone from thrashing the crap out of him to fawning over him at lunch.
John was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross twice. For the first one, in recognition of his service during the Battle of Britain, his parents accompanied him to the investiture. The first biography of him, A Tiger's Tale: The Story of Battle of Britain Fighter Ace Wg. Cdr. John Connell Freeborn, has pictures of the invitation.
Here's John with his mother Jean in Leeds shortly after receiving his DFC.
Most of his comrades have died, but John is one of the few of The Few who is still alive. He has co-authored a new biography, Tiger Cub: The Story of John Freeborn DFC*.
14 August 2009
Henry Rollins, 52 Harold Mount
I'm determined that this project won't just celebrate dusty old feted figures. Henry Rollins deserves his place alongside Orwell, Gawthorpe and the rest.
He's best known for his music, but he also does spoken word gigs that are pithy, incisive, funny and bold. He has an outspoken and original social conscience.
And he was in Leeds at a formative time. After the split of his first band Black Flag he could have simply faded away. His time in Leeds at that crucial point in his life galvanised his resolve to continue.
Sleeve note to 1999 reissue of Hot Animal Machine by Henry Rollins:
===========
From 1981 to 1986 I was in a band called Black Flag. In late summer of 1986, the band broke up and I had to decide whether to stop or try to keep making music. Years before, Chris Haskett, an old friend of mine, and I promised each other that some day we would record together. We were both in DC at the time so I called him and told him that my schedule was suddenly extremely open. Without missing a beat, Chris went right to work and assembled a band: Bernie Wandell on bass and Mick Green on drums.
At the time Chris was living in Leeds UK and he headed back there because his gear and Mick were there. Bernie and I were to fly out when he got things set. It was a strange time in my life. I had grown used to being in a band, going on tour and being handed a schedule telling me where I was going all the time. I couldn't see ever making another record. Chris would have none of it. There was no doubt in his mind that things were going to go great and he really picked me up. In October I flew to London and took a bus up to Leeds and went to 52 Harold Mount where Chris lived. I had never met Bernie or Mick so it was strange at first but we hung out that night and it was cool.
We had practice time booked and both Chris and I had some song ideas. We went in the next day and started work. I thikn one of the first things we played together was Suicide's "Ghost Rider." From there we worked on covers that I had wanted to do and Chris showed us some of the riffs he had written,
From practice we would go back to 52 Harold Mount and eat. After that, Chris and I would work on song writing. Perhaps it was a grand combination of new association, excitement and a good dose of fear of failure, but whatever it was, we wrote like men possessed and came up with a lot songs in a short time.
Days later we were in Off Beat Studios and met what proved to be one righteous man, the studio engineer, Geoff Clout. He was basically assigned to us. At first he regarded us from quite a distance and a bit of altitude. He thought we were nuts I imagine. Not hard to come to that conclusion. The four of us were very intense in our own lovable way. Nonetheless, we got right to work and managed to record seventeen tracks in a few days. There was no one around, so Chris and I produced and mixed the record with Geoff.
Days later I was flying back to America in a jet lagged daze with the quarter inch tapes under my arm. The master multi-tracks of these songs no longer exist as I could not afford the tape and had to rent it from the studio. Days later, it was no doubt taped over.
Chris is the reason this record happened and it should be mentioned here that it was his hard work and relentless energy that put this thing over the wall. I was so confused and depressed after Black Flag broke up that I didn't know which end was up. Fortunately, Chris did and we ended up with this cool record.
The following April, he and I were in Trenton, NJ working with two people had had never met before, Sim and Andrew. The result was the Rollins Band, hundreds of shows and many, many miles under the wheels.
--Henry Rollins
[ This line-up released two records: Hot Animal Machine (credited as a Rollins solo record) and Drive by Shooting (credited to "Henrieta Collins and the Wifebeating Childhaters") ]
He's best known for his music, but he also does spoken word gigs that are pithy, incisive, funny and bold. He has an outspoken and original social conscience.
And he was in Leeds at a formative time. After the split of his first band Black Flag he could have simply faded away. His time in Leeds at that crucial point in his life galvanised his resolve to continue.
Sleeve note to 1999 reissue of Hot Animal Machine by Henry Rollins:
===========
From 1981 to 1986 I was in a band called Black Flag. In late summer of 1986, the band broke up and I had to decide whether to stop or try to keep making music. Years before, Chris Haskett, an old friend of mine, and I promised each other that some day we would record together. We were both in DC at the time so I called him and told him that my schedule was suddenly extremely open. Without missing a beat, Chris went right to work and assembled a band: Bernie Wandell on bass and Mick Green on drums.
At the time Chris was living in Leeds UK and he headed back there because his gear and Mick were there. Bernie and I were to fly out when he got things set. It was a strange time in my life. I had grown used to being in a band, going on tour and being handed a schedule telling me where I was going all the time. I couldn't see ever making another record. Chris would have none of it. There was no doubt in his mind that things were going to go great and he really picked me up. In October I flew to London and took a bus up to Leeds and went to 52 Harold Mount where Chris lived. I had never met Bernie or Mick so it was strange at first but we hung out that night and it was cool.
We had practice time booked and both Chris and I had some song ideas. We went in the next day and started work. I thikn one of the first things we played together was Suicide's "Ghost Rider." From there we worked on covers that I had wanted to do and Chris showed us some of the riffs he had written,
From practice we would go back to 52 Harold Mount and eat. After that, Chris and I would work on song writing. Perhaps it was a grand combination of new association, excitement and a good dose of fear of failure, but whatever it was, we wrote like men possessed and came up with a lot songs in a short time.
Days later we were in Off Beat Studios and met what proved to be one righteous man, the studio engineer, Geoff Clout. He was basically assigned to us. At first he regarded us from quite a distance and a bit of altitude. He thought we were nuts I imagine. Not hard to come to that conclusion. The four of us were very intense in our own lovable way. Nonetheless, we got right to work and managed to record seventeen tracks in a few days. There was no one around, so Chris and I produced and mixed the record with Geoff.
Days later I was flying back to America in a jet lagged daze with the quarter inch tapes under my arm. The master multi-tracks of these songs no longer exist as I could not afford the tape and had to rent it from the studio. Days later, it was no doubt taped over.
Chris is the reason this record happened and it should be mentioned here that it was his hard work and relentless energy that put this thing over the wall. I was so confused and depressed after Black Flag broke up that I didn't know which end was up. Fortunately, Chris did and we ended up with this cool record.
The following April, he and I were in Trenton, NJ working with two people had had never met before, Sim and Andrew. The result was the Rollins Band, hundreds of shows and many, many miles under the wheels.
--Henry Rollins
[ This line-up released two records: Hot Animal Machine (credited as a Rollins solo record) and Drive by Shooting (credited to "Henrieta Collins and the Wifebeating Childhaters") ]
21 July 2009
Arthur Ransome, 6 Ash Grove
He's certainly not under-appreciated, with extensive sites such as All Things Ransome and the Arthur Ransome Society.
There's a blue plaque on the house he was born in at 6 Ash Grove (Google map), but it is rubbish. 'Arthur Ransome author of Swallows and Amazons was born here'.
I mean, if someone's so obscure that you have to tell people why they're notable it's bad enough, but to tie it to a single deed means that they're probably not worth commemoration.
And with Ransome, while the book is the main thing he's known for, it was actually written in semi-retirement after a much more interesting early life around some of the world's major radical politics.
He was taught to ice skate when he was 12 on a frozen lake up at the Ford's house by none other than the great anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin!
In his early 30s he went to Russia to write a travel book but ended up as a witness to the Revolution. He covered it for the British press, writing from a pro-revolutionary perspective.
When the October revolution came he approved of that too. Within a few months he'd interviewed all the senior figures, was living with Trotsky's deputy and was going out with the woman who would become his wife, Trotsky's private secretary Evgenia Shelepina.
In August 1918 he was recruited as an MI6 agent. Yet he still smuggled out a load of jewels to fund communist causes when he left Russia. Double agent? Or just a sort of sneaky journalist diplomat? Either way, it's a hell of a lot more exciting, intriguing and relevant than childrens books.
In the introduction to his book Russia in 1919 he asserted
He was at Kropotkin's funeral in Moscow in 1920. He finally returned, with Evgenia, to England in 1924, and after settling in the Lake District he wrote the children's books that made his name.
In recent years, though, as official documents have been released or leaked, this earlier, wilder, more political aspect of him has come to the fore. It appears the main guy doing the work is Roland Chambers who wrote this article for the Guardian in 2005, and his proper book on all this stuff, The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome, has just been published.
There's a blue plaque on the house he was born in at 6 Ash Grove (Google map), but it is rubbish. 'Arthur Ransome author of Swallows and Amazons was born here'.
I mean, if someone's so obscure that you have to tell people why they're notable it's bad enough, but to tie it to a single deed means that they're probably not worth commemoration.
And with Ransome, while the book is the main thing he's known for, it was actually written in semi-retirement after a much more interesting early life around some of the world's major radical politics.
He was taught to ice skate when he was 12 on a frozen lake up at the Ford's house by none other than the great anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin!
In his early 30s he went to Russia to write a travel book but ended up as a witness to the Revolution. He covered it for the British press, writing from a pro-revolutionary perspective.
When the October revolution came he approved of that too. Within a few months he'd interviewed all the senior figures, was living with Trotsky's deputy and was going out with the woman who would become his wife, Trotsky's private secretary Evgenia Shelepina.
In August 1918 he was recruited as an MI6 agent. Yet he still smuggled out a load of jewels to fund communist causes when he left Russia. Double agent? Or just a sort of sneaky journalist diplomat? Either way, it's a hell of a lot more exciting, intriguing and relevant than childrens books.
In the introduction to his book Russia in 1919 he asserted
I got, I think I may say, as near as any foreigner who was not a Communist could get to what was going on.
He was at Kropotkin's funeral in Moscow in 1920. He finally returned, with Evgenia, to England in 1924, and after settling in the Lake District he wrote the children's books that made his name.
In recent years, though, as official documents have been released or leaked, this earlier, wilder, more political aspect of him has come to the fore. It appears the main guy doing the work is Roland Chambers who wrote this article for the Guardian in 2005, and his proper book on all this stuff, The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome, has just been published.
18 July 2009
The Statues of Woodhouse Moor
Four statues stand on Woodhouse Moor, but none of them were originally placed there.
At the corner of Moorland Road and Clarendon Road stands the Duke of Wellington, always with his boots creatively repainted, and as I write he's currently sporting a Homer Simpson mask.
Homer with a poncey hat and that puffed up pomposity of 18th century aristocrats. Great.
At the opposite side of the park by Hyde Park Corner stands Robert Peel. He too has been reinterpreted. For the Euro 2004 football tournament he got England flag facepaint, and after the death of John Peel the inscription 'Peel 1852' was painted to say 'John Peel 1939-2004'.
The miserablist council scrubbed it off, but it returned. By my count, it's been redone eleven times. And if you stood there and asked the citizens of the creative haven of Leeds 6 who they'd prefer - the inventor of the Conservative party and the police, or the man who brought us Jimi Henrix and The Clash - I know what answer you'd get.
Disrespect of statues is nothing new, nor is it limited to Woodhouse Moor. There was a great hoo-hah about disrespect when a Mayday demo gave London's Churchill statue a grass mohican, but that was anomalous. It goes off all the time without comment. It's seems like more common to see Cardiff's statue of NHS godfather Aneurin Bevan with a traffic cone on his head than without.
And frankly, I suspect that we subconsciously know that the people we erect statues to - largely our overwealthy and brutal ancestors - need taking down a peg or two, so we have them publicly shat on in effigy by pigeons.
But anyway, collectively the four statues of Woodhouse Moor spell out another form of disrespect. Wellington, Victoria and Robert Peel originally stood in Victoria Square outside the town hall, but were moved in 1937 to make way for a car park.
The fourth is the only native of the city, the Victorian industrialist and mayor of Leeds Henry Marsden.
His statue gives the name to Monument Moor, the area of Woodhouse Moor on the other side of the A660 from Victoria.
It was called Swing Moor prior to Marsden's arrival in 1952, when he was moved there from the city centre road junction of Merrion Street and Albion Street as he was deemed to be a hindrance to the increasing amount of motor traffic.
So, we used to venerate these folks in the city centre, but we've sidelined them to a peripheral park in order to make way for increased traffic. Collectively, then, they stand as a monument to the motor car.
Their moving is not a sign that we've stopped venerating things, just a physical acknowledgement of the change in what we worship.
At the corner of Moorland Road and Clarendon Road stands the Duke of Wellington, always with his boots creatively repainted, and as I write he's currently sporting a Homer Simpson mask.
Homer with a poncey hat and that puffed up pomposity of 18th century aristocrats. Great.
At the opposite side of the park by Hyde Park Corner stands Robert Peel. He too has been reinterpreted. For the Euro 2004 football tournament he got England flag facepaint, and after the death of John Peel the inscription 'Peel 1852' was painted to say 'John Peel 1939-2004'.
The miserablist council scrubbed it off, but it returned. By my count, it's been redone eleven times. And if you stood there and asked the citizens of the creative haven of Leeds 6 who they'd prefer - the inventor of the Conservative party and the police, or the man who brought us Jimi Henrix and The Clash - I know what answer you'd get.
Disrespect of statues is nothing new, nor is it limited to Woodhouse Moor. There was a great hoo-hah about disrespect when a Mayday demo gave London's Churchill statue a grass mohican, but that was anomalous. It goes off all the time without comment. It's seems like more common to see Cardiff's statue of NHS godfather Aneurin Bevan with a traffic cone on his head than without.
And frankly, I suspect that we subconsciously know that the people we erect statues to - largely our overwealthy and brutal ancestors - need taking down a peg or two, so we have them publicly shat on in effigy by pigeons.
But anyway, collectively the four statues of Woodhouse Moor spell out another form of disrespect. Wellington, Victoria and Robert Peel originally stood in Victoria Square outside the town hall, but were moved in 1937 to make way for a car park.
The fourth is the only native of the city, the Victorian industrialist and mayor of Leeds Henry Marsden.
His statue gives the name to Monument Moor, the area of Woodhouse Moor on the other side of the A660 from Victoria.
It was called Swing Moor prior to Marsden's arrival in 1952, when he was moved there from the city centre road junction of Merrion Street and Albion Street as he was deemed to be a hindrance to the increasing amount of motor traffic.
So, we used to venerate these folks in the city centre, but we've sidelined them to a peripheral park in order to make way for increased traffic. Collectively, then, they stand as a monument to the motor car.
Their moving is not a sign that we've stopped venerating things, just a physical acknowledgement of the change in what we worship.
7 July 2009
More Mary Gawthorpe pictures
When I said that the WSPU postcards showed the second picture I'd found of Mary, I was unwittingly wrong.
For years I've had a postcard on my wall of Christabel Pankhurst in Manchester, with posters advertising her meeting at the Free Trade Hall, the scene of the 1905 arrest that got her imprisoned and kicked the suffrage movement up a gear.
In January 1909 when this was taken, Mary Gawthorpe was well established as the WSPU's organiser, running their Manchester office.
That's Christabel apparently holding a box file on her head by means of bedclothes. Who's that stood to the left of her?
Let's have a closer look.
And here's another one I've found, clearly taken the same day.
For years I've had a postcard on my wall of Christabel Pankhurst in Manchester, with posters advertising her meeting at the Free Trade Hall, the scene of the 1905 arrest that got her imprisoned and kicked the suffrage movement up a gear.
In January 1909 when this was taken, Mary Gawthorpe was well established as the WSPU's organiser, running their Manchester office.
That's Christabel apparently holding a box file on her head by means of bedclothes. Who's that stood to the left of her?
Let's have a closer look.
And here's another one I've found, clearly taken the same day.
29 June 2009
In search of Melville Street
I just about remember the Silver Jubilee of 1977. It was 25 years since the Queen's accession to the throne, and the country went nuts for it. I know people who grew up in ardent Welsh Nationalist families who had street parties with red white and blue bunting.
It is gratifying to note that nobody did anything much for the Golden Jubilee and most people here won't even have noticed it or be able to recall when it was without doing the maths in their head. I don't know how we can call ourselves democratic whilst giving power, wealth and respect to people because they're the vague descendants of thieves and murderers. I'm glad we're making them pay a bit of tax whilst we ignore them all the more.
I always assumed that the Jubilee Social Club in Woodhouse got its name from being built in 1977. It certainly looks like a chunk of unimaginative functional 70s architecture. But now I'm guessing that it's a nod to Jubilee road, Street, Mount and Terrace that used to stand nearby, where the Elthams now stand.
The Jubilee Social Club is built on the site of several stumpy rows of terraces perpendicular to Melville Place; the end of Melville Street, and Viscount Street, Viscount Place and Viscount Terrace. So it would have been more accurate to call it the Viscount Social Club, but I suspect so aristocratic a name sat uneasily with working mens' club sensibilities.
For those unfamiliar, the bits of Leeds built in the 19th century tend to have groups of street names. You'll get Brudenell Road, Street, Mount, Avenue, View and Grove all adjacent.
This method has it's pros and cons. It's awful if you're trying to remember it, (did they say it was Brudenell Mount? Or Grove? er...), but it also makes a neat subdivision of areas, so you refer to someone living in 'The Brudenells' and because you've seen so many streets you get the idea without having to have a precise knowledge.
Incidentally, 'Brudenell' always sounds like mild or archaic swearing to me, as in 'what the brudenell do you think you're doing?'
There is another Leeds convention, cross streets. So you'll get Louis Street and then a narrower street perpendicular to it is called Cross Louis Street.
The main road from Hyde Park Corner through Woodhouse down to Meanwood Road is called Woodhouse Street at the start, for obvious reasons. But as it passes the Chemic it becomes Melville Road, then for the last bit after the junction with Melville Place it becomes Cross Chancellor Street. Makes me picture Alistair Darling with a real mardy face.
That's because the sharp right turn at the Chemic is the rest of Woodhouse Street. The road as we know it today is the result of the demolition and remodelling of that lower part of Woodhouse. We still have Cross Speedwell Street, even though Speedwell Street has gone.
The new houses built on the Melvilles were given names in the series - Melville Close and Gardens, as is the case with the new Marian Terrace on the site of the Marians.
The Chemic on Johnston Street gets its name from Johnston's Chemical Works that stood on the street. It was demolished in about 1890 according to one source, though I'm sure I read somewhere else it was 1920 (using 'I'm sure' in that sense that means 'I'm not sure'). The Marians were subsequently built on the site. This is why the Marians are newer than the surrounding terraces.
A picture from 1959 shows houses on Johnston Street looking like the same sort of sandstone buildings as the Chemic. The older buildings all along the Meanwood valley are easily distinguished by their sandstone, presumably from the sandstone quarries that were on either side of the valley in the early 19th century.
This whole area between Woodhouse Street and Meanwood Road, around the Melvilles and Marians, is marked on the mid 19th century map as open land called Woodhouse Carr (a carr being marshy or boggy moor). The name is still on modern maps, though I've never heard anybody use it.
It seems as if the majority - literally - of Woodhouse is not the original buildings. Much of it appears to have been demolished and redeveloped in the 60s and 70s. The fabulous Leodis archive has that picture of the house Mary Gawthorpe was born and brought up in, but it is not at all easy to locate it on the ground. A few streets are in the same place, others have had their course changed and a great many have been erased entirely.
I've done a bit of a rudimentary calculation (looking at the 1908 Ordnance Survey map whilst having Google Earth up on screen with a ruler!), and it appears that 5 Melville Street was just inside the entrance to Melville Gardens. Walk in from Melville Place on the right, and as the pavement starts to curve right for the first cul-de-sac, you're stood on 5 Melville Street. I think.
The 10 Rillington Place site has some thunderously impressive research. It faces the same sort of problem, ie that the whole area has been remodelled and bears no relation to the original. But with diligence, maps and Photoshop they figured it out.
I'll scan a modern map of Woodhouse Carr and do an overlay of it with the 1908 one so we can see it clearly.
It is gratifying to note that nobody did anything much for the Golden Jubilee and most people here won't even have noticed it or be able to recall when it was without doing the maths in their head. I don't know how we can call ourselves democratic whilst giving power, wealth and respect to people because they're the vague descendants of thieves and murderers. I'm glad we're making them pay a bit of tax whilst we ignore them all the more.
I always assumed that the Jubilee Social Club in Woodhouse got its name from being built in 1977. It certainly looks like a chunk of unimaginative functional 70s architecture. But now I'm guessing that it's a nod to Jubilee road, Street, Mount and Terrace that used to stand nearby, where the Elthams now stand.
The Jubilee Social Club is built on the site of several stumpy rows of terraces perpendicular to Melville Place; the end of Melville Street, and Viscount Street, Viscount Place and Viscount Terrace. So it would have been more accurate to call it the Viscount Social Club, but I suspect so aristocratic a name sat uneasily with working mens' club sensibilities.
For those unfamiliar, the bits of Leeds built in the 19th century tend to have groups of street names. You'll get Brudenell Road, Street, Mount, Avenue, View and Grove all adjacent.
This method has it's pros and cons. It's awful if you're trying to remember it, (did they say it was Brudenell Mount? Or Grove? er...), but it also makes a neat subdivision of areas, so you refer to someone living in 'The Brudenells' and because you've seen so many streets you get the idea without having to have a precise knowledge.
Incidentally, 'Brudenell' always sounds like mild or archaic swearing to me, as in 'what the brudenell do you think you're doing?'
There is another Leeds convention, cross streets. So you'll get Louis Street and then a narrower street perpendicular to it is called Cross Louis Street.
The main road from Hyde Park Corner through Woodhouse down to Meanwood Road is called Woodhouse Street at the start, for obvious reasons. But as it passes the Chemic it becomes Melville Road, then for the last bit after the junction with Melville Place it becomes Cross Chancellor Street. Makes me picture Alistair Darling with a real mardy face.
That's because the sharp right turn at the Chemic is the rest of Woodhouse Street. The road as we know it today is the result of the demolition and remodelling of that lower part of Woodhouse. We still have Cross Speedwell Street, even though Speedwell Street has gone.
The new houses built on the Melvilles were given names in the series - Melville Close and Gardens, as is the case with the new Marian Terrace on the site of the Marians.
The Chemic on Johnston Street gets its name from Johnston's Chemical Works that stood on the street. It was demolished in about 1890 according to one source, though I'm sure I read somewhere else it was 1920 (using 'I'm sure' in that sense that means 'I'm not sure'). The Marians were subsequently built on the site. This is why the Marians are newer than the surrounding terraces.
A picture from 1959 shows houses on Johnston Street looking like the same sort of sandstone buildings as the Chemic. The older buildings all along the Meanwood valley are easily distinguished by their sandstone, presumably from the sandstone quarries that were on either side of the valley in the early 19th century.
This whole area between Woodhouse Street and Meanwood Road, around the Melvilles and Marians, is marked on the mid 19th century map as open land called Woodhouse Carr (a carr being marshy or boggy moor). The name is still on modern maps, though I've never heard anybody use it.
It seems as if the majority - literally - of Woodhouse is not the original buildings. Much of it appears to have been demolished and redeveloped in the 60s and 70s. The fabulous Leodis archive has that picture of the house Mary Gawthorpe was born and brought up in, but it is not at all easy to locate it on the ground. A few streets are in the same place, others have had their course changed and a great many have been erased entirely.
I've done a bit of a rudimentary calculation (looking at the 1908 Ordnance Survey map whilst having Google Earth up on screen with a ruler!), and it appears that 5 Melville Street was just inside the entrance to Melville Gardens. Walk in from Melville Place on the right, and as the pavement starts to curve right for the first cul-de-sac, you're stood on 5 Melville Street. I think.
The 10 Rillington Place site has some thunderously impressive research. It faces the same sort of problem, ie that the whole area has been remodelled and bears no relation to the original. But with diligence, maps and Photoshop they figured it out.
I'll scan a modern map of Woodhouse Carr and do an overlay of it with the 1908 one so we can see it clearly.
23 June 2009
21 Estcourt Avenue photos
The house George Orwell stayed in is a through terrace.
Front:
Back:
Front:
Back:
7 March 1936
Staying till next Wed. with M[arjorie] and H[umphrey] at 21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley. Conscious all the while of difference in atmosphere between middle-class home even of this kind and working-class home. The essential difference is here there is elbow room, in spite of there being 5 adults and 3 children, besides animals, at present in the house.
19 June 2009
Mary Gawthorpe postcards
After moves to make the Womens Social and Political Union democratically open and write a constitution were literally torn up by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1907, there was something of a ruling elite feeling among its prime movers and paid employees. Mary Gawthorpe was one of these generals.
The WSPU published sets of postcard portraits of their committee of leaders.
For reasons that I can't quite be bothered to fathom, there's a suffragettes section on the UK Parliament site's bit about the Life Peerages Act 1958, and it includes scans of a vintage set of eight postcards.
This is only the second picture of her I've found so far.
The same picture was used on a different postcard.
The WSPU published sets of postcard portraits of their committee of leaders.
For reasons that I can't quite be bothered to fathom, there's a suffragettes section on the UK Parliament site's bit about the Life Peerages Act 1958, and it includes scans of a vintage set of eight postcards.
This is only the second picture of her I've found so far.
The same picture was used on a different postcard.
18 June 2009
Mary Gawthorpe picture
The most common picture of Mary Gawthorpe - from 1909ish - is often used only in a cropped form, which is a great shame as in its fullness it is a wonderful photograph.
The recline of the pose is unlike the starchy formal posture common to portraits of the era, and that hint of a smirk set underneath the determination of the eyes makes it utterly captivating.
The recline of the pose is unlike the starchy formal posture common to portraits of the era, and that hint of a smirk set underneath the determination of the eyes makes it utterly captivating.
"Miss Gawthorpe is a morsel of a woman to have achieved so much, but one look into her hazel eyes - her very unusual hazel eyes - is convincing of the power within her. She is all fire and quick response, a flash of energy, of sympathy, of comprehension."
-Mary Ogden White
17 June 2009
Orwell's Leeds diary
The Leeds section of George Orwell's 1936 Road To Wigan Pier diary initially concentrates on his experiences in Sheffield, but then moves on to his stay in Headingley. He was a bugger for very long paragraphs, which are difficult to read on-screen, so I've added some paragraph breaks.
=======
5 March
At 21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley, Leeds. I left Sheffield at 10.30 this morning, and in spite of its being such a frightful place and of the relief of getting back into a comfortable house, I was quite sorry to leave the Searles. I have seldom met people with more natural decency. They were as kind to me as anyone could possibly be, and I hope and trust they liked me. Of course I got their whole life-history from them by degrees.
Searle is 33 and was an only child. When a youth he joined the Army and was in the Ordnance Corps (or whatever it is called) with the army of occupation in Palestine and Egypt. He has vivid memories of Egypt and wishes he was back there. Since then he has only had short-lived jobs, e.g. as store-keeper and check-weighman at various works, also as railway (outside) porter.
Mrs S comes from a somewhat more prosperous family, as her father till only a few weeks ago36 (36 He died very suddenly and his wife has now no resources except the old age pension [Author's footnote) was in a good job at £5 a week and also made something on the side by making fishing rods. But it was a very large family (11) and she went into service. She married S when he was on the dole, against the opposition of her family. At first they could not get a house, and lived in a single room, in which two children were born and one died. They told me they had only one bed for the family and had to 'lay out' the dead baby in the perambulator.
Finally, after frightful difficulty (one reason for this is that private landlords are not too keen on letting to people on the dole and there is a certain amount of bribery of agents) they got this house, of which the rent is about 8s. 6d. Mrs S earns about 9s. a week from her charing. Exactly what deduction is made for this from S's dole I don't know, but their total income is 32s. 6d. In spite of which I had great difficulty in getting them to accept enough for my keep while there - they wanted to charge only 6s. for full board and lodging from Monday night to Thursday morning.
They keep the house very clean and decent, have a bit of garden, though they can't do much with it, as it has factory chimneys on one side and the gas works on the other, besides being poor soil, and they are very fond of one another. I was surprised by Mrs S's grasp of the economic situation and also of abstract ideas - quite unlike most working-class women in this, though she is I think not far from illiterate. She does not seem resentful against the people who employ her - indeed she says they are kind to her - but sees quite clearly the essential facts about domestic service. She told me how the other day as she waited at the lunch table she calculated the price of the food on the table (for 5 persons for one meal) and it came to 6s. 3d. - as much as the P.A.C. allows her child for a fortnight.
B was very good and took my request to 'show me over Sheffield' even too seriously, so that from morning to night I was being rushed from place to place, largely on foot, to see public buildings, slums, housing estates etc. But he is a tiresome person to be with, being definitely disgruntled and too conscious of his Communist convictions. In Rotherham we had to have lunch at a slightly expensive restaurant because there didn't seem to be any others except pubs (B is T.T.), and when in there he was sweating and groaning about the 'bourgeois atmosphere' and saying he could not eat this kind of food.
As he declares that it is necessary to literally hate the bourgeoisie, I wondered what he thought of me, because he told me at the very start I was a bourgeois and remarked on my 'public school twang'. However, I think he was disposed to treat me as a sort of honorary proletarian, partly because I had no objection to washing in the sink etc. but more because I seemed interested in Sheffield. He was very generous and though I had told him at the start that I was going to pay for his meals etc. while we were together, he would always go out of his way to spare me expense.
It seems that he lives on 10s. a week - I had this from Searle: exactly where B's 10s. comes from I don't know - and the rent of his room is 6s. Of course it would not be possible to subsist on the remainder, allowing for fuel. You could only keep alive on 4s. a week if you spent nothing on fuel and nothing on tobacco or clothes.
----------------
Orwell kept a newspaper cutting among his notes:
----------------------
I gather B gets meals from time to time from the Ss and other friends, also from his brother who is in comparatively good employ. His room is decent and even cultured-looking, as it has bits of 'antique' furniture which he has made himself, and some crude but not disagreeable pictures, mostly of circuses, which he has painted.
Much of his bitterness obviously comes from sexual starvation. His deformity handicaps him with women, his fear of transmitting it has stopped him from marrying (he says he would only marry a woman past the childbearing age), and his inability to earn money makes it more impossible still. However, at one of the Adelphi summer schools he picked up with some school-mistress (aged 43) who I gather is his mistress when opportunities permit and who is willing to marry him, only her parents oppose it. The Searles say he has improved greatly since taking up with this woman - before that he used to have fits occasionally.
We had an argument one evening in the Searles' house because I helped Mrs S with the washing-up. Both of the men disapproved of this, of course. Mrs S seemed doubtful. She said that in the North working-class men never offered any courtesies to women (women are allowed to do all the house-work unaided, even when the man is unemployed, and it is always the man who sits in the comfortable chair), and she took this state of things for granted, but did not see why it should not be changed. She said that she thought the women now-a-days, especially the younger women, would like it if men opened doors for them etc.
The position now-a-days is anomalous. The man is practically always out of work, whereas the woman occasionally is working. Yet the woman continues to do all the house-work and the man not a hand's-turn, except carpentering and gardening. Yet I think it is instinctively felt by both sexes that the man would lose his manhood if, merely because he was out of work, he became a 'Mary Ann'.
One particular picture of Sheffield stays by me. A frightful piece of waste ground (somehow, up here a piece of waste ground attains a squalor that would be impossible even in London), trampled quite bare of grass and littered with newspaper, old saucepans etc. To the right an isolated row of gaunt four room houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney behind chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made from the slag of furnaces. In front, across the piece of waste ground, a cubical building of dingy red and yellow brick, with the sign, 'John Grocock, Haulage Contractor'.
Other memories of Sheffield: stone walls blackened by smoke, a shallow river yellow with chemicals, serrated flames, like circular saws, coming out from the cowls of the foundry chimneys, thump and scream of steam hammers (the iron seems to scream under the blow), smell of sulphur, yellow clay, backsides of women wagging laboriously from side to side as they shove their perambulators up the hills....
7 March
Staying till next Wed. with M[arjorie] and H[umphrey] at 21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley. Conscious all the while of difference in atmosphere between middle-class home even of this kind and working-class home. The essential difference is here there is elbow room, in spite of there being 5 adults and 3 children, besides animals, at present in the house. The children make peace and quiet difficult, but if you definitely want to be alone you can be so - in a working-class house never, either by night or day.
One of the kinds of discomfort inseparable from a working man's life is waiting about. If you receive a salary it is paid into your bank and you draw it out when you want it. If you receive wages, you have to go and get them in somebody else's time and are probably kept hanging abo0ut and probably expected to behave as though being paid your wages at all was a favour. When Mr H at Wigan went to the mine to draw his compensation, he had to go, for some reason I did not understand, on two separate days each week, and was kept waiting in the cold for about an hour before he was paid. In addition the four tram journeys to and from the mine cost him 1s., reducing his compensation from 29s. weekly to 28s. He took this for granted, of course.
The result of long training in this kind of thing is that whereas the bourgeois goes through life expecting to get what he wants, within limits, the working man always feels himself the slave of a more or less mysterious authority. I was impressed by the fact that when I went to Sheffield Town Hall to ask for certain statistics, both B and Searle - both of them people of much more forcible character than myself - were nervous, would not come into the office with me, and assumed that the Town Clerk would refuse information. They said, 'He might give it to you but he wouldn't give it to us'.
Actually the Town Clerk was snooty and I did not get all the information I asked for. But the point was that I assumed my questions would be answered, and the other two assumed the contrary.
It is for this reason that in countries where the class hierarchy exists, people of the higher class always tend to come to the front in times of stress, though not really more gifted than the others. That they will do so seems to be taken for granted always and everywhere.
N.B. to look up the passage in Lissagary's History of the Commune describing the shootings after the Commune had been suppressed. They were shooting the ringleaders without trial, and as they did not know who the ringleaders were, they were picking them out on the principle that those of better class than the others would be the ringleaders. One man was shot because he was wearing a watch, another because he 'had an intelligent face'. N.B. to look up this passage.
Yesterday with H and M to Haworth Parsonage, home of the Brontes and now a museum. Was chiefly impressed by a pair of Charlotte Bronte's cloth-topped boots, very small, with square toes and lacing up the sides.
9 March
Yesterday with H and M to their cottage at Middlesmoor, high up on the edge of the moors. Perhaps it is only the time of year, but even up there, miles from any industrial towns, the smoky look peculiar to this part of the country seems to hang about anything. Grass dull-coloured, streams muddy, houses all blackened as though by smoke. There was snow everywhere, but thawing and slushy. Sheep very dirty - no lambs, apparently. The palm was out and primroses putting out new shoots; otherwise nothing moving.
11 March
On the last two evenings to 'discussion groups' - societies of people who meet once a week, listen to some talk on the radio and then discuss it. Those at the one on Monday were chiefly unemployed men and I believe these 'discussion groups' were started or at any rate suggested by the Social Welfare people who run unemployed occupational centres.
That on Monday was decorous and rather dull. Thirteen people including ourselves (one woman besides M) and we met in a room adjoining a public library. The talk was on Galsworthy's play The Skin Game and the discussion kept to the subject until most of us adjourned to a pub for bread and cheese and beer afterwards.
Two people dominated the assembly, one a huge bull-headed man named Rowe who contradicted whatever the last speaker has said and involved himself in the most appalling contradictions, the other a youngish, very intelligent and extremely well-informed man named Creed. From his refined accent, quiet voice and apparent omniscience, I took him for a librarian. I find he keeps a tobacconist's shop and was previously a commercial traveller. During the war he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector.
The other meeting was at a pub and the people were of higher standing. The arrangement is that M and H go there taking the portable radio, and the publican, who is a member of this group, lets them have a room for the evening. On this occasion the talk was called 'If Plato Lived Today', but no one listened-in except M and myself - H has gone to Bedford.
When the talk was over the publican, a Canadian with a very bald head, a market gardener who was already the worse for drink, and another man rolled in and there began an orgy of drinking from which we escaped with difficulty about an hour later.
Much of the talk on both nights about the European situation and most people saying (some of them with ill-dissembled hope) that war is certain. With two exceptions all pro-German.
Today to Barnsley to fix up about a place to stay. Wilde, secretary of the South Yorkshire Branch of the Working Men's Club and Institute Union, has fixed it all up for me. The address is Agnes Avenue. The usual 2 up 2 down house, with sink in living room, as at Sheffield. The husband is a miner and was away at work when we got there. House very disorganized as it was washing day, but seemed clean.
Wilde, though kind and helpful, was a very vague person. He was a working miner till 1924 but as usual has been bourgeois-ified. Smartly dressed with gloves and umbrella and very little accent - I would have taken him for a solicitor from his appearance.
Barnsley is slightly smaller than Wigan - about 70,000 inhabitants - but distinctly less poverty stricken, at any rate in appearance. Much better shops and more appearance of business being done. Many miners coming home from the morning shift. Mostly wearing clogs but of a square-toed pattern different from the Lancashire ones.
========
On 25 March, Orwell closes his diary with, 'Returning to Leeds tomorrow, then on to London on Monday'. This gave him a further four days in Leeds, though there is no record from that visit.
=======
5 March
At 21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley, Leeds. I left Sheffield at 10.30 this morning, and in spite of its being such a frightful place and of the relief of getting back into a comfortable house, I was quite sorry to leave the Searles. I have seldom met people with more natural decency. They were as kind to me as anyone could possibly be, and I hope and trust they liked me. Of course I got their whole life-history from them by degrees.
Searle is 33 and was an only child. When a youth he joined the Army and was in the Ordnance Corps (or whatever it is called) with the army of occupation in Palestine and Egypt. He has vivid memories of Egypt and wishes he was back there. Since then he has only had short-lived jobs, e.g. as store-keeper and check-weighman at various works, also as railway (outside) porter.
Mrs S comes from a somewhat more prosperous family, as her father till only a few weeks ago36 (36 He died very suddenly and his wife has now no resources except the old age pension [Author's footnote) was in a good job at £5 a week and also made something on the side by making fishing rods. But it was a very large family (11) and she went into service. She married S when he was on the dole, against the opposition of her family. At first they could not get a house, and lived in a single room, in which two children were born and one died. They told me they had only one bed for the family and had to 'lay out' the dead baby in the perambulator.
Finally, after frightful difficulty (one reason for this is that private landlords are not too keen on letting to people on the dole and there is a certain amount of bribery of agents) they got this house, of which the rent is about 8s. 6d. Mrs S earns about 9s. a week from her charing. Exactly what deduction is made for this from S's dole I don't know, but their total income is 32s. 6d. In spite of which I had great difficulty in getting them to accept enough for my keep while there - they wanted to charge only 6s. for full board and lodging from Monday night to Thursday morning.
They keep the house very clean and decent, have a bit of garden, though they can't do much with it, as it has factory chimneys on one side and the gas works on the other, besides being poor soil, and they are very fond of one another. I was surprised by Mrs S's grasp of the economic situation and also of abstract ideas - quite unlike most working-class women in this, though she is I think not far from illiterate. She does not seem resentful against the people who employ her - indeed she says they are kind to her - but sees quite clearly the essential facts about domestic service. She told me how the other day as she waited at the lunch table she calculated the price of the food on the table (for 5 persons for one meal) and it came to 6s. 3d. - as much as the P.A.C. allows her child for a fortnight.
B was very good and took my request to 'show me over Sheffield' even too seriously, so that from morning to night I was being rushed from place to place, largely on foot, to see public buildings, slums, housing estates etc. But he is a tiresome person to be with, being definitely disgruntled and too conscious of his Communist convictions. In Rotherham we had to have lunch at a slightly expensive restaurant because there didn't seem to be any others except pubs (B is T.T.), and when in there he was sweating and groaning about the 'bourgeois atmosphere' and saying he could not eat this kind of food.
As he declares that it is necessary to literally hate the bourgeoisie, I wondered what he thought of me, because he told me at the very start I was a bourgeois and remarked on my 'public school twang'. However, I think he was disposed to treat me as a sort of honorary proletarian, partly because I had no objection to washing in the sink etc. but more because I seemed interested in Sheffield. He was very generous and though I had told him at the start that I was going to pay for his meals etc. while we were together, he would always go out of his way to spare me expense.
It seems that he lives on 10s. a week - I had this from Searle: exactly where B's 10s. comes from I don't know - and the rent of his room is 6s. Of course it would not be possible to subsist on the remainder, allowing for fuel. You could only keep alive on 4s. a week if you spent nothing on fuel and nothing on tobacco or clothes.
----------------
Orwell kept a newspaper cutting among his notes:
News of The World, 1 March 1936
LIVING on 4s. A WEEK: MAN'S DESCRIPTION OF HOW HE DOES IT.
Following the disclosures in the News of the World of parent who have to bring up big families on tiny incomes, a correspondent draws our attention to the case of a man who spends less than 4s. a week on food.
His week's supply and its cost is as follows:-
3 Wholemeal loaves 1/0
½ lb. Margarine 2½d
½ lb. Dripping 3d
1lb. Cheese 7d
1lb. Onions 1½d
1lb. Carrots 1½d
1lb Broken biscuits 4d
2lb. Dates 5d
1 Tin evaporated milk 5d
10 Oranges 5d
Total cost 3/11 ½
The man, Mr W Leach of Lilford Road, London SE, adds that he would prefer to boil the carrots to eating them raw 'but, of course, to boil the water would cost too much'.
----------------------
I gather B gets meals from time to time from the Ss and other friends, also from his brother who is in comparatively good employ. His room is decent and even cultured-looking, as it has bits of 'antique' furniture which he has made himself, and some crude but not disagreeable pictures, mostly of circuses, which he has painted.
Much of his bitterness obviously comes from sexual starvation. His deformity handicaps him with women, his fear of transmitting it has stopped him from marrying (he says he would only marry a woman past the childbearing age), and his inability to earn money makes it more impossible still. However, at one of the Adelphi summer schools he picked up with some school-mistress (aged 43) who I gather is his mistress when opportunities permit and who is willing to marry him, only her parents oppose it. The Searles say he has improved greatly since taking up with this woman - before that he used to have fits occasionally.
We had an argument one evening in the Searles' house because I helped Mrs S with the washing-up. Both of the men disapproved of this, of course. Mrs S seemed doubtful. She said that in the North working-class men never offered any courtesies to women (women are allowed to do all the house-work unaided, even when the man is unemployed, and it is always the man who sits in the comfortable chair), and she took this state of things for granted, but did not see why it should not be changed. She said that she thought the women now-a-days, especially the younger women, would like it if men opened doors for them etc.
The position now-a-days is anomalous. The man is practically always out of work, whereas the woman occasionally is working. Yet the woman continues to do all the house-work and the man not a hand's-turn, except carpentering and gardening. Yet I think it is instinctively felt by both sexes that the man would lose his manhood if, merely because he was out of work, he became a 'Mary Ann'.
One particular picture of Sheffield stays by me. A frightful piece of waste ground (somehow, up here a piece of waste ground attains a squalor that would be impossible even in London), trampled quite bare of grass and littered with newspaper, old saucepans etc. To the right an isolated row of gaunt four room houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney behind chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made from the slag of furnaces. In front, across the piece of waste ground, a cubical building of dingy red and yellow brick, with the sign, 'John Grocock, Haulage Contractor'.
Other memories of Sheffield: stone walls blackened by smoke, a shallow river yellow with chemicals, serrated flames, like circular saws, coming out from the cowls of the foundry chimneys, thump and scream of steam hammers (the iron seems to scream under the blow), smell of sulphur, yellow clay, backsides of women wagging laboriously from side to side as they shove their perambulators up the hills....
7 March
Staying till next Wed. with M[arjorie] and H[umphrey] at 21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley. Conscious all the while of difference in atmosphere between middle-class home even of this kind and working-class home. The essential difference is here there is elbow room, in spite of there being 5 adults and 3 children, besides animals, at present in the house. The children make peace and quiet difficult, but if you definitely want to be alone you can be so - in a working-class house never, either by night or day.
One of the kinds of discomfort inseparable from a working man's life is waiting about. If you receive a salary it is paid into your bank and you draw it out when you want it. If you receive wages, you have to go and get them in somebody else's time and are probably kept hanging abo0ut and probably expected to behave as though being paid your wages at all was a favour. When Mr H at Wigan went to the mine to draw his compensation, he had to go, for some reason I did not understand, on two separate days each week, and was kept waiting in the cold for about an hour before he was paid. In addition the four tram journeys to and from the mine cost him 1s., reducing his compensation from 29s. weekly to 28s. He took this for granted, of course.
The result of long training in this kind of thing is that whereas the bourgeois goes through life expecting to get what he wants, within limits, the working man always feels himself the slave of a more or less mysterious authority. I was impressed by the fact that when I went to Sheffield Town Hall to ask for certain statistics, both B and Searle - both of them people of much more forcible character than myself - were nervous, would not come into the office with me, and assumed that the Town Clerk would refuse information. They said, 'He might give it to you but he wouldn't give it to us'.
Actually the Town Clerk was snooty and I did not get all the information I asked for. But the point was that I assumed my questions would be answered, and the other two assumed the contrary.
It is for this reason that in countries where the class hierarchy exists, people of the higher class always tend to come to the front in times of stress, though not really more gifted than the others. That they will do so seems to be taken for granted always and everywhere.
N.B. to look up the passage in Lissagary's History of the Commune describing the shootings after the Commune had been suppressed. They were shooting the ringleaders without trial, and as they did not know who the ringleaders were, they were picking them out on the principle that those of better class than the others would be the ringleaders. One man was shot because he was wearing a watch, another because he 'had an intelligent face'. N.B. to look up this passage.
Yesterday with H and M to Haworth Parsonage, home of the Brontes and now a museum. Was chiefly impressed by a pair of Charlotte Bronte's cloth-topped boots, very small, with square toes and lacing up the sides.
9 March
Yesterday with H and M to their cottage at Middlesmoor, high up on the edge of the moors. Perhaps it is only the time of year, but even up there, miles from any industrial towns, the smoky look peculiar to this part of the country seems to hang about anything. Grass dull-coloured, streams muddy, houses all blackened as though by smoke. There was snow everywhere, but thawing and slushy. Sheep very dirty - no lambs, apparently. The palm was out and primroses putting out new shoots; otherwise nothing moving.
11 March
On the last two evenings to 'discussion groups' - societies of people who meet once a week, listen to some talk on the radio and then discuss it. Those at the one on Monday were chiefly unemployed men and I believe these 'discussion groups' were started or at any rate suggested by the Social Welfare people who run unemployed occupational centres.
That on Monday was decorous and rather dull. Thirteen people including ourselves (one woman besides M) and we met in a room adjoining a public library. The talk was on Galsworthy's play The Skin Game and the discussion kept to the subject until most of us adjourned to a pub for bread and cheese and beer afterwards.
Two people dominated the assembly, one a huge bull-headed man named Rowe who contradicted whatever the last speaker has said and involved himself in the most appalling contradictions, the other a youngish, very intelligent and extremely well-informed man named Creed. From his refined accent, quiet voice and apparent omniscience, I took him for a librarian. I find he keeps a tobacconist's shop and was previously a commercial traveller. During the war he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector.
The other meeting was at a pub and the people were of higher standing. The arrangement is that M and H go there taking the portable radio, and the publican, who is a member of this group, lets them have a room for the evening. On this occasion the talk was called 'If Plato Lived Today', but no one listened-in except M and myself - H has gone to Bedford.
When the talk was over the publican, a Canadian with a very bald head, a market gardener who was already the worse for drink, and another man rolled in and there began an orgy of drinking from which we escaped with difficulty about an hour later.
Much of the talk on both nights about the European situation and most people saying (some of them with ill-dissembled hope) that war is certain. With two exceptions all pro-German.
Today to Barnsley to fix up about a place to stay. Wilde, secretary of the South Yorkshire Branch of the Working Men's Club and Institute Union, has fixed it all up for me. The address is Agnes Avenue. The usual 2 up 2 down house, with sink in living room, as at Sheffield. The husband is a miner and was away at work when we got there. House very disorganized as it was washing day, but seemed clean.
Wilde, though kind and helpful, was a very vague person. He was a working miner till 1924 but as usual has been bourgeois-ified. Smartly dressed with gloves and umbrella and very little accent - I would have taken him for a solicitor from his appearance.
Barnsley is slightly smaller than Wigan - about 70,000 inhabitants - but distinctly less poverty stricken, at any rate in appearance. Much better shops and more appearance of business being done. Many miners coming home from the morning shift. Mostly wearing clogs but of a square-toed pattern different from the Lancashire ones.
========
On 25 March, Orwell closes his diary with, 'Returning to Leeds tomorrow, then on to London on Monday'. This gave him a further four days in Leeds, though there is no record from that visit.
15 June 2009
Mary Gawthorpe, 5 Melville Street
A Leeds 6 double-whammy here - not only a local hero but a major local event.
Mary Gawthorpe (January 12 1881-March 12 1973) was a militant suffragette born and brought up at 5 Melville Street, Woodhouse. She organised and addressed perhaps the largest rally Woodhouse Moor has ever seen, a suffragette demonstration over 100,000 strong on 26 July 1908.
The rich pictorial treasure trove, Leodis, has a picture of her house which, like much of lower Woodhouse, was demolished circa 1970. Her family was political with her father being - eek - the political agent for the local Conservative MP.
She won a scholarship to high school, but the family's poverty meant she was taken on as a pupil-teacher. She became a professional teacher, and her Socialist convictions led her to work for the National Union of Teachers, leading a campaign for school meals.
She attended the local Labour Church (whatever that was), and met TB Garrs, a socialist journalist for a local newspaper. From here, she ended up editing the womens page of Labour News.
In 1906 she became a full time organiser for the Womens Social and Political Union. Like many in the movement, she was arrested several times and imprisoned.
There was a mass demonstration in London’s Hyde Park on ‘Womens Sunday’, Sunday 21 June 1908, addressed by Mary Gawthorpe. Drawing a crowd of quarter of a million, it was one of the largest demonstrations the country had ever seen.
Manchester suffragist Helena Swanwick described Mary as having a ‘big fog-and-frost’ voice. Mary was a teacher; a militant suffragette; from Yorkshire. Any one of these is likely to give someone a strong declarative tone. The combination of all three must have been like an oratory blacksmith at work.
After the huge success of London, Mary went to Manchester to implement some successor rallies. She started with that city less than a month later, addressing a rally of 150,000 at Heaton Park on 19 July. A week later she moved on to a park she probably knew better than any other.
One can only imagine the particular excitement she must have had coming to Woodhouse Moor. It was not just her home town but her childhood neighbourhood. Standing on the Moor overlooking the streets she grew up on, Mary Gawthorpe addressed a crowd of 100,000.
In 1909 she heckled Winston Churchill and was badly beaten by his bouncers. After she retired from the WSPU in 1911 due to ill health (I get the impression it was activist burnout), she teamed up with Dora Marsden to co-edit The Freewoman magazine. Whilst it drew submissions from such luminaries as HG Wells and Ezra Pound, it was nonetheless avowedly radical. Not only did it have a strong feminist line and counselled women not to marry, but it advocated free love and tolerance of homosexuality and suggested communal childcare and co-operative housekeeping.
The WSPU Women's Press published a pamphlet by Mary called Votes For Men, in late 1907 or early 1908 I think.
Strangely, she published a completely different - and hilarious - pamphlet with the same name in America in 1913. A specialist publisher in Montana reprinted that one last December.
She emigrated to New York in 1916, and immediately became an agitator and organiser. She continued to show her joined-up political thinking campaigning for a range of social justice issues in the feminist and labour spheres, ending up working full time as a union official.
She belatedly published her autobiography of her childhood and early adult years up until her imprisonment in 1906, Up Hill To Holloway, in 1962. Only 6000 were printed, it's long out of print and the only copy I can find is 300 quid. Sheesh.
After her death her relatives left her papers to an archive in New York who provide an online inventory but sadly not the documents themselves. They do have an excellent potted history of Mary's life in the 'biographical note' section, though.
Mary Gawthorpe (January 12 1881-March 12 1973) was a militant suffragette born and brought up at 5 Melville Street, Woodhouse. She organised and addressed perhaps the largest rally Woodhouse Moor has ever seen, a suffragette demonstration over 100,000 strong on 26 July 1908.
The rich pictorial treasure trove, Leodis, has a picture of her house which, like much of lower Woodhouse, was demolished circa 1970. Her family was political with her father being - eek - the political agent for the local Conservative MP.
She won a scholarship to high school, but the family's poverty meant she was taken on as a pupil-teacher. She became a professional teacher, and her Socialist convictions led her to work for the National Union of Teachers, leading a campaign for school meals.
She attended the local Labour Church (whatever that was), and met TB Garrs, a socialist journalist for a local newspaper. From here, she ended up editing the womens page of Labour News.
In 1906 she became a full time organiser for the Womens Social and Political Union. Like many in the movement, she was arrested several times and imprisoned.
There was a mass demonstration in London’s Hyde Park on ‘Womens Sunday’, Sunday 21 June 1908, addressed by Mary Gawthorpe. Drawing a crowd of quarter of a million, it was one of the largest demonstrations the country had ever seen.
Manchester suffragist Helena Swanwick described Mary as having a ‘big fog-and-frost’ voice. Mary was a teacher; a militant suffragette; from Yorkshire. Any one of these is likely to give someone a strong declarative tone. The combination of all three must have been like an oratory blacksmith at work.
After the huge success of London, Mary went to Manchester to implement some successor rallies. She started with that city less than a month later, addressing a rally of 150,000 at Heaton Park on 19 July. A week later she moved on to a park she probably knew better than any other.
One can only imagine the particular excitement she must have had coming to Woodhouse Moor. It was not just her home town but her childhood neighbourhood. Standing on the Moor overlooking the streets she grew up on, Mary Gawthorpe addressed a crowd of 100,000.
In 1909 she heckled Winston Churchill and was badly beaten by his bouncers. After she retired from the WSPU in 1911 due to ill health (I get the impression it was activist burnout), she teamed up with Dora Marsden to co-edit The Freewoman magazine. Whilst it drew submissions from such luminaries as HG Wells and Ezra Pound, it was nonetheless avowedly radical. Not only did it have a strong feminist line and counselled women not to marry, but it advocated free love and tolerance of homosexuality and suggested communal childcare and co-operative housekeeping.
The WSPU Women's Press published a pamphlet by Mary called Votes For Men, in late 1907 or early 1908 I think.
Strangely, she published a completely different - and hilarious - pamphlet with the same name in America in 1913. A specialist publisher in Montana reprinted that one last December.
She emigrated to New York in 1916, and immediately became an agitator and organiser. She continued to show her joined-up political thinking campaigning for a range of social justice issues in the feminist and labour spheres, ending up working full time as a union official.
She belatedly published her autobiography of her childhood and early adult years up until her imprisonment in 1906, Up Hill To Holloway, in 1962. Only 6000 were printed, it's long out of print and the only copy I can find is 300 quid. Sheesh.
After her death her relatives left her papers to an archive in New York who provide an online inventory but sadly not the documents themselves. They do have an excellent potted history of Mary's life in the 'biographical note' section, though.
14 June 2009
George Orwell, 21 Estcourt Avenue
Everyone knows 1984 and Animal Farm, but for me it's George Orwell's non-fiction that gives us the most insight and value. Open the mighty four-volume Collected Essays Letters and Journalism at any page and you'll find a line that slaps your mind. A more select book of Essays should be standard reading for anyone of conscience.
George Orwell's older sister, Marjorie Dakin, lived at 21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley (Google map).
Orwell stayed with the Dakins for a week (5-13 March 1936) between his visits to Sheffield and Barnsley on his travels researching The Road To Wigan Pier, and again after Barnsley before his return to London (26-30 March 1936).
He typed up an lengthy lot of notes not only about his experiences in Wigan, Sheffield etc, but also about what he found and did in Leeds. This document was found among his papers after his death. It is now held in the extensive Orwell Archive at University College London Library.
He talks of visiting a local pub for a political discussion group (sadly he doesn't say which one). During the visit they went to Haworth and the Bronte parsonage, and stayed at Humphrey and Marjorie's cottage nearby at Middlesmoor.
The Left Book Club commissioned Orwell to write reportage of life for working class people in Northern industrial towns. In The Road To Wigan Pier, they got considerably more than they bargained for. Not only was their Orwell's characteristic clarity of style and compassion in the face of injustice, but along with the journalism and social analysis was a hefty section considering the socialist movement in Britain, much of it uncomplimentary.
Ruffling feathers never bothered Orwell much at any time, but less so with this. Despite it being his best selling book by far, he its reception as he went off to fight with the POUM militia in the Spanish Civil War.
According to the chronology appendix in his Collected Essays Letters and Journalism Volume 1, he sent off the finished manuscript on 15 December 1936 and had left for Spain by Christmas. The book was published on 8 March 1937 and Orwell returned home in early July.
I remember reading that it was by quite some distance his biggest selling book at the time. As the Left Book Club was a subscription thing, there was a guaranteed readership. If memory serves, there were about 35,000 sold, compared to the low thousands for everything else before Animal Farm came out in 1945.
Marjorie Dakin (nee Blair, presumably) was married to Humphrey Dakin. They had three children. She died on 3 May 1946, aged 48, of a kidney disease and the funeral was in Nottingham.
The Road To Wigan Pier Diary was published in An Age Like This 1920-1940: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters volume 1, 1968 (reprinted by Penguin in 1993, and by David R Godine, 2007). It is most readily available in Orwell's England, which has the full text of Road To Wigan Pier along with the other writings that contextualise it. Read the illuminating introduction to Orwell's England here.
The full text of The Road to Wigan Pier (but not the diary) is online here.
George Orwell's older sister, Marjorie Dakin, lived at 21 Estcourt Avenue, Headingley (Google map).
Orwell stayed with the Dakins for a week (5-13 March 1936) between his visits to Sheffield and Barnsley on his travels researching The Road To Wigan Pier, and again after Barnsley before his return to London (26-30 March 1936).
He typed up an lengthy lot of notes not only about his experiences in Wigan, Sheffield etc, but also about what he found and did in Leeds. This document was found among his papers after his death. It is now held in the extensive Orwell Archive at University College London Library.
He talks of visiting a local pub for a political discussion group (sadly he doesn't say which one). During the visit they went to Haworth and the Bronte parsonage, and stayed at Humphrey and Marjorie's cottage nearby at Middlesmoor.
The Left Book Club commissioned Orwell to write reportage of life for working class people in Northern industrial towns. In The Road To Wigan Pier, they got considerably more than they bargained for. Not only was their Orwell's characteristic clarity of style and compassion in the face of injustice, but along with the journalism and social analysis was a hefty section considering the socialist movement in Britain, much of it uncomplimentary.
Ruffling feathers never bothered Orwell much at any time, but less so with this. Despite it being his best selling book by far, he its reception as he went off to fight with the POUM militia in the Spanish Civil War.
According to the chronology appendix in his Collected Essays Letters and Journalism Volume 1, he sent off the finished manuscript on 15 December 1936 and had left for Spain by Christmas. The book was published on 8 March 1937 and Orwell returned home in early July.
I remember reading that it was by quite some distance his biggest selling book at the time. As the Left Book Club was a subscription thing, there was a guaranteed readership. If memory serves, there were about 35,000 sold, compared to the low thousands for everything else before Animal Farm came out in 1945.
Marjorie Dakin (nee Blair, presumably) was married to Humphrey Dakin. They had three children. She died on 3 May 1946, aged 48, of a kidney disease and the funeral was in Nottingham.
The Road To Wigan Pier Diary was published in An Age Like This 1920-1940: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters volume 1, 1968 (reprinted by Penguin in 1993, and by David R Godine, 2007). It is most readily available in Orwell's England, which has the full text of Road To Wigan Pier along with the other writings that contextualise it. Read the illuminating introduction to Orwell's England here.
The full text of The Road to Wigan Pier (but not the diary) is online here.
13 June 2009
What is This Blog?
Last December I met a friend in the Chemic in Woodhouse. We started talking about the snippets of history we knew about the area.
She has a print of the entry to Royal Park Gardens, a pleasure gardens that stretched down from Hyde Park Road between Royal Park Road and Brudenell Road.
Hyde Park once hosted a massive Suffragette rally.
She had a chart from the 17th century that shows the stone stepped mounting block beside the A660 in Hyde Park. That means that if you stand there, despite the huge view, it is the oldest structure you can see.
I chipped in - George Orwell stayed in Estcourt Avenue whilst researching Road To Wigan Pier. Henry Rollins lived in the Harolds. The air raid shelter under Hyde Park still has paint on the walls saying which side is for men and which for women. The pub we were sat in took its name from the chemical works that used to stand beside it.
We were really enthused and thought we should research things more with a view to doing a pamphlet. A history of Hyde Park (the district not just the park, though the park should be seen as a sort of spiritual centre of the area) and it should have something of a radical slant.
Well, it's six months later and there's no real work been done.
But I thought if I start this blog, I can just tip my notes and findings on to it so things are useful immediately without waiting for a publication to be finished. Also, it means others can leave comments and fill in gaps or correct errors.
So, it's not meant to be definitive or authoritative, but a way of putting down what I've found so far and what the questions niggling me are.
I'll stray further away from the park if what I've found is interesting enough or undocumented enough. It's arbitrary. I'll go as far as Estcourt Avenue for George Orwell, but not all the way up to Far Headingley for Alan Bennett.
She has a print of the entry to Royal Park Gardens, a pleasure gardens that stretched down from Hyde Park Road between Royal Park Road and Brudenell Road.
Hyde Park once hosted a massive Suffragette rally.
She had a chart from the 17th century that shows the stone stepped mounting block beside the A660 in Hyde Park. That means that if you stand there, despite the huge view, it is the oldest structure you can see.
I chipped in - George Orwell stayed in Estcourt Avenue whilst researching Road To Wigan Pier. Henry Rollins lived in the Harolds. The air raid shelter under Hyde Park still has paint on the walls saying which side is for men and which for women. The pub we were sat in took its name from the chemical works that used to stand beside it.
We were really enthused and thought we should research things more with a view to doing a pamphlet. A history of Hyde Park (the district not just the park, though the park should be seen as a sort of spiritual centre of the area) and it should have something of a radical slant.
Well, it's six months later and there's no real work been done.
But I thought if I start this blog, I can just tip my notes and findings on to it so things are useful immediately without waiting for a publication to be finished. Also, it means others can leave comments and fill in gaps or correct errors.
So, it's not meant to be definitive or authoritative, but a way of putting down what I've found so far and what the questions niggling me are.
I'll stray further away from the park if what I've found is interesting enough or undocumented enough. It's arbitrary. I'll go as far as Estcourt Avenue for George Orwell, but not all the way up to Far Headingley for Alan Bennett.
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