Trams and Air Raids in the 21st Century

I've just discovered Phill Davison's superb photosets of urban exploration.

One has vintage photos of Leeds' tram system, and the remnant bits of kit that still lie around the city. It's city-wide, but here's a bit of Leeds 6 with the old tram depot in St Chad's Road, Headingley, and the site as it is today.



He's also been inside air raid shelters all over the city, including the one under Woodhouse Moor by the top of Brudenell Road. The struts sticking out of the wall were for benches, the brick thing on the left held a heater.



He's also spotted an air raid shelter vent still labelled in the pavement outside Boots in Headingley.

Fabulous stuff, unauthorised and trespassy, but captivating to anyone with a sense of curiosity and the slightest element of poetry in their hearts. There are over a dozen explorations with concise yet well researched captions that set your mind racing.

Suffragette rally news report

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.