County was hotbed in fight for women's vote
One hundred years ago, as we keep hearing on the radio and television, women got the vote for the first time.
So why did nobody tell Shrewsbury widow Isabella Knox?
Or Mrs Emma Cross of 22 Stanley Terrace? Or Mrs Ellen Taylor, of New Park Road... Sarah Ellen Foster, of New Park Terrace... Jane Burroughs, of Castlefields... Mrs Mary Wellings...?
They all voted in 1902. Yes, 1902.
Typically, they got paid 2s 6d to do so. But that was neither normal - except perhaps for the corrupt Castlefields ward - nor legal.
Sarah Foster got coal instead and for some reason Mrs Wellings wasn't paid at all.
And we know all this because they gave evidence in an inquiry into a "cash for votes" scandal following a town council election in Shrewsbury's Castlefields ward in November 1902 which involved wholesale bribery.
Asked at the inquiry if she had received half a crown at previous elections, Isabella Knox testified: “We have had it for years before, and we have not had all this bother.”
Women had indeed had the vote for years - since 1869 in fact. But it was for some women in some elections.
In the years before the Great War Shropshire was quite a hotbed of activity in the campaign to win women the vote for Parliamentary elections.
A significant figure was Katherine Harley, of Condover, a member of the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She was the sister of Mrs Charlotte Despard, another leading light in the movement for securing the Parliamentary vote for women.
The Newport by-election of 1908 provided a ready platform for the cause, with suffragettes speaking at various meetings in the county.
One was at The Square, Shrewsbury, and drew a crowd of thousands. The three members of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies received a mixed reception.
The Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News reported: "Mrs Stanbury, the leader, stood on a chair under the shadow of Clive’s monument, and endeavoured to explain the objects of the union. She was greeted with shouts of 'Go to the washing' and 'Where’s your bell?' but, after appealing to the interrupters to be Englishmen, she succeeded in getting a fair hearing.
"Occasionally unsympathetic members of the crowd endeavoured to poke fun at the speaker, but Mrs Stanbury’s repartee was unusually clever, and she invariably turned the laugh against the interrupters."
On another occasion, in October 1912, women's rights campaigners marched with banners in Shrewsbury, holding a meeting in the Music Hall.
There was also organised opposition in the form of a Shrewsbury branch of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, which was not just a men's group - a public meeting it called in the county town was attended mainly by women.
