Sacrifice of the suffragettes paved way for change
Newtown's pioneers of the suffrage movement are put in the spotlight in a new booklet produced by local historian Joy Hamer for the town's local history group.
Titled "Suffrage Movement in the Newtown Area and Beyond" it was researched and written to commemorate the centenary of women getting the Parliamentary vote for the first time in 1918.
Leading the movement in Newtown was Miss Alix Minnie Clarke, who was born in the town in 1874, and became the organiser of the Women's Freedom League in Montgomeryshire.
And Joy's booklet shows that those who fought for the women's right to vote needed both moral and physical courage in the face of sometimes violent opposition.
In 1910 three members of the league arrived in the town, she writes, and were constantly heckled at an open air meeting at The Cross. Returning the following day, they stayed with Alix Clarke in Clifton Terrace as they were denied lodging anywhere in the district.
"A crowd of mainly children and youths soon formed outside the house where they booed and brayed for hours, even throwing a very large stone through the window. John Astley denounced the women as agents of the devil," writes Joy.
Alix – who was also referred to as Minnie in contemporary reports – moved from Newtown to Surrey in 1928, and died at the age of 73 on May 6, 1948, in Haslemere.
Another leader of the cause was Kate Williams Evans, of Llansantffraid, who to the dismay of her parents became a suffragette when in her early thirties.
On March 4, 1912, she was arrested by the Metropolitan Police for malicious damage and jailed for 54 days in Holloway prison.
"While she was there she went on hunger strike and was one of just 100 women hunger strikers to be awarded a Hunger Strike Medal," writes Joy, who says during her time in jail she was force-fed.
"The most common method was by a tube through their nostril, or down the throat on to the stomach. For these procedures to take place the prisoner often had to be held down by as many as five wardresses."
Kate lived almost the rest of her life in Llansantffraid, and Joy writes that it is possible that she died, unmarried, on February 1, 1961, while living at Morda, Oswestry, at the age of 94.
The booklet includes other women who were not suffragettes, but who played an important part in the life of Newtown in both the 20th and 21st centuries.
Priced at £6, it can be bought from history group members.
