Struggle and Suffrage in Windsor: Women's Lives and the Fight for Equality

By Katharine Johnson

An in-depth history of women who lived, worked, and fought for the vote in the town surrounding Windsor Castle.
 
At drawing room meetings, debates, and rallies, suffragists in Windsor—home to Britain’s royal family—fought not just for the right to put a cross on a ballot paper but to help put an end to some of the shocking injustices women faced, some of which were especially felt in Windsor at that time.
 
It was no easy task—they came up against fierce opposition, ridicule, and rage, with one newspaper saying Windsor was the town in which the suffragettes were “most cordially hated.” From Queen Victoria to Princess Elizabeth, the women of Windsor have played a major role in shaping this country. But what of the lesser-known women? In this book, the untold and often intertwined stories of the rich and famous are brought together with those of domestic staff, nuns, nurses, school teachers, mothers, shopkeepers, beggars, and prostitutes, who all played a part in a century of extraordinary social changes. What was it like to be a female resident of the workhouse? Or the lady who founded a home for destitute and “fallen” women? The lady who allowed her home to be used as a hospital in WWI and the nurses who worked there? For those who lived in the cholera-infested Victorian slums and the women evacuated to Windsor with their children during WWII? And those who campaigned tirelessly to improve women’s rights and get the vote? This book provides a fascinating, behind-the-scenes insight into women’s lives above and below stairs in this unique microcosm of Britain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781526719270

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Introduction

The first question you might ask is why Windsor? In some ways this book is about social change from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries and so could have been written about any British town. Well, yes – except that Windsor during this period was not any town. It had the distinction of being the primary residence of the royal family – and also of having some of the worst squalor and pollution in Britain, making it a unique microcosm of the country.

The struggle for women’s equality didn’t begin as a campaign for women’s votes. It had its roots in social injustices found in so many areas of women’s lives: the home, schools, health and the workplace – and during two world wars. The effects of these injustices can clearly be seen in Windsor where, in the shadow of the castle, the town was riddled with poverty, violence, alcoholism and prostitution.

The birth of the women’s suffrage movement went hand in hand with the demand for change. Women weren’t campaigning for the right to be able to mark a cross on a piece of paper – they wanted the vote in order to have a voice.

Women in the nineteenth and early twentieth century had very few legal rights and in many ways were treated as second-class citizens. As visiting speaker Alice Abadam put it at a drawing room women’s suffrage meeting in Frances Road in 1909, ‘All women are lower class.’¹

A wealthy female landowner was not allowed to vote, while her male staff were. Well-informed, well-educated women were not allowed to vote, but a male drunkard was. Without the vote, women had no say in how their lives were governed and no opportunity to help bring about changes.

A common misconception about the suffrage movement is that it was one or two organisations, whereas it was in fact a collection of different groups and societies that certainly didn’t agree about everything, but shared a common cause.

In Windsor alone suffragists and anti-suffragists belonged to several different religious and political societies, including men’s groups. And yet most people have never heard of them or the main characters in the town’s suffrage story.

Neither did votes for women come about because of one or two events. At school I vaguely remember learning about the suffragettes chaining themselves to railings and one of them throwing herself in front of the king’s horse, but of course the truth is quite different. Women weren’t ‘given’ the vote in 1918 – they won it after a very long series of battles and setbacks.

Windsor’s story is a little different from that of some of the more industrial towns. The Windsor suffragists were predominantly middle-class, middle-aged, educated people and were suffragists as opposed to suffragettes – which is to say they belonged to the NUWSS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies) as opposed to the militant WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) – although suffragettes did come to Windsor.

The Windsor suffragists’ aim was to win the vote through peaceful means – but this didn’t mean they were meek. They were passionate about their beliefs and tireless in their efforts to get their message across and correct misunderstandings or false accusations from the other side.

But Windsor also had its anti-suffragists. It became known as the town in which suffragettes were most hated. Women’s suffrage supporters had to put up with belittling, ridicule and rage.

But the issues surrounding women’s suffrage weren’t all black and white, and many characters in this story don’t fall conveniently into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ camps. Some people who had no interest in women’s suffrage or were vehemently opposed to it nevertheless contributed in other ways to improve women’s lives through charitable acts, fundraising or donations.

Because of the town’s small physical size, ardent supporters and opposers of women’s suffrage were often neighbours in the same street. During the First World War staunch suffragists and anti-suffragists found themselves working together for the war effort.

While the contribution of men towards the town’s transformation is well-documented, the role women played has been much less talked about. Very little has been written specifically about women in Windsor showing how their lives interconnected.

Following the centenary anniversary in 2018 of the first votes for women, this book aims to redress the balance and explore the lives of women in Windsor above and below stairs, looking at ways in which their lives were affected by a century of enormous social and political change and ways they contributed to that change.

As I’ve learned more about the Windsor suffragists in researching this book however, I’ve also learned so much about the town. Windsor today is probably most often associated with picture postcard prettiness, State visits and celebrations. The castle, the pageantry, the historic buildings and lovely Thameside setting give it a coffee-table-book appeal and make it one of the most desirable and expensive towns in which to live.

Between the start of Queen Victoria’s reign and the reign of Queen Elizabeth that bookend this story however, Windsor was transformed from a poverty-stricken, sewage-ridden army town whose streets, according to the Windsor Express in 1836, ‘swarmed with prostitutes and beggars’, into a genteel place that people would come to visit on daytrips.

I’ve lived on the doorstep of Windsor for twenty years and my children have grown up here so for me the town will always be associated with memories of watching the Changing of the Guard, feeding the ducks along the river, walking the dog in the Great Park, and going to the shops and cafes.

But it’s only during the past year-and-a-half that I feel I’ve really come to know the town. Now when I’m in the Windsor Royal Shopping centre in the old Windsor Royal Station I like to do a bit of mental time-travelling and find myself amid the jumble of slums, brothels and boarding houses that were there when Queen Victoria came to the throne. The streets were cramped, noisy and smelly, full of urchin children, soldiers and prostitutes, drunken brawls and pickpockets.

If we fast-forward a few years the slums have been replaced by the new station, bringing with it, for those who could afford a ticket, the chance of discovery and adventure and also bringing people into the town, eager to see the castle or buy one of Madame Caley’s hats.

Fast-forward again and we see ladies in long skirts, one or two on bicycles, making their way up to the castle to join a women’s suffrage rally where a visiting speaker addresses the crowd through a loudspeaker from her motorcar.

In 1850 when our story begins, Britain was on the verge of an extraordinary period of social and economic change. Queen Victoria was 31 years old. She had been monarch for thirteen years, married for ten years and had seven children (with two more to follow in the next decade). The prime minister was Sir Robert Peel, in his third administration.

During the first years of Victoria’s reign, leading up to 1850, the Chartist movement for ‘one man, one vote’ had gained substantial support with three national petitions being presented in 1839, 1842 and 1849.

The invention of the telegraph in 1837 and penny post in 1840, had made communication quicker and less expensive. Slavery had been abolished in the British Empire in 1838 and in the same year the London–Birmingham railway opened, starting the railway boom.

Income tax had been introduced in 1840. The Factory Act in 1844 had improved conditions for women and children working in factories and restricted their hours. There had been a four-year potato famine in Ireland from 1845. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 lifted the restrictions on imported grain which had kept food prices in Britain punishingly high.

Charles Dickens had written eight novels including Oliver Twist, Dombey & Son and A Christmas Carol. Mrs Gaskell had written Mary Barton. And the Pre-Raphaelite movement had just been born.

The Industrial Revolution was already leading to a marked increase in female and child labour, and a resultant surge of people from the country into towns for work. The population of Windsor in 1851 had almost doubled in fifty years although the town’s main industry was its breweries rather than factories.

Over the century from 1850, the country would see remarkable advances in science, industry, health and communications, starting with the Great Exhibition of 1851, Prince Albert’s showcase for the world’s most exciting inventions and works of art, which attracted nearly 6 million visitors, many of them travelling to London for the first time by train.

The building of the railways in Windsor from December 1849 would change the lives of many women in Windsor – although not immediately for the better, as houses were pulled down and the town was flooded with railway workers and their families.

But among better-off, well-read women, due partly to church mission work and partly to the novels they were reading, a new social consciousness was dawning.

From the woman who founded Windsor’s home for fallen women, the Sisters who formed a convent, the first female war correspondent, and the suffragettes who threatened to invade the castle, to the women who worked for the armed services or took in evacuees during the Second World War, women throughout Windsor helped shape its future. That future has become our history.

CHAPTER ONE

Queen Victoria and Princess Elizabeth

Key dates:

1819 – 24 May: birth of Alexandrina Victoria.

1837 – 27 June: Victoria becomes queen on the death of William IV.

1838 – 28 June: Coronation of Queen Victoria.

1839 – A difficult political year: the Hastings Affair and the Bedchamber Crisis.

1840 – 10 February: marriage of Victoria and Albert.

1901 – 22 January: death of Queen Victoria.

Although this is a story about ordinary women, it wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the two most famous female Windsor residents whose reigns mark the start and finish of the period covered by this book, 1850–1950, and their huge influence on ordinary women in Windsor – Queen Victoria and Princess Elizabeth.

Queen Victoria was the first Windsor queen, choosing the town as her home, while Princess Elizabeth would be given the surname Windsor and spend the war years at the castle, giving local people encouragement and reinforcing the monarchy’s link with the town.

As well as being one of history’s most iconic queens, Victoria in many ways put Windsor on the map. If she hadn’t decided to make Windsor her primary royal residence instead of London, it would be a very different town today and the lives of many women within would also have been different. Having a monarch in residence brought the town employment opportunities, better transport, festivities and tourism. It also gave this once most disreputable town a sense of pride.

Victoria’s sixty-three-year reign, which covers half the period explored by this book, was an era of enormous political, industrial, cultural and scientific change. It saw the invention of the radio, telephone, ‘bone shaker’ bicycle, gramophone, electric light and camera. Railways and the London Underground were built. Darwin published his Origin of Species, votes were extended to most men following the Reform Acts, compulsory free education was made available to children and the suffragette movement was born. By the end of her reign, she was ruler not just of Great Britain but of the largest empire in the history of the world.

But it was no easy ride. This diminutive (4ft 11in) 18-year-old girl who few had expected to become queen had to battle to establish and maintain her authority and independence, deal with thirteen prime ministers and tread a difficult line between maintaining political neutrality and showing concern for social welfare.

In 1839, the young queen’s handling of two situations made her unpopular. Public opinion turned against her when she believed false allegations that Flora Hastings, a popular lady-in-waiting, was pregnant when Flora in fact turned out to be dying. As a result stones were thrown at the queen’s carriage at the funeral.

Victoria was also booed and called Mrs Melbourne at Ascot races following the Bedchamber Crisis. As a condition of accepting the role of prime minister, Robert Peel had requested she replace some of her Whig ladies-in-waiting with Tories. She refused, so Lord Melbourne was reappointed prime minister but this was seen by many as unconstitutional.

She faced a considerable amount of public opposition during her reign and had to cope with at least seven assassination attempts, including one in Windsor when she was an elderly widow. A pistol was fired at her from close range as her coach left Windsor central station.

One of the things she is best remembered for is the way she redefined the British monarchy, restoring its reputation, which had been tarnished by the licentious behaviour of her uncles, and ensuring its survival for future generations. At a time of great political turmoil when other European countries faced revolutions, Queen Victoria presented the royal household as a loving, stable, close-knit family and a model of respectability and stability.

Victoria and Windsor

Windsor suited Victoria partly because she was in some respects an outsider. At her birth on 24 May 1819 few people expected her to become queen. She was only fifth in line to the throne, the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (the fourth son of George III) and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. Both the Duke of Kent and his father George III died in 1820 when she was a baby. It was assumed George IV’s daughter Charlotte would inherit the throne but in 1817 Charlotte died following a stillbirth.

Victoria had just turned 18 when her uncle, William IV, died on 27 June 1837 without an heir. One of the first decisions she took as queen was to assert her independence by refusing to continue sharing rooms with her mother, and to move away from the controlling influence of her mother’s comptroller John Conway.

So it’s no surprise that Windsor appealed to Victoria. It gave her freedom and independence away from the bustle and scrutiny of London but was within a reasonable carriage ride for conducting her regal duties.

The Coronation celebrations in Windsor

The day after her coronation in Westminster Abbey, London, on 28 June 1838, Victoria returned to Windsor. Despite terrible weather she was greeted by tumultuous crowds as her coach drove through the streets decorated with triumphal arches, flowers and lighting. Long tables were set out in the Long Walk and 4,000 poor and old people of the borough sat down to dinner in the pouring rain.

As well as the arrival of the queen, the crowds were treated to the sight of a solo flight by the first female aeronaut Margaret Graham in The Royal Victoria hot air balloon. Mrs Graham’s husband had hoped to accompany her on the flight but due to the appalling weather the balloon wouldn’t take off with the couple’s combined weight so Mr Graham had to get out and watch as his wife took off into the clouds, waving a