Skip to main content

Were the suffragettes insane?

On 16 March 1912 a leader in The Times explained suffragette militancy by attributing it to women’s “Insurgent Hysteria”. The article suggested that “in a large number of cases, even though in the strict sense insanity is not present, there is a tendency to some form of hysteria or morbid moods akin thereto”. Women’s mental weakness was inherent in their physiology: their “senseless outrages against property” could best by understood by physicians. Amongst the correspondence the leader inspired, one doctor, in a letter headed “What Every Doctor Knows”, agreed that physicians did indeed understand the type of woman referred to. He explained that “when she has reached a certain age, we know that there is no help in us”. To prevent the development of such characters, he added, “the lunacy laws will require revision.”   

Medical scientist Sir Almroth Wright produced a whole book – The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage – exploring the theme, characterising the suffragettes as “spinsters in a state of retarded development”, women who could not understand that their “unsatisfied sexuality is an intellectual disability.” He characterised the suffragettes as “ungrateful women” – disappointed wives , the sexually embittered, and those who wanted to have everything for nothing.  
 
Other newspapers, like the Daily Express, also described suffragettes as “crazy”, “frenzied” and “insane”. The insane, of course, could not vote. Neither could criminals.

Suffragette militancy itself proved that women should not have the vote. “If anything could strengthen the general conviction of ordinary men that women are unfit for the suffrage, it surely would be the supremely silly conduct of the window-breakers”, thundered The Times on 26 June 1912.  

Before forcible feeding was used on suffragettes, it was used on the insane, and it continued to be connected with insanity. A male suffragist, William Ball, was said to have been driven mad by forcible feeding. Bristol woman Alice Walters was so badly affected by forcible feeding she feared that if it continued she “should have gone mad”.
 
In 1912 the Home Secretary introduced The Mental Deficiency Bill which would give the Home Secretary the power to compulsorily confine people for life based on fairly sweeping definitions of insanity. In the Commons, Sir F Banbury criticised the Bill, saying it would make the Home Secretary “an absolute dictator” who could use the legislation to exclude who he chose from “the rights of citizenship”. It “would enable him to brand all the woman suffragists as deficient in mind and to lock them up”. Sir F Banbury added, however, that if he did so he “might be acting rightly”.    
 
When on 11 June 1914 the House of Commons discussed methods of dealing with hunger-striking militants, treating them as lunatics was amongst the options considered. Reginald McKenna, the Home Secretary, agreed that suffragettes were “hysterical fanatics”, but rejected the lunatic suggestion because his earlier attempts to get women certified as insane failed when doctors would not co-operate. (The other options considered were to let the prisoners die (“the most popular”, remarked McKenna), deport them, or give them the franchise (this was greeted with “Hear, hear, and laughter”).

Suffragettes on trial were frequently characterised as insane. During the trial of Bristol woman Lillian Lenton, who had burned the tea house at Kew Gardens, the magistrate asked, “is she responsible for her actions?”  Mary Lindsay, who struck Lord Weardale when she mistook him for Prime Minister Asquith, was remanded in custody to see whether she was of sound mind. The London County Council solicitor, prosecuting Elsie Neville Howey for setting off false fire alarms, described her crime as “an act of madness”.  

Sometimes it’s easy to sympathise with the outraged populace. One woman attended a church service and placed a canister of gunpowder and iron filings under a church pew. She lit the fuse as the congregation was leaving; the device was discovered and doused in water. What was she thinking? The same woman carried a loaded revolver and frequently declared that she wasn’t afraid to use it (though thankfully she never did). Was she insane? She was certainly reckless and violent – perhaps not the same thing.
 
What do you think? Were the suffragettes mad, criminal, or political activists? If you are in Bristol on 13 July 2013 you can find out more in a free panel event at Bristol M Shed – details below.
 
“Senseless outrages against property”: suffragette militancy and women’s right to vote
Saturday 13 July 2003, 2 pm to 3.30 pm, at Bristol M Shed.   

Join June Hannam, Professor Emeritus at the University of the West of England; Lois Bibbings, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol; Dawn Dyer of the Local Studies Team at Bristol Central Library; and local author Lucienne Boyce to discuss the effectiveness and ethics of suffragette militancy in the campaign for women’s right to vote. For details see the Bristol M Shed website.
 
This free event is part of the Dreadnought South West series of events commemorating the south west’s contribution to the Suffrage Pilgrimage of 1913. For more information about the project see http://dreadnoughtsouthwest.org.uk/

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dickens and Chickens

On 17 April 1860, in fields near Farnborough, Charles Dickens joined an audience amongst whom were the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, as well as a number of MPs and clergymen, to watch the American John Carmel Heenan and England’s Tom Sayers (the Brighton Titch) beat one another blind and bloody in a bare-knuckle fight that lasted nearly two and a half hours. The fight ended in a draw when Aldershot police stormed the ring, forcing the fighters and their illustrious spectators to flee the scene. It was the brutality of this match that signalled an end to the bare-knuckle era and prompted the development of the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules. Dickens’s interest in pugilism was of long standing. In 1848 Dombey and Son , which had been published in serial form over the preceding two years, came out in book form. One of many of his novels that draws on the world of the prize fighter, it introduces the unforgettable Mr Toots, a would-be man about town, an

The Bristol Boys: The Bare Knuckle Champions and The Hatchet Inn

The Hatchet Inn on Frogmore Street in Bristol is all that remains of a row of seventeenth-century timbered houses dating back to 1606 – making it one of the city’s oldest pubs. It was substantially altered in the 1960s, and these days it stands on a traffic island. But at one time it boasted extensive grounds – and amongst the facilities on offer was a bare-knuckle boxing ring. Plaque at The Hatchet Inn, Bristol The pub’s connection with Bristol’s boxing heroes is commemorated in a plaque illustrating five of Bristol’s champions – one of whom, Hen Pearce, features in Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery. Hen Pearce (Detail) Bristol born Hen Pearce, The Game Chicken (1777 – 1809), a former butcher’s boy, became champion of England in 1805. He was a hero inside and outside the ring. In 1807 he climbed onto the roof of a building in Thomas Street, Bristol to rescue a servant girl from a fire. Always a popular figure, this courageous act inspired many eulogies in pr

Spotlight On...Begbrook House, Frenchay, Bristol

On 11 November 1913, the head gardener at Begbrook House in Frenchay near Bristol discovered that the   building was on fire. The house stood in its own wooded grounds, and was said to have twenty rooms and a fine old staircase. Within a few hours the house was gutted. The fire caused £3,000 worth of damage. A copy of the WSPU newspaper, The Suffragette , was left at the site with the message, “Birrell is coming. Rachel Pease is still being tortured”.  Begbrook House Picture: Frenchay Village Museum Augustine Birrell was the Liberal MP for Bristol North, and a cabinet minister. He was frequently targetted by militants in Bristol. Suffragettes interrupted his meetings and two women once accosted him at Temple Meads Railway Station with their demand for the vote.    Begbrook House belonged to Hugh Thomas Coles, a wealthy banker. Hugh Coles was the son of   William Gale Cole of Clifton, who was also a banker, and was born in Clifton in 1856. Lik