| Event type: | Meeting |
| Date: | 14th January 2025 |
Chris Lloyd never fails to entertain – and January’s talk subtitled ‘Darlington and the Campaign for Votes for Women’ also educated many of us. Through information from the archives of The Northern Echo, we learned of:
- Jane & Elizabeth Procter who ran Polam Hall School and were active in the Suffrage movement in mid-19th century.
- Elizabeth Pease Nichol active in the Anti-Slavery movement who later moved to Edinburgh.
- Sophia Fry of Woodburn who was prominent in the Women’s Liberal Federation.
- Clara Curtis Lucas the first female elected Councillor in Darlington (who’s picture today hangs outside the Council Chamber in the Town Hall).
- Arthur Henderson, former Mayor of Darlington and MP for Barnard Castle whose pressure on the government was a significant help towards enabling women to vote. He also was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. His portrait also hangs outside the Council Chamber next to that of Clara Lucas.
We were also educated into the differences between Suffragettes (more active in their protests and wore white) with Suffragists who veered towards the more peaceful pressure that words could bring to bear and wore black.
Of particular note was Gertrude Bell, was very prominent in a male dominated world, who was of the belief that women should not get the vote. Perhaps she agreed with the many men who considered that women’s brains weren’t big enough to cope with political decisions, perhaps being full of thoughts of cushions and cake!
Chris beautifully wove tales of these people together with more obscure reports from the Echo with perhaps the most alarming being that most of us had grandmothers who probably didn’t initially have the vote, and that doesn’t seem that long ago!
Kevin Beckett