The feminine public sphere

Middle–class women and civic life in Scotland, c. 1870–1914

Megan Smitley

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781847797445
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

At a time when women were barred from clerical roles, middle-class women made use of the informal power structures of Victorian and Edwardian associationalism in order to actively participate as citizens. This investigation of women's part in civic life provides a fresh approach to the 'public sphere', illuminates women as agents of a middle-class identity and develops the notion of a 'feminine public sphere', or the web of associations, institutions and discourses used by disenfranchised middle-class women to express their citizenship. The extent of middle-class women's contribution to civic life is examined through their involvement in reforming and philanthropic associations as well as local government. Making use of a range of previously untapped sources, this fascinating book will appeal in particular to those with an interest in Gender History and Scottish History.

1

The organisations

Women’s organisations in the 1870 to 1914 period were characterised by a vigorous community of public-spirited women. This community of middle-class public women generated influential inter-organisational networks, networks which were mapped using a database of organisational membership and which cross-pollinated the policies of women’s temperance, suffrage and Liberal organisations. That is, individual women’s membership to multiple organisations, either simultaneously or at different periods during their reforming careers, made an important contribution to broadening the reform programmes of each organisation. The women’s temperance and Liberal associations were particularly prone to a multi-issue approach, and both organisations were sites of energetic agitation for temperance reform and female political rights. Indeed, individuals’ membership across several organisations encouraged an inter-penetration of ideas and reforming interests, a process which undermines strict differentiation between organisations as suffragist or non-suffragist.

The constitutional suffrage societies

The Glasgow and Edinburgh constitutional suffrage societies are the central explicitly-suffrage societies in this study. The ENSWS was established in 1867, and was the first dedicated suffrage organisation in Scotland and one of the first three women’s suffrage groups in Britain alongside Manchester and London. The records left by the ENSWS include annual reports for the years 1868–78, 1892 and 1907 as well as reports of its work published in the Women’s Suffrage Journal (WSJ) (1870–90). The GNSWS was established in 1870, and while official records for this organisation do not survive, the WSJ carries a selection of reports submitted by the GNSWS.1 The work of Glasgow suffragists is better documented from 1902 when the GNSWS was reorganised as the GWSAWS, and the records for the GWSAWS include minute books spanning 1902 to 1914. This discussion also refers to suffrage societies in Kilmarnock and Shetland. The Kilmarnock branch of the Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies (SFWSS) was formed in March 1911; the SFWSS was established in 1910 as an affiliate of the London-based NUWSS, and was designed to supervise the constitutional suffrage campaign in Scotland. The minute books of the Kilmarnock society cover the period 1911 to 1914. The Shetland National Society for Women’s Suffrage (SNSWS) was formed in Twageos in October 1909, independent of party affiliation and with the understanding that it ‘had no connection with the disturbances which had been caused recently by women Suffragists’.2 The minutes for this society are also confined to the early twentieth century and cover the years 1909 to 1919.

The constitutional societies examined here shared a similar approach to the suffrage campaign across time and space. The uneven distribution of source material means that this analysis of the nineteenth-century campaign must focus on Edinburgh, while evidence from the early twentieth century is more plentiful for Glasgow. While accepting the deficiencies of the source material, it is possible to identify some important aspects of the methodology of these organisations, namely suffragists’ agitation in support of parliamentarians’ bills for women’s suffrage. The annual reports of the ENSWS (1868–78), suggest that the early work of the society centred on supporting the parliamentary work of men such as John Stuart Mill, Jacob Bright and Duncan McLaren. This support most often took the form of petitions to Government in favour of legislation for women’s equal enfranchisement. For instance, the 1868 report claimed that fifty-five petitions had been organised with a total of 14,000 signatures in support of the Representation of the People Bill: ‘The signatures to the petition were procured partly by the aid of paid Canvassers, partly by the personal efforts of Members of Committee’.3 In 1871, the ENSWS claimed to have gathered over 24,000 signatures, including the endorsement of the Edinburgh Town Council – the first local government body to petition for women’s suffrage – in support of Jacob Bright and Charles Dilke’s bill to enfranchise women.4 From this year, the ENSWS gathered tens of thousands of signatures in favour of legislation for women’s equal enfranchisement, an effort which peaked in 1875 with 50,000 signatures.5 The minutes from the GWSAWS suggest that Glasgow suffragists also focused on support for male politicians’ efforts to pass legislation for women’s enfranchisement. For instance, the GWSAWS worked closely with Colonel Denny MP to bring equal enfranchisement measures before parliament. In March 1903, the GWSAWS asked Denny to introduce a pro-suffrage amendment to the Representation of the People Act.6 In November, the GWSAWS asked the NUWSS to rally behind Denny’s amendment.7 In April 1904, the GWSAWS secretary, Mrs Isaac T. Hunter, sent letters to MPs known to support women’s suffrage, ‘asking them to support a Resolution in favour of Women’s Suffrage to be moved on the 16th March by Sir Chas. McLaren and seconded by Col. Denny’.8 Ultimately Denny’s amendment was unsuccessful, and by October 1904 the GWSAWS’s attention had shifted to Kier Hardie’s women’s suffrage bill. What is significant here is that the GWSAWS’s relationship with Denny can be seen as representative of its approach to suffrage agitation, and demonstrates the continued co-operation between constitutional suffragists and their male advocates in parliament. This trend is further reflected in the work of the SNSWS, which consisted in the main of lobbying local MPs to support women’s suffrage legislation. So, in the run up to the 1911 Conciliation Bill, the SNSWS lobbied the local MP, Mr Wason, to support the measure.9 While a basic component of constitutional suffragism was co-operation with and support of parliamentarians, suffragists also took on a role in public speaking for their cause.

A prominent feature of suffragists’ campaigning was the organisation of large public meetings in order to promote women’s voting rights. An important component of public meetings was suffragists’ public speaking. Evidence from the annual reports of the ENSWS and the WSJ suggests that women had a somewhat marginal role as speakers in the early years of the campaign. While women were listed as present on the platform in reports of annual public meetings, the speakers tended to be male parliamentarians and local leaders with the exception of Miss Eliza Wigham, the secretary, who read the annual report. In Glasgow, Miss Jessie Craigen was renowned for addressing working-class audiences at open-air meetings in the 1870s. The WSJ described such a meeting at Glasgow Green in 1872:

The persons present numbered about 1,000, chiefly working men of the most intelligent type. The meeting lasted more than two hours, and of the immense mass not more than 50 quitted the place from the beginning to the end. All stood in a compact throng till the end of the proceedings. After an address by Miss Craigen, the Chairman opened the discussion. Mr Long, and a young man whose name did not transpire, spoke in opposition, and Miss Craigen replied. When the debate was closed, a motion for the adoption of a petition in favour of the Bill to Remove the Electoral Disabilities of Women was put. A perfect forest of hands went up for it; for the contrary a few appeared. The meeting was dispersed with some little difficulty, for the people wanted to hear more.10

In the following year, the WSJ reported that: ‘Miss Craigen addressed a meeting in the United Presbyterian Church Manse, St Girbal’s [sic], Glasgow, on February 17th. The attendance was almost entirely of the working class. A petition in favour of Mr Bright’s Bill was carried by a unanimous vote.’11 Craigen’s efforts to gear her speeches towards working-class audiences in the early stages of the suffrage campaign were extraordinary in terms both of women’s public speaking and of efforts to engage with the working classes, and Leneman has noted that Craigen’s endeavours to enlist working-class support were the exception rather than the rule.12

Suffragists’ public speaking seems to have become more common practice as the campaign matured. This is most striking in reports of the Scottish National Demonstration of Women, which was organised in 1882 by the GNSWS. The WSJ carried an extensive report of the meeting held in St Andrew’s Halls, and described the meeting as, ‘specially a woman’s one, the only portion of the hall to which men were admitted being the balcony’.13 The spatial segregation of male attendees is significant as evidence of suffragists’ subversion of gendered roles in public spaces. As Simon Morgan has noted, by the 1860s the trend towards spatially separating female attendees at public events was increasingly realised in the architecture of public buildings, specifically the inclusion of balconies and galleries designed to accommodate female spectators.14 By dominating the speaking platform and removing men to the balcony, suffragists at the Scottish National Demonstration symbolically usurped men’s dominance of public forums. All of the speakers at the demonstration were women, including the American suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the English editor of the WSJ, Lydia Becker. Mrs Priscilla McLaren, who presided, along with Miss Eliza Wigham, Miss Flora Stevenson, Miss Jessie Craigen and Mrs Wellstood represented the Scottish movement. The WSJ reproduced Reuben Roseneath’s coverage of the demonstration for the Glasgow paper, the Christian Leader. Roseneath summarised the arguments of the speakers while critiquing, with much praise, the public speaking capabilities of the women on the platform. He was especially impressed with Craigen’s adept public speaking and claimed: ‘For twenty minutes Miss Craigen held the audience spellbound. This lady is one of the greatest orators I have ever heard. She gave the impression of being an independent and original thinker, fearless in speaking out her convictions; and some of the passages of her speech might be justly described as logic on fire.’15 Roseneath pressed his point regarding suffragists’ ability to work a platform by issuing a challenge to the male audience to admit the fine performance of the female speakers: ‘if any of the gentlemen in the balcony – and among them were sheriffs, professors, ministers, and lawyers – can say that they ever heard the same uniform good speaking at any meeting they attended in their lives before, or as many effective points crushed into the same space of time, I shall be greatly surprised’.16 Roseneath’s commentary is especially revealing in the context of this investigation as he seems to highlight middle-class women’s successful endeavours to participate fully in middle-class public life. As Roseneath implies, public speaking was understood as central to the public lives of the local male elite, and this point was further emphasised in the WSJ’s reporting.

Suffragists’ endeavours to network with MPs, and their ability to publicly lay claim to their political rights demonstrates the positioning of constitutional suffrage societies in middle-class civic life. Suffragists were keenly aware of their male peers’ emphasis on civic participation, and in arguing for women’s equal enfranchisement Victorian feminists might organise public spectacle of their capacity for full participation as citizens. In other words, the speakers at the Scottish National Demonstration of Women can be understood as an example of suffragists’ endeavours to prove their fitness for the parliamentary franchise by demonstrating their own mastery of the skills so prized by the local ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The organisations
• 2 The feminine public sphere
• 3 Temperance reform and the feminine public sphere
• 4 The women’s movement and female temperance reform
• 5 New views of the women’s suffrage campaign: Liberal women and regional perspectives
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index