Suffragette tree

1866. The year that arguably marked the start of the women’s suffrage campaign in Britain. It was the year the first mass Votes for Women petition was submitted to Parliament, presented by John Stuart Mill MP (1806-1873) and organised by the Kensington Society, a nineteenth-century women’s discussion group.  

Amongst the 1500 signatures, including prominent nineteenth-century female campaigners, was the name ‘Lady Anna Gore Langton of Newton Park, Bristol’. Local newspaper, the Bath Chronicle recorded the event and reported that ‘Lady Anna Gore Langton is one of the ladies who have signed the petition presented last week to the House of Commons by Mr John Stuart Mill, for granting the parliamentary suffrage to women’. [1]

It was a small and inconspicuous line of text, squashed in amongst marriage, death and event notices of the week and yet, this was an action that therefore forever cemented an everlasting link between Newton Park, now one of the main campuses of Bath Spa University, and that very first petition for universal suffrage.  

Lady Anna Gore Langton (1820-1879) came to live at Newton Park in 1865 on the marriage to her husband, William Gore Langton MP (1824-1873).[2]

Lady Anna was a suffragist. These were peaceful campaigners who laid the foundations of the nineteenth-century movement before the later, more militant associated suffragettes that we are perhaps more familiar with in the early twentieth century. She was therefore, an early champion and pioneer of women’s rights who worked to improve the lived experiences of women in this period in Bath and beyond, campaigning against the unjust fact of women being ‘denied’ the ‘same privileges’ as men and often speaking about these issues publicly. [3]

From 1872, she was the president of the Bath Committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage and two years later, she became president of the Bristol and West of England Branch. Lady Anna would often speak in London on women’s rights as well as being involved in many other feminist enterprises. She was the director of the Women’s Printing Society and by 1878, she had become the vice-president of the London School of Medicine for Women. [4]

In 1907, many years after her death, she would still be celebrated in Bath by other suffragist women, and a tribute in the Bath Chronicle described how she was still remembered as a most ‘excellent speaker and most earnest worker’, her death being ‘a great loss and sorrow to all the notable circle of early workers.’[5]

Lilias Ashworth Hallett (1844-1922) was another name which appeared on the 1866 petition. Lilias resided at Claverton Lodge, Bathwick Hill, and was another fundamental individual to the early Bath suffrage campaign, contributing to the cause for many years. In 1867 aged 23, Lilias and her sister Anne were asked, just after the establishment and her joining of the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage, to form a committee in Bath, which they did with immediate effect. [6]

Well known for being an excellent public speaker, she also wrote often to the Bath Chronicle newspaper, thus bringing the national campaign to the readers of Bath by engaging in a variety of debates through letters and articles. [7]  

Lilias was connected both to the National Union for Women’s Suffrage Society (NUWSS) and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) during her campaigning years. Her involvement with the campaign also stretched to attending and presiding at meetings in Bristol under the Bristol and West of England Society for Women’s Suffrage, which was created in 1869 but amalgamated with Bath in 1884. [8]

She devoted much of her life working to progressing women’s rights. Her ability to so speak publicly at events, as well as being published, at a time when it was virtually unheard of for a woman to do so, illustrates the confidence, power and determination Lilias was still able to apply to a course she believed in. 

‘The idea of a field of trees grows’. [9]

So recorded Mary Blathwayt’s mother, Emily Blathwayt (1852-1940), two years after her daughter Mary became a member of the WSPU in Bath in 1906. It's Mary and her parents that we can credit with the fascinating idea of a living memorial for votes for women campaigners, that would soon become known as the ‘Suffragette’s Wood’ or ‘Annie’s Arboretum’, named after the suffragette Annie Kenney, who would visit the Blathwayts and plant a tree at Eagle House, Batheaston.[10]

Sixty women in total would visit Eagle House to plant a tree, including well-known campaigners and suffragettes such as Emmeline Pankhurst and Adela Pankhurst, Constance Lytton and Millicent Fawcett. [11] Lilias Ashworth Hallet also came to plant a holly bush in March 1910. [12]

After planting, each tree would be marked with a plaque which named the species of the tree and the date it was planted. Suffragettes who had been in prison were honoured in the arboretum with the planting of a conifer, whilst others working for the cause would plant a species of holly. Many of the women who visited Mary and her family would come to recuperate after the horrors of experiencing force-feeding in prison. Mary’s father, Col. Linley Blathwayt (1839-1919), documented the planting of the trees through photographing the women at their plantings and the arboretum grounds. [13]

This action of staying at Eagle House, planting trees, resting and socialising significantly contrasts with the images we are so used to associating the suffragettes with during this period. This often include women being engaged in direct action, undergoing arrest and militant activity. The pictures are a wonderful documentation of a fascinating but largely unknown story withing the women’s campaign. Sadly, the site was bulldozed in the 1960s to make way for a housing estate. Today, only one original tree remains on the site planted in 1909 by Rose Lamartine Yates. [14]

The final chapter and case study of Bath’s suffrage story can be told through the work and campaigning of Mildred Mansel (1868-1942). Bath was a city that soon became embroiled in what we describe as more militant tactics by the campaigners. Whilst Bath also became the site of much disruptive militant action, including the smashing of the city’s post office, a house burning and public disturbances at events, it was also a city that took part lesser-known non-violent disruptive tactics that many women took part in and yet often remain overlooked. [15] One such event was the 1911 Census Evasion.  

Mildred had become a member of the WSPU in 1909 and in 1910, was already made organiser of the Bath branch of the WSPU. That same year, Mildred would plant a tree in the Blathwayt’s arboretum. In February 1911, the Bath Chronicle announced that ‘the suffragettes of this city and district, who are bent on evading the Census return, are making elaborate plans for next Sunday night.’ [16]

The organiser of those plans was Mildred herself. She had hired 12 Lansdown Crescent for one night where women would stay and avoid being counted in the census. [17]  Mary Blathwayt described that she ‘got there before 10 o’ clock. A little crowd of people were standing in the doorway…I took a nightdress etc. with me…we had a charming room to hold our meeting.’ [18]

There was also to be singing and speeches, including from Mrs Mansel. The image below shows the census paper that was submitted by Mildred and the 35 other ‘ladies’ present, including Mary. On the paper Mildred had written ‘no vote, no census’. [19] 

The census evasion was an event that has largely been neglected within the women’s suffrage campaigning story, and yet this was in fact hugely significant and took place nationally, with Bath being one of many spaces to host a census evasion.

It was an innovative campaigning method which brought into question the very spaces in which women occupied, pitting the masculine and public space of politics against the female domestic home as a space that could also be used to campaign and resist, challenging ideas around how women could interact with politics. The argument was that if women could not have the vote, the government should not invade their private female space. Mildred was extremely active in taking part and organising campaigns such as these and would also later go on to support tax evasion and lead other public demonstrations in the city. [20]