A suffragette with Bristol connections

As of the 2015 general election, all the MPs for Bristol are now women. Lucienne Boyce reviews a work on one of the most well known suffragettes, Lady Constance Lytton, and draws our attention to her connections with Bristol.

Lady Constance Lytton: Aristocrat, Suffragette, Martyr by Lyndsey Jenkins

Suffragette Lady Constance Lytton is best remembered for disguising herself as a working woman in order to expose the class bias of the prison system. She was moved to take this action after she and other suffragettes were imprisoned in Newcastle. When they all went on hunger strike, Lady Constance and Jane Brailsford, both well-connected women, were not forcibly fed, whereas the obscure Kathleen Brown and Ellen Pitman were. The only reason Lady Constance could see for this differential treatment “was that our names were known, theirs were not!” Presenting as plain Jane Warton, however, Lady Constance was forcibly fed in Walton Gaol, Liverpool. 

Nurse Ellen Pitman was a Bristol woman who lived in Southleigh Road in Clifton. Aged fifty two, she had already served time with hard labour in Horfield Gaol and gone on hunger strike there. Nurse Pitman’s prison experiences destroyed her health, damaged her career and reduced her to poverty. Ironically, it is Lady Constance’s sacrifice that is best remembered, while Nurse Pitman’s still remains largely unknown.   

Lady Constance had other links with Bristol and the South West, which are mentioned in this very readable biography. She had many friends in the region and often spoke in Bristol and Bath. She played Florence Nightingale in the 1910 performance of Cicely Hamilton’s A Pageant of Great Women at the Prince’s Theatre, Bristol.

Jenkins has a natural, flowing style which guides the reader through the fascinating story of Lady Constance’s life. Her admiration for Lady Constance is evident, but this is no mere hagiography. One of the book’s strengths is the way she evaluates the evidence before her. She notes, for example, the bias in the source material. Lady Constance’s autobiography was “written to give the suffragettes new strength” at a time when extreme militancy had lost them support. On the other hand, the letters published by her family after her death were selected to portray her as a “dutiful daughter”, and also omitted details of her hopeless love affair.

There are a few quibbles. For example, Emmeline Pethick Lawrence’s family were not Quakers. Her mother was an Anglican, her father a Methodist who later joined a Congregational chapel and subsequently returned to the established church. Emily Wilding Davison did not die under the King’s horse at the 1913 Derby, but in hospital a few days later. The first window breaking by Mary Leigh and Edith New was not carried out during the Hyde Park demonstration on 21 June 1908, but during a deputation to the House of Commons on 30 June.

But these details do not detract from this thoughtful biography which challenges us to look at the suffragettes as individuals. Jenkins writes: “We think we know the suffragettes…smartly dressed Edwardian ladies chaining themselves to railings and setting fire to post-boxes…The trouble with this stereotype is that it obscures the real women…” This book goes a long way to challenging the stereotypes, whether favourable or unfavourable. I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about one of the movement’s major figures who had many connections with Bristol and the South West.

Lady Constance Lytton is now available through Biteback Publishing

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Lucienne Boyce is the author of The Bristol Suffragettes (SilverWood Books, 2013), a history of the local suffragette campaign which includes a fold-out map and walk. She is currently writing a biography of suffragette Millicent Browne – another campaigner with Bristol connections.   

Lucienne is also a historical novelist whose books are set in the eighteenth century. She published To The Fair Land in 2012, and has just published Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery. She is now working on the second Dan Foster Mystery.

www.lucienneboyce.com/