The suffragette census protests of 1911 were instigated by The Women’s Freedom League (WFL), a non-violent and democratic organisation founded in 1907. The then liberal government continued to frustrate calls for female suffrage, so a call went out to avoid the count. The boycott was supported by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the Women's Tax Resistance League (WTRL), as well as many other organisations and individuals.
Founded in 1903, the WSPU was a leading militant organisation formed by the political activist Emmeline Pankhurst, her husband and others. Dedicated to 'deeds, not words', their members pursued a strategy of ‘spectacle politics’ through civil disobedience and direct action. They carried out a range of headline-grabbing activities, which included mass window smashing and later a campaign of arson. It was in reference to the WSPU that the term suffragette was first coined by a derisive journalist in 1906.
Pankhurst encouraged a passive protest on census night, either by avoiding the enumerators altogether or refusing to complete the schedule; refusal could potentially be met with a £5 fine or a month's imprisonment. (On a side note, Pankhurst had worked as a registrar of births and deaths from 1898 to 1907.)
In the lead up to the appointed date, the paper Votes for Women (17 March 1911) reported:
'Census resistance has been taken up with a heartiness and a vigour which has astonished the organisers. In every centre men and women are extensively organising their own plans for carrying out the boycott. Private houses are being thrown open, and dances, whist drives, and other festivities are being arranged with view to making the Census night of 1911 a memorable occasion to those engaged in this struggle for political freedom.'
From mid-afternoon on 1 April, the day before the census, a mass meeting was held in Trafalgar Square. Police reports detail a crowd slowly gathering, with about 1,000 people in the square by midnight.
Suffragettes evaded enumerators by staying in non-residential properties or out in the open air. A rich widow and friend of Pankhurst opened her Manchester home, Denison House, to protestors. The night was filled with debates, singing and dancing. A total of 155 women (and 52 men) sought refuge in a giant 'sleepover'. Their representative, Jessie Stephenson, scrawled across the schedule: 'No Vote No Census. My house is crowded with men & women but I decline to answer any questions'. The property became known as 'Census Lodge'.
The suffragette 'sleepover' at 'Census Lodge' (Denison House), Manchester, 1911.
The census boycott slogan is on the wall behind them.
On Putney Heath in south-west London, Kitty Marshall (Pankhurst's bodyguard), her husband, and nine other women camped out in three horse-drawn caravans. All that the enumerator could obtain from then was 'Mr Marshall', 'Mrs Marshall', '& nine women'; their occupation was recorded as 'Suffragists'. One woman spent the night in a cycle shed behind her house, kept warm by a fur coat. Others gathered on Wimbledon Common for a midnight picnic.
Emily Davison made her political point by secreting herself in a broom cupboard in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the House of Commons. After 46 hours she was discovered by a cleaner, arrested and released without charge. As a result, her postal address was recorded as 'found hiding in Crypt of Westminster Hall'. In the end she was recorded twice as her landlady noted her down, despite Davison's absence. In 1913 she died when attempting to throw or attach a suffragette flag to King George V's horse on the final bend at the Epsom Derby.
Emmeline Pankhurst herself failed to avoid the census-takers and was 'captured' as a visitor at the Inns of Court Hotel in Holborn, London. Only her name was taken though and even then incorrectly, as 'Mrs G Pankhurst'.
As 1911 is the first census for which original household schedules survive, we can see their protests voiced in pen and ink. Some suffragettes spoiled their returns with the oft-used slogan 'No vote, No census' or variations thereof. On occasion, protest comments were added. The majority came from women in London, some examples being:
- 'I demand the right to a political vote' (Hammersmith)
- 'I absolutely refuse to give any information' (St Marylebone)
- 'You cannot expect me to fulfill a citizens' duties not having the rights of one' (Hampstead)
- 'No votes for women, no information from women' (Hampstead)
- 'Those who do count in the nation cannot be counted' (Hampstead)
- 'I shall be pleased to supply all information when the franchise act is passed and I am recognised as a person' (Kennington)
- 'If I am intelligent enough to fill in this Census form, I can surely make a X on a Ballot paper' (Isabelle Leo, Paddington)
A 1911 census schedule plastered with a protest flyer and the words
'No persons here only women!'
Faced with an incalcitrant or absent household, enumerators would add comments, such as:
'Suffragettes, refused all information and wrote across census form no vote no census information obtained from neighbours'. In Paddington, another example was: 'Flat deserted by women who wanted the vote'.
Helen Hutchinson Wright in Devon pointedly listed her 'Personal Occupation' as: 'Private means Helping obtain the vote for qualified women'. While Ada Twells, a farmer's wife in Lincolnshire, opted for: 'At present agitating for votes for women'.
A Mary Howey in Hertfordshire entered 'not enfranchised' in the Infirmity column.
The suffragettes campaign garnered a great deal of publicity, but many of the protesting women were recorded in some way or another, even if only a headcount.
The government decided against prosecuting census rebels. Fines and imprisonment for militant suffragettes had done little to discourage activism.
Their protest was pilloried in the press. 'The suffragettes have now definitely decided to take leave of their Census', punned Punch magazine. Pankhurst responded: ‘The Census is a numbering of the people. Until women count as people for the purpose of representation in the councils of nation as well as for purposes of taxation, we shall refuse to be numbered.'
Naturally the exact number of women who boycotted the census is unknown, but it has been estimated at several thousand.
In 1913 Pankurst maintained 'Because women are voteless there are in our midst to-day sweated workers, white slaves, outraged children, and innocent mothers and their babies stricken by horrible disease.'
Ten days after the Great War, on 21 November 1918, the 'Parliament (Qualification of Women Act) 1918' received royal assent. It enfranchised women over the age of 30 who were either householders or married to a householder, or who held a university degree. Not until the 'Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928' were women were granted suffrage on the same terms as men.
Note
On outlier from the rest of the British Isles was the Isle of Man, where on 31 January 1881 women who owned property in their own right were given the vote; in 1866 the isle had obtained limited home rule.
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