Suffragettes, radical novelists and trade unionists in Leicester.
I have just become aware that 2 cousins of my gt grandfather were suffragetttes in Leicester.
Agnes Mary Clarke aka Agnes Spencer Clarke wrote 3 novels on socialist themes. Glenroyst: A Story of Old Time Leicestershire published by Batty & Company, 1898, Seven Girls, Sketches Of A Factory Life' published by Spencer & Greenhough - Leicester / Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent - London., 1899. This was about girls working in a laundry and a strike is one of the incidents in the book, and her third novel, First Women Minister’ was a thinly veiled account of Unitarian pioneer, the Rev. Gertrude von Petzold of whom she was a follower. Gertrude von Petzold was appointed minister of Narborough Road Free Christian Church (Unitarian) in 1904.
Agnes contributed stories to the Leicester Guardian and wrote regularly for the Midlands Free Press.
From 1902 Agnes also wrote for The Pioneer newspaper, established by Tom Barclay, probably under the soubriquet 'Lydia'.
She worked in the boot & shoe industry although Mrs Pankhurst wrote of Agnes that she had been "collecting rents".
She never married and died aged 95 in 1965 leaving only £24. A sad end for a socialist active in fighting for equal pay for women.
I never met this lady and would like to know more abut her and her sister Bertha, who married aged 73 to Albert Stoney.
There is pletnty of information about male contemporaties but I can find little about Agnes, less about Bertha and no trace of The Pioneer. Leicester Guardian or Midland Free Press.
Surely someone will have historical evidence of them.
I am the great nephew of
I am the great nephew of Agnes and Bertha Clarke, my grandfathers sisters, known to me as great aunts Aggie and Bertie. I do have some family history including some photos one of which shows them in a pony and trap with their votes for women sashes. If you have any questions please get in touch and I will do my best. regretably I have no knowledge of the publictions you refer to although I do have copies of her books.
My name is Andrew
My name is Andrew Allen-Melvin and she was my great Aunt, I was researching a silver Van Arcken pocket watch which used to belong to her that I own and stumbled apon this thread. Feel free to contact me via [email protected] Regards, Andrew.
I have a first edition signed
I have a first edition signed copy of 'Seven Girls' which I would like to sell. Just enquiring if either Clayton56 or Andy Melvin would be interested?
I remember Agnes and Bertha
I remember Agnes and Bertha (my great aunts) as Aggie and Bertie. They were two of a family of four children which also included Lilly (who died very young) and my Grandfather Alfred Spencer Clarke. Aggie and Bertie always lived together in a rented Victorian bungalow in Glenfield near Leicester. They bred Sealyhams and kept goats. In 1948 Bertha married Albert Stoney (a retired policeman) and all three continued to live together. However, the nature of the relationship was never completely clear as Stoney (which is what everyone called him) always called Bertie "Miss Clarke" and she always called him "Mr. Stoney".
Bertha was a very no-nonsense person who ran the household. Aggie was the intellectual one, but incredibly absent minded who depended on Bertie for pretty well everything. I only have vague recollections of Stoney who was a large, very powerful man who provided the muscle which the two women found they needed as they got older.
Aggie was a writer (as you know) who also had an extensive library, Every time we visited, she would take me into the library (which was never heated) and we would kneel on the floor for hours while she went through her books looking for one to give to me. I was only 8 or 9 at the time and these visits were a bit like purgatory! I only have one of the books she gave me which I kept because it was the most readable. It was titled "A day of my life at Eton" by an Eton schoolboy. This should give you some idea of the ones I didn't keep!
My Grandfather, Alfred Spencer Clarke, visited his sisters every week for most of his life, taking the bus from Leicester to Glenfield. He also wrote occasionally but never had anything published apart from a series of letters he wrote from South Africa at the end of the Boer War while he was a private in the Leicestershire Yeomanry. These letters were published in the "Leicester Mercury" under the sobriquet "a Leicester Yeoman". I have all of these letters but they are probably accessible through the "Leicester Mercury" website. I wouldn't rush to read them, though!
A bit of further info. My Grandfather and his wife were married by Gertrude von Petsold at the Narborough Road Unitarian church and, as far as I know, were the first couple to be married by a woman minister in the UK.
Just out of curiosity, where
Just out of curiosity, where these women suffragettes (ie who wanted votes for women on the same terms as then for men, ie who wanted votes for rich women only) or suffragists (who wanted universal suffrage for all men and women). I suspect (and hope) the latter but the distinction is important and the media are giving the impression that the suffragettes wanted votes for all women when they didn't.