Boarding house keeper

64

Widow

'Trevarra' 30 Bouverie Road West, Folkestone.

WSPU

Resists

Catherine Annie Smart (1847-1915) was a member of the local WSPU in Folkestone and Boarding housekeeper at 'Trevarra' for several years. One of her long term residents there appears to have been WSPU organiser for Canterbury and South Kent, Miss Florence Macaulay. The hotel proprietor, a Miss Marjorie Key, was clearly sympathetic to the votes for women cause as she consented to several fund raising events and suffrage planning meetings being held at Trevarra. This included in 1912, a suffragette equivalent of the 'Antiques Roadshow' where members were invited to bring items for valuation in exchange for a donation to raise funds for the WSPU! (see image). On census night in 1911, Catherine oversaw a census 'evasion' at the boarding house, providing a safe space for 3 other women to evade - one of whom was likely Macaulay. Catherine resists rather than evades the 1911 census, listing herself as 'Mrs Smart'. The census official writes suffragette next to her name, creating - presumably unintentionally - a rather witty read of 'Mrs Smart Suffragette'. The census official also notes that Mrs Smart and the others refused to fill in the schedule because 'women have no vote'. Still at 30 Bouverie Road West, Catherine died in January 1915 aged 68. See also Elizabeth Crawford and Jill Liddington's 'Gazetteer' in Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census (Manchester: 2014).