Not known

Single

20 Northumberland Road, Coventry

WSPU

Evades

Miss Helen Dawson was joint secretary of the Coventry WSPU branch with (see) Alice Lea which the two seemed to have been instrumental in founding. Helen appears to have been from Lancashire originally and had spent at least some of her life in Calderbrook near Rochdale where she likely came into contact with her future husband (see) the Rev. Percy Widdrington. In 1908, Helen was caught chalking advertisements for a WSPU meeting on local pavements including outside the Baths Assembley Hall along with Alice Lea. The two women were reportedly 'drenched' by water poured from the windows above on one street ruining their clothes and washing away their chalked pavement slogans. Undaunted and in retaliation, Helen and Alice 'promptly chalked the steps instead'. Helen lived at 20 Northumberland Road for some time in 1911 likely as a boarder, but seems to be absent from the 1911 census. As a suffragette, she may have been 'evading' the government survey as part of a wider and orchestrated boycott of it by some women in protest at not having a vote. However, we do know that by September 1911, she was living with and married to the votes for women supporting and campaigning local vicar (see) Rev. Percy Widdrington at St. Peter's vicarage. Helen had already been using the vicarage as a postal address for some of her suffrage activities as early as 1909 and the couple had married by August 1911 in Cornwall. In true tabloid style, the headline in the Birmingham Mail read: 'Socialist Vicar Weds Suffragette'. In 1918, they relocated to Essex. Researcher: Tara Morton. Coventry research funded by Warwick University.