WSPU secretary

46

Married

7 Castle Street, Hereford.

WSPU

Evades

Ethel Scott was born in Surrey in 1865, the daughter of Reverend Thomas Scott, vicar of Penge, and his wife Louisa. Ethel married George Herbert Davis in 1891 when he was still working as a solicitor; he had been lodging with the Scott family prior to their marriage. Whilst living at 7 Castle Street and later in 1911, at 7 The Cloisters, Hereford Cathedral, Ethel was Secretary to the WSPU in Hereford. Ethel is nowhere to be found on the 1911 Census, although her husband (see) George Davis complied. However, two of her children are with the family of Bertha Ryland, a census evader in Birmingham and so it may be that Ethel was hiding out there. She was involved in local activism and militancy in the city and beyond, selling the Votes for Women newspaper and organising and chairing suffrage meetings. The couple had five children, with Molly, the youngest, accompanying her mother whilst campaigning. Ethel worked closely with Ada Flatman, local organiser for the WSPU, and was instrumental in a campaign in 1912 to have Votes for Women on the reading table at Hereford Library. When the campaign failed, the WSPU, led by Ethel and Ada, took a stall at the annual May Fair, selling copies of the newspaper and “dainty handmade articles”. Ethel wrote in support of the 1913 campaign by Ursula Roberts for the ordination of women. She attended court to protest about the treatment of women during sexual abuse cases, and was ejected from the Shire Hall Crown Court on at least one occasion in 1915. Ethel became an advocate of birth control and hosted Stella Browne and Doris Stevens in the late 1920s whilst living at St Weonard’s Vicarage in Herefordshire where Ethel and George had moved to in 1917. The couple eventually retired to Sherborne in Dorset, where she died in 1948. Contributed by Herefordshire community fundraiser, Clare Wichbold, MBE.