WSPU organiser

25

Single

19/21 Silent Street, Ipswich.

WSPU

Evades

Grace Roe was born into a prosperous Anglo-Irish family in London in 1885. Her mother died when she was twelve and she was sent to Beadles boarding school. She became a vegetarian in her teens and remained one throughout her life. Grace was captivated by WSPU leader Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel Pankhurst, when she heard her speak in Hyde Park on 21 June 1908. She remembered thinking, “That’s the woman I’m going to follow.” She joined the movement a few months later and became one of Christabel’s most trusted confidants. Her first arrest came during the Great Deputation to the House of Commons on 29 June 1909, but she wasn't prosecuted. In 1910, she became the WSPU’s first organiser in East Anglia based in Ipswich and built up the membership with a series of headline speakers, including Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. Grace likely took part in the suffragette boycott of the government’s 1911 census survey as she is not recorded at the address in Ipswich where she was boarding with a family of printers (see census image) and is not recorded anywhere else. In September 1912, Christabel Pankhurst sent Grace to Dublin to secure the release of suffragettes Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans, who were on hunger strike after being imprisoned for attempting to set fire to a Dublin theatre. Following her success in Dublin, she took charge of the WSPU campaign during the Bromley and Bow by-election when George Lansbury stood unsuccessfully as a woman's suffrage candidate. Sylvia Pankhurst criticised Grace’s approach to the by-election, especially her decision not to give over control of WSPU resources to the Labour Party. In January 1913, Grace Roe became deputy to Annie Kenney, who had been appointed the WSPU’s Chief Organiser after Christabel Pankhurst went into exile in France in March 1912. When Annie Kenney was arrested on 8 April 1913 on charges of conspiracy to commit arson, Grace took over as Chief Organiser. She was wanted by the police but managed to evade arrest during the police raid on WSPU headquarters on 30 April 1913. She made sure the WSPU weekly paper, by then named The Suffragette, still appeared that week with the front cover announcing, “Raided”. She lived in hiding for the next year, often dressing as a chorus girl to avoid capture, during which time she oversaw the conduct of the arson campaign and protests against the Cat & Mouse Act (see our Suffrage Glossary). She helped organise Emily Wilding Davison’s funeral in June 1913, which was regarded as a propaganda triumph and established The Bodyguard to provide security at rallies, protect the leadership from arrest and help suffragettes to escape. On 23 May 1914, Grace Roe was arrested. She went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. Grace was still in prison when Britain declared war on Germany that year. She was released under a government amnesty for suffragettes and played an active part in promoting women’s employment in industry as part of the war effort, also criticising labour unrest. After the war, she lived for a time with Annie Kenney before settling in America with Christabel Pankhurst. They went their separate ways in 1925 but remained close. Grace was Christabel Pankhurst’s executor and arranged for her memoir to be published after Christabel died. In an interview in 1974, she said that “Christabel was the apple of my eye.” Key sources: Interview with Antonia Raeburn for the BBC, see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/womans-hour-grace-roe/z7vcnrd; Interview with Brian Harrison, held by the Women's Library at LSE; Antonia Raeburn, 'Militant Suffragettes'; Elizabeth Crawford, 'The Women's Suffragette Movement'; Annie Kenney, 'Memories of a Militant'; Andrew Rosen, 'Rise Up Women!'; Christabel Pankhurst, 'Unshackled: the Story of how we Won the Vote'; Sylvia Pankhurst, 'The Suffragette Movement' Votes for Women, 20 September 1912 (re Dublin). Contributed by: Writer, Hilary McCollum.