WSPU organiser

Single

32 Stuart Road, Gillingham

WSPU

Evades

Laura Frances Ainsworth was born in 1885 in Northumberland and became a teacher. However, she gave up her position to work as an organiser for the WSPU first in London and then in Birmingham. It was in Birmingham that she was arrested in 1909, for participating in the disruption of a meeting being held by the Prime Minister at Bingley Hall. Laura immediately went on hunger strike in Winson Green prison where she was forcibly fed. She, it was remarked, 'is very determined and it is necessary still to administer food through the tube' (see our Suffrage Glossary under resources for an explanation of Force Feeding). Once released, she was taken to a nursing home to recover. Like many WSPU organisers, Laura's life was peripatetic over the next few years. She worked in Bradford, Bolton, back in London, in Southend, Maidstone and Gillingham. Laura was lodging at (now) 32 Stuart Road in Gillingham in 1911 but was absent from her usual address when the government census survey was taken. That's because as a committed suffragette she was overseeing a mass census evasion of suffragettes elsewhere in Gillingham - at Jezreel Hall, in Canterbury Street. The census return for this evasion, tracked down by suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford (see images) shows the census official recorded at the Hall (then a Dance Academy) a 'Party of suffragettes assembled' consisting of 1 male and 39 females - a considerable evasion. The 'Party' were discovered by the census official after a tip off by the police who were called to the Hall to investigate due to the noise made by the over exuberant suffragettes inside - undoing their own plans to hide out unnoticed! Laura resigned from the WSPU in 1912, when the Pankhurst's split with the well respected Pethick-Lawrences who had been with the WSPU since its very beginning. In 1913, she became secretary for the North-East branch of the National Political League which aimed to push social and political reforms for women and for men - a predicate of which was the granting of the vote to women. Laura died in 1958. Sources: Information provided by Elizabeth Crawford. To read more on Laura's census night exploits, view Crawford's excellent blog on Laura Ainsworth at https://womanandhersphere.com/2013/11/11/suffrage-stories-the-1911-census-the-gillingham-suffragettes-boycott/