None given (but was an organiser for the WSPU)

44

Married

66 Chatham Street, Stockport

WSPU

Complies

Born in Birmingham, Jennie (Sarah Jane) Baines was the daughter of James Hunt, gunmaker, and Sarah Ann. She started working with her mother in a gun factory when she was 11. She later recorded that she was educated in the spirit of rebellion by the Salvation Army. On 16 September 1888, she married a boot-maker, George Baines, and had five children. Only three of them survived childhood. Jennie joined the WSPU in 1903, after witnessing Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney at the Free Trade Hall. In 1906, she went to London as an organizer for the WSPU - asked by Mrs Pankhurst. She was arrested on 13 December 1906 at the entrance to the House of Commons and completed a sentence of 14 days in Holloway prison. In her own words, this experience reinforced her concern for the treatment of women prisoners and made her more of a rebel than ever. After her first imprisonment as a suffragette, Jennie Baines was very active as a full-time organiser for the WSPU, focused on the Midlands and North of England including Leeds and Manchester. She was the main speaker on one of the platforms at the WSPU June 1908 Hyde Park demonstration. That year she wrote a handbill, published by the Woman's Press, titled "The Labour of Married Women: a working woman's reply to Mr John Burns". She was arrested on many occasions over the years, served prison sentences in different gaols where she performed several hunger strikes. The Criminal Record Office considered her a "Known Militant Suffragette" and circulated her photograph and description: 4' 10", brown eyes, dark brown hair. In 1913, Jennie was arrested and sentenced to one month imprisonment. She was warned that her body could not undergo another hunger strike because her health had already deteriorated as a result of her many prison sentences, hunger strikes and subsequent force-feedings. For this reason, Jennie escaped to Australia with her family where her activism continued. She became an organizer for the Women's Political Association, and joined the Socialist party with her husband. She also co-founded the Women's Peace Army and was elected officer in 1917. In 1919, she was arrested and sentenced to six months imprisonment in Melbourne. She was the first hunger-striker in Australia and was released within four days. She was a founding member of the Victorian branch of the Communist Party in 1920 but was expelled in 1925. In 1928 she was appointed a Children's Court magistrate in Port Melbourne. In 1911, Jennie was living at 66 Chatham Street, Stockport. Despite her very active profile in the suffragette movement, she did not participate in the census protest in 1911 as her census form (see image) shows. There is no clear evidence of the reasons behind her decision not to participate in the boycott, but it may have been due to the economic situation of her family (taking part in the boycott carried a potential fine), the lack of support networks for the protest in her local area, or that her own priorities as an activist were closer to working class women’s issues, which the census, recording things like overcrowding and child deaths, could be used to argue for social reform. She was described thus in the WSPU newspaper 'Votes for Women': 'A woman whose soul is filled with passionate desire to rescue the oppressed, who hates compromise, who is a stranger to fear - such a woman is Mrs Baines'. Jennie Baines died in 1951. Sources: Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census (Manchester: Manchester Uni Press, 2014); Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 (Routledge, 1999); J Smart, Baines [née Hunt], Sarah Jane [Jennie] (1866–1951), suffragette and social reformer. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Retrieved 26 Aug. 2020; Votes For Women, 23 August, 1912. Contributed by Oihane Etayo, Warwick University.