Campaigner

29

Single

The Residence, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham

WSPU

Evades

Muriel was born on 25th Feb 1882, the eldest daughter of George Wallis who was Director of the Castle Art Gallery. Her mother was Kate Carey - from a well-known and socially active Nottingham family, including women’s suffrage appearing on the list of Patrons for the East Midland Federation of the NUWSS Fete in 1912 – along with her sister, Henrietta Carey. Muriel was active in the NUWSS and the WSPU from about 1907 and took part in several London processions between 1909-1911. She was arrested for “wilfully obstructing Police whilst in the execution of their duty” on ‘Black Friday’, 18th November 1910 at the Deputation to Parliament. She was bailed for £2 and bound over to keep the peace but not imprisoned. She was almost certainly an evader boycotting the 1911 Census and cannot be located anywhere that night. We also know from her scrapbook that she went to a meeting at Morley’s Cafe on 22 March 1911 at which the speaker, Mrs Simon Massey, said the census offered “an excellent and most logical method of protest.” Muriel was also a member of the National Council of Women and a member of the General Council of the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) with whom she worked for over 25 years. She was also a member of the Guild of Helpers, strongly associated with the work of the Nottingham and Notts Convalescent Homes, and the Social Guild. In 1914 when girls employed in the lace trade were thrown out of work, she opened a shop on Derby Road for some of the girls who successfully found employment manufacturing unbreakable dolls, in a small factory run in the Park-passage [now the eastern end of Lenton Rd. next to the Castle] until 1922. Muriel died on the 21st January 1929 at no. 26 The Ropewalk. Her obituary in the Nottingham Evening Post (23 Jan. 1929) said that “Miss Wallis was well known in the district and engaged herself in social and philanthropic work on an extensive scale”. She is buried in the Carey plot at Church cemetery. Researched and contributed by Nottingham Women's History group www.nottinghamwomenshistory.org.uk. Sources: No Surrender! Women's Suffrage in Nottinghamshire, Rowena Edlin-White (Ed.) Nottingham Women's History Group ISBN:978-1-900074-31-5