Housemaid & Waitress in hotel

18

Single

40 Little Mount Sion, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

WSPU

Complies

Ethel Violet Baldock (1893 to 1939) was born in Gravesend, Kent to Frances Elizabeth and Samuel Baldock. She was their fifth daughter, one of eight children (six girls and two boys). Ethel’s mother and one of her sisters (aged 7 years) died in 1899 from meningitis. Ethel’s father employed a housekeeper, Martha Nelson and she and her daughter, May, moved into the house. Samuel Baldock married Martha shortly after this. Ethel and her siblings did not get along with Martha or May. The Baldock girls all went into service at 12 years old and were found ‘good’ positions by their Aunt Jane (their father’s sister). In 1911 Ethel was living with one of her older sisters, Florence, and her husband but worked elsewhere in a Tunbridge Wells hotel as a house maid/waitress. Records have not yet been identified listing Ethel as a WSPU or other suffrage society member but in 1912 she participated in the WSPU window smashing campaign. Ethel was arrested with well-known suffragette, Violet Bland, for smashing the window of the Commercial Cable building at 1 Northumberland Avenue on 1st March 1912. They, along with nearly 200 other women arrested for window smashing were held in Holloway prison. These women were called ‘vitrifragists’, or ‘glass-breakers’ by a newspaper. Emmeline Pankhurst was among those arrested and imprisoned that night. Ethel and Violet had a hearing on 9 March and were charged and committed to trial on 26th March. At the trial, Ethel was released and Violet sentenced to 4 months’ imprisonment. Violet was sent to Aylesbury prison, she immediately went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. Violet stated in their trial that she had been provoked to participate in the window smashing because of MP Mr Hobhouse’s words. He had said that universal suffrage was not the majority view as women had not destroyed property like men had during the 1832 Reform Act riots. It is not clear what, if anything, Ethel said at their trial but it is possible that she had heard either first or second hand Mr Hobhouse’s speech as he had visited and spoken at a meeting in Tunbridge Wells in January 1912. It is unknown if Ethel was ever in touch with Violet again. She went on to marry Arthur Hodge in 1915 and had one son, Donald, in 1919. To learn more about Ethel’s story, see, Jennifer Godfrey, Suffragettes of Kent, (Pen & Sword Ltd, 2019). Researched & contributed by Jennifer Godfrey.