41

Single

Cringle Brook, 4 Park Crescent, Victoria Park, Manchester

NUWSS

Evades

Born into a wealthy Irish family on 22 May 1870, Eva Gore Booth had an early awakening to her social conscience, witnessing the Irish famine of 1879. She was deeply moved by the experience of tenants coming to her home and begging for help, and she saw her mother’s efforts to help by setting up a school for women to learn needlework, to supplement their incomes and achieve financial independence. After extensive travel with her father during the 1890’s, Eva spent time in Italy – in part to recuperate from the respiratory illness she was beginning to endure. There she began writing poetry and in 1896, met the love of her life, Esther Roper. Eva’s poetry focused in Irish folklore, but also on love and sexuality, and she was one of the only women then writing about love between women. After meeting Esther, Eva moved to live with her in Manchester where she was an active, vociferous but non-violent campaigner for women’s labour rights from 1899 to 1913. Eva believed that women’s suffrage was crucial to gaining fair and equal treatment in the workplace, and in 1904, resigned from the Manchester & Salford Women’s Trade Union Council when they decided not to include the vote among their political demands for women. Eva and Sarah Dickinson set up the Manchester & Salford Women’s Trade Union and Labour Council to continue the campaign for the vote, putting forward parliamentary candidates in the 1906 and 1909 general elections. From 1906 onwards, Eva continued to campaign for women’s rights at work, and the vote. She wrote papers, letters and articles and spoke frequently at meetings and conferences, including Labour Party Conferences and the Fabian Society. In November 1911, she was a member of the delegation representing working women of the north of England who called upon Lloyd George not to drop the Conciliation Bill. Determined to learn everything she could about the conditions of women, Eva spent a brief period in 1911 working as a ‘pit brow lass’ (the women who moved the coal above ground). In Manchester, Eva and Esther lived together first in a small house in Heald Place, in Rusholme. In 1906, they moved to the leafier Victoria Park area – into a house called Cringle Brook (4 Park Crescent). This house is now part of The Victoria Park hotel. The 1901 census records the Heald Place as ‘jointly occupied’ and notes both women to be ‘secretaries’ of campaigning organisations. In 1911, both women appear to have evaded the census – the record for 4 Park Crescent is signed by Elizabeth Parker (visitor) ‘for Esther Roper, the occupier’ and there is no other record of Eva or Esther. The 1911 census boycott offered an opportunity for peaceful campaigners as well as 'suffragettes' to engage in an act of passive resistance although uptake among NUWSS members seems to have been scarce. Eva and Esther may have stayed at the 'mass evasion' sleepover going on at Denison House, just around the corner from their home in Park Crescent, and organized by (see) WSPU member Jessie Stephenson. In 1913, Eva and Esther moved from Manchester to Hampstead in London, to provide a healthier atmosphere for Eva, who continued to suffer from respiratory problems. During the war, both women became involved in welfare work and in the peace campaign. Eva died from intestinal cancer in 1926, and is buried in Hampstead with Esther. Eva's sister Constance, later became Countess Markievicz, Irish nationalist, suffragist, and the first woman elected to the British House of Commons. Sources: Sonia Tiernan, Eva Gore-Booth: An Image of Such Politics (Manchester, 2012); Emma Baldwin, Biography of Eva Gore Booth (Poemanalysis.com); Slaters' Manchester , Salford & Suburban Directory' 1909 p 955 and 1911 (Pt1) p 538 (University of Leicester, Special Collections online). Contributed by Evelyn Cook, Independent Researcher.