None given

29

Single

Chilcompton, Somerset

WSPU

Complies

Helen was born in Co Durham the eldest child of Rev Alan Hunter Watts who became the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Lenton in 1893. The family lived at Lenton Vicarage now Unity House, 35 Church Street. She had seven younger siblings and was particularly close to her brother Nevile with whom she published 'Poems by a Brother and Sister' in 1906. As a girl Helen contributed to The Girl's Realm magazine an enlightened periodical supporting women's education and entry into the professions although where Helen herself was educated it unclear. Her parents were known supporters of the East Midlands Federation of the NUWSS and some suffrage meetings were held in the church hall. Helen seems to have attended various suffrage meetings before joining the city branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1907 after hearing Christabel Pankhurst speak at a volatile meeting in Nottingham mechanics on 2nd December that year. The speakers there were unable to make themselves heard and so a follow-up meeting was held a week later, on the 9th of December and after this Helen joined the WSPU. On the 24th of February 1909, she joined a protest in London and was arrested for willful obstruction. At her appearance at Bow Street Police Court, she refused to be bound over and was sentenced to one month in jail. She wrote to her parents to tell them about her arrest and arranged that her sisters, Alice and Ethel, would receive weekly copies of the WSPU’s 'Votes for Women' newspaper. On release, she was greeted at Nottingham station by many local suffragettes and a celebration supper was held at Morley's cafe on Wheeler Gate. On the 27th of July 1909, the WSPU attempted to disrupt a meeting at the Albert Hall in Nottingham and were ejected; so held a separate meeting in the Market Place where Helen and several others were arrested but released without charge. On the 4th of September along with Mary Rawson and (see) Nelly Crocker - the local WSPU paid organiser- she attended a meeting in Leicester where Winston Churchill was speaking. This time Helen was charged with 'disorderly conduct' and in Leicester jail went on hunger strike for 90 hours. During that time, she was threatened with force feeding, but this did not happen. She did however, smash two windowpanes in her cell to let in the fresh air. Helen was released after 5 days and spoke about her experiences at Morley's cafe on the 17th of September, remarking, ‘Votes for Women’ will not be won by drawing-room chatter’. She was awarded the Holloway prison medal and the Hunger strike medal and was much in demand as a speaker; there are notes of several of her speeches in the Nottingham archives. Helen was arrested again but does not appear to have been involved with militancy after 1910. By March 1911 was at Eagle House, Batheaston where the (see) Blathwayt family welcomed recovering suffragettes. On the 17th of March she planted a juniper tree in the Suffragettes wood there (see image). By the 2nd of April 1911 - census night - she was boarding at the home of her brother Nevile in Chilcompton, Somerset, where she complied with the census. We are not certain where the house was in Chilcompton, so have temporarily placed it at a generic location in the town. If anyone local can discern the name of the house from the census record and identify its precise location, please contact the Mapping Women's Suffrage project. By 1912, Helen was training as a nurse at the Royal National Hospital in Bath and working with the Women’s Freedom League by 1914. Later, she worked as a Civil servant in the Ministry of Pensions. After her retirement she lived in Hassocks in Sussex where she was involved with the Unitarian church. On the 18th of May 1962, she gave an interview in Bath where she had come to see the remains of the Suffragette’s Wood. She said that she had carried a sprig of the juniper tree she planted there in her purse since. In October 1965, she went to Canada to visit her sister Ethel, but ill health forced her to return to Somerset where she died aged 91. She is buried in St Vigor's churchyard at Stratton-on-the-Fosse. In the 1970s, an unaccompanied trunk arrived from Canada at Bristol Docks and remained unclaimed there for several years. Eventually, a dock worker opened it and it was found to contain Helen's letters and suffragette memorabilia. Fortunately, this was shown to a local teacher who made copies and sent these to Nottinghamshire archives - without which we would know a great deal less. The Nottingham Women’s History Group planted a Juniper tree in 2017 and in 2019 installed a commemorative plaque to Helen in the Arboretum. Sources: Helen Kirkpatrick watts Suffragette a Piecemeal Pamphlet by Rowena Edlin White Feb 2016 No Surrender: Women's Suffrage in Nottinghamshire NWHG; Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide (London, 1999). Contributed by Nottingham Women's History group www.nottinghamwomenshistory.org.uk.