None given

77

Widow

Buxton House, 23 Buxton Road, Congleton, Cheshire

WSPU

Complies

Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy (1833-1918) was born in Manchester. Her mother died when she was very young and her father, a Methodist Minister (who remarried to Elizabeth’s stepmother Mary Wolstenholme) also died when Elizabeth was around 10 years old. An orphan, she attended the Moravian school at Fulneck near Leeds, until the age of 16. Her desire to attend the newly founded Bedford College was quashed by her guardians, so she continued her education unassisted and worked as a governess. Later, using her inheritance, she opened a private girls' boarding school in Boothstown, and in May 1867, moved it to Congleton, Cheshire. One of her pupils was later suffragette Frances Rowe. Perhaps because of her own experiences, Elizabeth was committed to improving access and standards of education for women and girls. She joined the College of Preceptors in 1862, meeting Emily Davies, to campaign on this issue. In 1865, she founded the Manchester Schoolmistresses Association and in 1867 established the North of England Council for Promoting the Education of Women with Mrs Butler and Miss Clough. Their work led to the University Extension Movement and the delivery of lectures for women students in Cambridge, facilitating the foundation of Newnham College. Elizabeth Wolstenholme was an active campaigner for women's suffrage for more than 50 years. In 1865, she was honorary secretary and founder of the Manchester Committee for the Enfranchisement of Women with the purpose of collecting signatures for the first petition in support of women's enfranchisement in 1866. In 1868, she became the secretary of the Married Women's Property Committee and with Lydia Becker and Josephine Butler she founded, and became honorary secretary of, the Committee for Amending the Law in Points Injurious to Women. She gave up her school in 1871 and moved to London to work for the women's movement, lobbying Parliament regarding laws detrimental to women. Around this time, she started a free union with Ben Elmy. They shared secular values and lived together without benefit of marriage until 1874, when Elizabeth became pregnant. They decided to marry in a civil ceremony due to social pressure as their situation was considered scandalous. It threatened Elizabeth’s role in the suffrage movement and regardless of relenting to marry, she had to resign her position on the Married Women's Property Committee. The couple had a son Francis (or Frank). Ben Elmy died in 1906. In 1877, the women's suffrage campaign was centralised as the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and in 1889, Elizabeth was a founding member (with Harriet McIlquham and Alice Cliff Scatcherd) of the Women's Franchise League, which she left to found the Women's Emancipation Union in 1891. She pressed the NUWSS to revitalize its campaign in the early twentieth century, offering help and services, but was frustrated by the lack of response. In 1903, Elizabeth was invited onto the executive committee of the WSPU. Now 70 years of age, she expressed a refreshed excitement about this “new wave” in the movement. She was supportive of militant action and took part in the WSPU Hyde Park rally in 1908, leading the ‘North country’ procession on the Euston Road with Mrs Pankhurst and ‘Lancashire lasses’ (see images). She took to a balcony for the Women’s Coronation Procession, on the 17th of June 1911 where a banner described her as ‘England’s Oldest Militant Suffragette’ (see images). Despite belonging to the WSPU at the time, Elizabeth complied with the government’s 1911 census rather than boycotting it, so we find her at home in Buglawton, Congleton, with her son. In 1912, she resigned from WSPU after her opinion of militancy changed, now feeling the moment was right for using constitutional methods once more. She was the only WSPU member to sign the public letter of protest against militancy that appeared in The Times on 23 July 1912. In 1913, Elizabeth became vice-president of the Tax Resistance League and gave her support to the Lancashire and Cheshire Textile and other Workers' Representation Committee headed by Esther Roper. Elizabeth died on 12 March 1918 in Manchester, sadly just six days after the Representation of the People Act received the royal assent granting the vote to some women. Despite her central role in campaigning for female suffrage and women’s rights throughout the 19th and early 20th century, her role was overlooked in suffrage histories for many years. This may have been a legacy of the scandal associated with her private life. Sources: Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1966-1928 (London: 1999); Susan Kingsley Kent, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914 (1987); Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality 1885-1914 (1995); Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census (Manchester: 2014). Contributed by Oihane Etayo (Warwick University) & Tara Morton