None given

45

Married

'Hazeldene', Sylvan Way, Bognor Regis

WSPU

Evades

Josephine Gonne was born in Natal in South Africa in 1866. By 1894 she had married Capt. Charles Melvill Gonne of the Royal Artillery and given birth to a son in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. By 1901, the family had moved to Kent where Josephine was in a partnership with an electrical engineer’s business in Canterbury, although this was dissolved in 1906. The couple were active in the suffrage movement from at least 1910 (see separate entry for Charles Gonne). Their son Vere Carol Melvill Gonne (1894-1961) was also a suffrage supporter who donated to the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement. In 1911, Josephine wrote to the Common Cause newspaper defending the policy of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and its interruption of a Liberal meeting at Bath. She donated to WSPU campaigns several times in the following years and also belonged to the Women’s Tax Resistance League (WTRL) which campaigned under the slogan ‘No Vote, No Tax’. During early 1911, Charles was on the electoral register in London and the couple were active in the WSPU branch in the King’s Road, Chelsea. No record has been found of Charles, Josephine, or their son in the census of April 1911, so it is possible that they evaded it as per WSPU and WTRL policy. By the autumn, they had moved to 'Hazeldene' Sylvan Way, Bognor Regis, West Sussex (the location is approximated on the map) where Josephine hosted an “At Home” for a local suffrage society that included militant and non-militant campaigners and at which her husband and Evelyn Sharp spoke. Perhaps the most dramatic moment in Josephine’s campaigning came when Charles was imprisoned in December 1913 for refusing to pay taxes on her behalf. ‘The Vote’ newspaper complimented Josephine on her “plucky fight” in support of her husband. She sent a telegram to the King giving the facts of the case but was told to submit her petition to the monarch via the Home Secretary. She declined this “doubtful privilege”, asking to present it through a military officer instead. Fortunately, Charles was released within 48 hours and Vere made a public statement supporting him. Josephine died four years later in February 1917, aged around fifty. In her will she left over £2000 to her husband (worth approx. £150,000 today). By then Vere had joined the Royal Garrison Artillery in line with his family’s military tradition, eventually becoming an acting major. Contributed by art historian, Dr Diana Wilkins with additional information provided by Frances Stenlake and Tara Morton.