Writer

47

Married

Far End, Sea Lane, East Preston, Littlehampton

MLWS

Evades

Author and dramatist Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) was associated with several suffrage societies. In 1903 he married Edith Ayrton who was also active in the suffrage movement. In 1906 he told Edith Palliser, secretary of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, that he was too busy to address suffrage meetings. In December 1907, Israel spoke at the first big public meeting held by the MLWS; he later became one of its Vice-Presidents. On 21 June 1908, the Zangwills took part in the WSPU’s ‘Women’s Sunday’ procession to Hyde Park, riding in a four-horse coach with HG Wells, Thomas Hardy, and others. Later that year Zangwill criticised certain militant methods, and in February 1909 he was the principal speaker at an Exeter Hall meeting organised by non-militant societies. In May 1909 he addressed an NUWSS meeting in Cambridge; the following month he spoke for the WSPU in London. By the end of the year, he was supporting the WFL; a full-page profile in its paper Vote described him as ‘witty, ironic and brilliant’. In April 1911, the Zangwills joined the organised boycott of the census choosing to evade. Their servants were recorded and the Zangwills left a signed note on the census (see image) stating ‘The rest of the household is not entered as we feel that until women have the political rights of citizens, they should not perform the duties of citizens’. In June, Zangwill was in the writers’ contingent of the WSPU Coronation procession and on the platform at its Albert Hall finale. The Actresses’ Franchise League, the International Women’s Suffrage Club, and the Men’s International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage were among other organisations addressed by him. In November 1912 he expressed support for the new Jewish League for Women’s Suffrage, and by 1913 was speaking for the Women’s Tax Resistance League. In May 1913 Zangwill wound up an Oxford Union debate at which a women’s suffrage resolution was carried for the first time. He was involved in protests at this time against force feeding - of Hugh Franklin of the Men’s Political Union as well as of women prisoners – and the Cat and Mouse Act. In Sussex as elsewhere, Zangwill supported both constitutional and militant suffrage societies. In May 1911 he addressed a meeting of the Worthing Women’s Franchise Society presided over by (see) Lady Maud Parry; in February 1914 a meeting of the Littlehampton Women’s Suffrage Society, chaired by Alys Russell. In December 1912 WSPU organiser (see) Greta Allen reported two meetings in Chichester addressed by Zangwill and Alice Abadam, one disrupted by ‘hooligans.’ In February 1913 Zangwill became involved in a scuffle with Worthing hooligans shouting down his wife and other WSPU speakers at the Kursaal. When the United Suffragists was formed early in 1914, Israel and Edith Zangwill became Vice-Presidents, and as a United Suffragists speaker 1915 Zangwill demanded that the ‘Women’s Voice’ be heard in any Peace Settlement. Zangwill’s most memorable speeches were published as pamphlets by the Woman’s Press. Several were delivered at the Albert Hall on behalf of either the WSPU or the NUWSS, and Zangwill attributed the success of one speech, at a WSPU meeting in Nov 1910, to Miss Rosa Leo, voice coach to WSPU speakers: ‘Thanks to your teachings I spoke for nearly an hour at the Albert Hall without weariness – at least to myself – while my voice carried to every part of the hall’. Rosa Leo used this endorsement for months to come in her suffrage press advertisements. Sources: Women’s Library (WL 9/01/0118) letter 10 April 1906 to Miss Edith Palliser; Pall Mall Gazette; Cambridge Independent Press; Times; Common Cause; Suffragette; Vote; Votes for Women; Women’s Franchise; Eastbourne Gazette; West Sussex Gazette; Worthing Gazette; Jewish Chronicle. Contributed by: Frances Stenlake, Independent Writer & Researcher.