None known

35

Married

49 Rotherwick Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London

WFL

Resists

Bessie Ingman, known as Mrs Drysdale, was the ‘daughter-in-law’ of Dr Alice (Drysdale) Vickery and, like Alice, moved from constitutional to militant campaigning. On 14 February 1907, as a member of the WSPU National Executive Committee, she was one of 52 women arrested during a march to the House of Commons and spent 21 days in Holloway. In November of that year, she became a member of the first NEC of the breakaway WFL. In 1908 Bessie was a WFL delegate at the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance Congress in Amsterdam; Charles Drysdale represented the MLWS. The involvement of the whole family in the campaign was demonstrated in the June 1908 procession to Hyde Park, organised by the WSPU: ‘in the WFL contingent, secretary Edith How Martyn walked with a pretty little girl, Eva Drysdale, whose father marched with the MLWS, whose mother was with the prisoners, and whose grandmother took her place with the veterans.’ (The Vote 25 June 1910) Bessie wrote across her page in the 1911 Census: ‘As the Government refuses me a vote and as I am not therefore recognised as a citizen, I refuse to perform the duties of one in giving the information required by the Government’, signing with her name as a member of the WFL. She represented the WFL at the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance Congress in Stockholm that summer, reporting on it to The Vote, acknowledging some material supplied by Margery Corbett Ashby. At this time Bessie, Charles and Eva lived at 49 Rotherwick Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb. Alice lived at 47 and a local WFL branch was formed here, with Bessie as secretary. Photographs in the Schwimmer/Lloyd Collection in New York Public Library show that on 7 October 1911 Bessie and Charles took part in a procession to Holloway Gaol to protest against the imprisonment of Clemence Housman, for non-payment of rates. In one photograph Bessie is identified as the tall figure left of centre; on the right is Christabel Pankhurst. It is likely that Charles took and inscribed the photographs showing Bessie. He himself appears in another photograph, probably taken by Bessie, as the man on the right carrying a banner, immediately in front of Clemence Housman herself. Bessie remained on the WFL NEC until April 1912, when she and several other prominent members, including Edith How Martyn, announced that they had left to campaign independently. It was at this time, and presumably for Eva’s health, that the Drysdales acquired 13 acres at Heathfield, East Sussex, where they built a house, Cherry Croft, and Bessie attempted to establish a women’s co-operative fruit and chicken smallholding. After Eva’s death in 1914 this enterprise was abandoned and Bessie, during the War and under the auspices of the Malthusian League, published a series of leaflets emphasizing the need to reduce the birth-rate at a time of such shortages. After the War, she travelled the country, arranging meetings held by the American birth control campaigner, Mary Sanger, and promoting Ministry of Health birth control information. Sources: Frances Stenlake, 'Heathfield Story Discovered in New York Public Library' Sussex Family Historian, June 2014; LSE WL 9/01/00/90 HO-45-24665 arrest list; Women’s Franchise; The Vote; Votes for Women; The Woman’s Leader; The Times; Kent and Sussex Courier. Contributed by Frances Stenlake, Independent researcher & writer.