Journalist

23

Single

185 King’s Road, Camden Town (now St Pancras Way) London.

WFL

Evades (absent abroad see biog)

Edith Mary Watson (nee Wall) was born in 1888. To say that Edith did not have a good start in life is no exaggeration. She was born in the Hackney Union Workhouse the illegitimate daughter of Martha Wall, a domestic servant and single mother. Edith led an impressive life by any standards, becoming the first policewoman to wear a uniform, a campaigning journalist, a captain in the Salvation Army, a suffragist, Secretary of a pressure group on divorce law reform, and an early campaigner against female genital mutilation. Her mother Martha married Arthur Willett, and the family, including 3 stepsisters, moved to Marylebone. The family were Salvation Army members. Edith, thanks to the help of the wealthy mother of her Sunday School teacher, went to a good girl’s school, Hampden Gurney. Edith, while travelling in South Africa as a children’s nurse, decided to join the Salvation Army despite not being able to afford the uniform. It was then she suffered a sexual attack, and was nearly raped, by a fellow officer. This experience motivated her later work as a journalist and a campaign for female police officers and court officials to provide support to women. In 1910 she returned to London and became involved in the suffrage campaign with the Women’s Freedom League. She took part in the protest on the river Thames in 1913 where campaigners sailed past the Houses of Parliament singing protest songs. Edith was imprisoned in 1914 for chaining herself to the doors of Marylebone Magistrates’ court and began writing a suffrage column for the Daily Herald which by the 1930s, was the bestselling daily newspaper worldwide (it was Labour supporting and the precursor to The Sun before it was bought by Rupert Murdoch). Edith was also court correspondent for The Vote, the Women’s Freedom League’s newspaper. She wrote a series of pieces arguing against the injustices of a male dominated legal system. For example, comparing the lenient sentences handed down for domestic violence, sexual harassment, and abuse, contrasted to crimes against property. This was in a column ironically titled ‘the Protected Sex’. She met her future husband Ernest Watson around this time, and defying convention, they lived together before marriage. She spent some time in Algiers in 1911 and was likely there when the 1911 census was taken so appears to have been absent rather than evading. However, before she left that year, following an argument with Ernest, she was living with him in his ‘old room at his lodgings in Camden Town’ at 185 King’s Road, which is now St Pancras Way. As her last known location in 1911 this is where she is approximately located on the map. She and Ernest reconciled on her return, and they married in 1912. The couple had a son in 1919 but divorced a few years later. She continued to have live in relationships post-divorce. Edith wrote an autobiography which remains unpublished accessible via the Women’s Library (see sources). In it she describes how female journalists were not allowed in court when cases of an indecent nature were being heard. She knew women and girls were not believed, and they needed safeguarding as much as possible. She stated how “...Again and again, I heard a girl lose her case because she had not screamed…no man there seemed to understand why she had not done so if her story were true…why didn’t you scream? Because you needed that breath to fight…you are ashamed and embarrassed and want to abolish the very memory of it”. Edith was clearly drawing on her own experience. From 1914-1916 she served in the Women’s Volunteer Police Service (WVP) which she founded with (see) Constance Antonia ‘Nina’ Boyle (WFL). The service carried out patrols to assist women and children, and to counteract the restrictions placed on women by Victorian morality campaigners. Edith and Nina strongly believed women should have rights to public space. However, the WVP were increasingly used to control the behaviour of women (particularly working-class women) which was contrary to the original aims. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Boyle and Watson left. There were up to 5,000 women volunteers in the early days but by 1922 they were almost non-existent. The moral and social control they were being asked to enforce caused division amongst them and alienated the women they were supposed to be protecting. It wasn’t until 1923 that women police officers were officially sanctioned and given powers of arrest. Edith became an active member of the Independent Labour Party in the 1920s. She became friends with Fenner Brockway (later Lord Brockway, MP, and chairman and General Secretary of the Independent Labour Party) and his first wife Lila. The couple fostered Edith’s son for a while. Among her other exploits, Edith disguised herself as a nurse to obtain information for a campaign to improve conditions in mental hospitals; she criticised the Marriage Guidance Council for being too middle class; led a pressure group for divorce reform; and publicised the practice of Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya. She was an active campaigner for women most of her life, dying in a nursing home in Worthing in 1966. Sources: Edith Watson Papers & autobiography, ‘Travelling Hopefully - the autobiography of a Nobody’ accessible at the Women’s Library, LSE; Edith Watson entry Oxford DNB. Contributed by Susan Doe, Hackney Historian (with a particular interest in women’s history).