Artist

44

Single

103 Hampstead Way, London

ASL & NUWSS

Complies

Charlotte Charlton (sometimes known as Charlotte Hedley-Charlton) was born in 1866 and had seven siblings. Her mother and father, who was a coal merchant, were evidently prosperous in Charlotte’s younger years employing a governess and three servants. However, by the mid-1870s they had fallen on harder times and her father’s business was declared bankrupt. Consequently, it was important Charlotte found work and by 1891 she was teaching art at a boarding school in Saltburn, north Yorkshire. She later moved to London where between 1898-1910 she lived with suffragette Ethel Layton who in 1911 appeared in court with Marion Dunlop Wallace, for breaking two panes of glass at the Home Office. In 1911, Charlotte was lodging at 103 Hampstead Way and did not take part in the census boycott. She described herself as an ‘artist illustrator etc…magazines…etc…’ It was likely for career purposes that she signed her artwork ‘C. Hedley Charlton’ (Hedley being her father’s middle name) obscuring her gender and thus making her work more palatable to commissioning editors who were invariably men. By then, she was already a member and artist for the Artists Suffrage League formed in 1907, closely aligned with the law abiding NUWSS. Charlotte contributed to several jointly produced suffrage art works including illustrations for Cicely Hamilton’s ‘Beware! A Warning to Young Suffragists’ published in 1908 and the 'ABC of Politics for Women Politicians’ in 1909. She also produced individual post card designs for the ASL during these years including ‘The Cry of the Children’ and ‘I Pray for all Grown Ups’ available to view at The Women’s Library, LSE, London. The ASL archive there also holds several draft sketches for postcards designed by Charlotte. Whether she produced further suffrage designs for the ASL after 1909 is uncertain but she continued to independently advertise suffrage cards and calendars in the NUWSS newspaper The Common Cause. One design she submitted to the NUWSS during the First World War was considered too ‘wicked’ by them. In it three children are peering over a wall with the message: ‘When I an big I’ll buy a gun, And so will Babs & Sue. We’ll dead those Germans…every one…We’ll dead the Kaiser too’. Charlotte spent her last years living in Brighton close to one of her sisters. She died in 1945. Sources: Thanks to Elizabeth Crawford ‘Art & Suffrage: A Biographical Dictionary of Suffrage Artists’ (2018); The Women’s Library, LSE, London (ASL collection); The National Archives.