Assistant Teacher

24

Single

15 George St, Leamington Spa, CV31 1ET

WSPU

Complies

Mary Julia Bull was Secretary of the Leamington branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The branch seems to have loosely formed in 1910, but ceased to exist some time in 1913 and was largely supported from Birmingham. Mary was an assistant teacher and lived in Ashton House, George Street, Leamington, with her parents Ellen (55) and Ralph (59) a physician and surgeon. Her similarly unmarried sisters were also resident there in 1911: her elder sister Jane (25) and younger sister Isabel (22) also an assistant teacher. Mary seems to have been the flag-bearer for the WSPU in Leamington and presented a bouquet of flowers to its leader Mrs Pankhurst when she gave a talk at the town hall in 1909. It is not clear whether Mary’s sisters were also fully fledged WSPU members, though this is possible. At least one or two of them attended suffrage fetes and meetings with her, where they are generally referred to as the ’Misses Bull’. Certainly, all three 'Misses Bull’ traveled down to London to take part in the Women’s Coronation Procession in June 1911. The procession was organised by suffrage societies to rival the official Coronation procession of George V from which women were excluded. Approximately 40,000 women from around 40 women’s suffrage societies participated, and the procession was seven miles long. The Bull House in George Street, directly adjoins the Leamington Spa Mission building; a former Roman Catholic church built in 1820 with an impressive colonnaded façade, featuring a sculpture of St Peter. The congregation moved to a larger building in the 1860s and it thence became Leamington Youth Mission. Perhaps the Misses Bull and their father as a physician and surgeon, were involved in work at the mission? Could the close proximity of the poverty and destitution they witnessed among the young there have influenced their involvement with Votes for Women as a vehicle for social change? Contributor: Tara Morton. Research funded by Warwick University.