Book charts Bexhill's suffragette movement

But, as a new book reveals, campaigners a century ago were not shy of indulging in direct action themselves.

They set light to a bungalow in Cooden'¦

When newly-extended Bexhill Museum re-opens for the 2010 season on Tuesday, February 2 its ongoing Awards For All-funded Quest For Equality exhibition devoted to the campaign for women's suffrage will be complemented by a companion volume published under the museum's own imprint.

Bexhill's Suffragettes tells the story of the local campaign through the pages of the town's rival papers - the Observer and the Chronicle, which the Observer later absorbed.

What museum curator Julian Porter and volunteers Claire Eden and Yvonne Cleland found in researching the papers' bound files for 1912-1914 was a revelation to them.

Julian says: "When we got the bound copies of the Observer and Chronicle in 2008 we realised that there was an immense wealth of information to which we previously had no direct access..

"We thought the Suffragette movement would be a good subject if we got original material."

A book to accompany the exhibition was always part of the plan. But the trio had no idea at the start what they would discover.

"We wanted to trace what the suffragettes were doing in the town.

"Contemporary newspaper reports show that there was a lot more activity locally than we had suspected."

Bexhill had a direct link to the core of the movement. When Emily Wilding Davison threw herself at the King's horse at the 1913 Derby she became the movement's martyr.

Principal male mourner at her funeral was a Bexhillian; her half-brother, Captain Henry Davison, of Terminus Avenue.

The movement had swiftly divided into two wings. The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies sought by constitutional means to persuade Parliament to give women the vote.

Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union believed in direct action.

In Hastings, militants burned the home of the town's MP Arthur Du Cross. In Bexhill they set fire to a bungalow being built on the De La Warr Estate at Cooden, left a fake bomb in Beaconsfield Road sub-post office and threatened to fire-bomb churches -St Stephen's was closed as a precaution, except for services.

Julian Porter says of the stormy local campaign: "It was all very dramatic. But, in a modern context of the threat of terrorism, it is even more interesting.

"What comes across strongly is that there was not a strong reaction. The response was very measured. People took it seriously. But many thought they were just pranks or people playing at threats.

"They had a very level-headed Edwardian approach to it.

"The thing I found very interesting is that there was very little debate about women having the vote or not.

"The debate was about whether it was right to adopt militant tactics."

Local coverage also illustrates the rivalry between the town's papers.

The Observer was present when the speaker was stoned. It carried an eye-witness account plus picture.

The Chronicle missed the meeting and had to rely on the accounts of others. But it did a follow-up with a gentleman said by the Observer to have sided with stone-throwing youths.

Significantly, the museum's researchers found three differing stories.

The national movement suspended its activities during the First World War. Women gained the right to vote, having shown their mettle in supporting the war effort.

Julian Porter says: "The ironic thing is that most men had not had the vote for long. That only came as a result of late Victorian reform. Before that the only people who could vote were land-owning men."

Quest For Equality: Bexhill's Suffragettes will be the subject of a book-launch after the museum re-opens. The price of the 152-page volume has yet to be announced.

The researchers' findings will be available as an education pack. Quest For Equality will run until Easter when the museum exhibition will be replaced by Toys And Childhood.

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