Bristol Friend’s plaque for local suffragists
A Bristol Friend has played a key role in the installation of a blue plaque commemorating 'nonmilitant' suffrage campaigners
A Friend from Redland Meeting in Bristol has played a key role in the putting up of a blue plaque to commemorate the city’s ‘nonmilitant’ suffrage campaigners. Lucienne Boyce, of Redland Meeting, campaigned for the blue plaque to be installed at 3 West Mall, Clifton to mark the home of The Bristol and West of England Society for Women’s Suffrage. The plaque was unveiled on 15 December 2018 by Bristol West Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire who has spoken out previously about her Quaker heritage.
Historical novelist Lucienne Boyce, who has written a book about Bristol’s suffragist campaigners, told the Friend: ‘I’d been trying for three years to get a plaque. There’s a recognition that there’s a lack of blue plaques and statues for women in public space, so I did it partly to address that. I wanted an organisation rather than an individual, because it was such a collective movement.’
The Bristol society, which joined the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in 1896, contained many local Quaker women, including: the Priestman sisters, Anna Maria and Mary; Emily and Elizabeth Sturge; and Lilias Ashworth Hallett.
It was set up when Florence Davenport Hill invited a group of like-minded individuals to a meeting at her home at 3 West Mall (formerly 3 The Mall) in Clifton, on 24 January 1868. According to Lucienne Boyce, ‘although Florence was in her thirties, she needed her father’s permission to hold the meeting’.
The initiative cost £666 and was part-funded by a grant and crowdfunding through the Just Giving website. Lucienne Boyce said, as a pacifist, she also wanted to highlight the nonmilitant suffrage campaigners who did not feature so prominently in last year’s ‘Votes for Women’ centenary commemorations.
She said: ‘Everyone was so focused on the militancy of the Suffragettes, but this was inaccurate and distorted history. The nonmilitant movement was the longest running campaign, from the 1860s to 1928 and beyond. There were thousands of nonmilitant women campaigning, including lots of Quaker women. But I do get fed up hearing Quakers say they were on the forefront of the suffrage movement – they were not officially.
‘The Society of Friends’ response was woeful and not supportive at all. Meeting for Sufferings refused to discuss votes for women. The Society really dragged its feet.’
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