Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

Was your granny a suffragette?

37 replies

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 14/04/2011 10:07

Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 had a rare moment of non-shitness yesterday, discussing the suffragettes and asking for calls from people whose relatives had been involved in the movement.

(Here - fast forward to about 1 hour 10 minutes in)

It was incredibly moving, and so wonderful to hear these brave women being discussed on national radio, with only the faintest of murmurings from the whiny squad.

Being Radio 2, the music is still dreadful though, sorry :o Although I do like the song they featured about the suffragettes. (Over the montage here)

OP posts:
granhands · 14/04/2011 11:26

No, but she was the first person (not woman, but person) in our family to go to university. She studied bottany and was the only woman on her course.

She was amazing and had a rich life full of funny stories, she had a wonky finger and told me that it happened when she fell out of a jeep when she was going out with a GI.

I really miss her, she pracitcally raised me from childhood and always had faith in me and believed I could do anything I put my mind to.

Original poster
ElephantsAndMiasmas · 14/04/2011 12:10

Wow granhands (if they're her hands they should stand you in good stead - wonky finger and all!) she sounds amazing. My grandma wasn't a suffragette (too young), but she did daringly wear trousers, and divorce her husband for being an arse back when it Wasn't Done.

I am so proud of previous generations of women who broke out of what was expected of them, they made it easier for us all today, and I like to think that the things we are doing now are making the world better for the girls and women of the future

OP posts:
MoChan · 14/04/2011 13:05

My grandmother was too young to be a suffragette also. She became a welder, though, and found herself in a 'man's world', where she got death threats and was paid significantly less than her counterparts. Demanded equal pay, got it in the end, and was attacked by fellow workers, but stood her ground. Proud of that.

iskra · 14/04/2011 13:07

My grannies weren't suffragettes either (too young). My paternal granny divorced my grandfather when she was 60 - she lost all their mutual friends - & went straight out to work. She's now 90 & still working 2 days a week. My grandfather wouldn't let her work when they were married.

My great grandmother was a suffragette (not a postbox burning one, the other kind, can't remember what the non-radical organisation was) & the first female academic at a certain university. She later went into the family planning movement. She campaigned for the right of married teachers to continue working but did not describe herself as a feminist.

My great-great grandmother was also a suffragette, & big into the Rational Dress Movement. Apparently they had to have her husband's cousin move in because she was never at home to do her wifely duties... She wrote an academic text on how the rights of women had been wittled away over the centuries.

RustyBear · 14/04/2011 13:08

I don't think my gran was a suffragette, but she did refuse to be included in the 1911 census because women didn't have the vote - my Dad was 11 months old at the time, he's now 101 and is on two censuses 100 years apart.

sethstarkaddersmackerel · 14/04/2011 13:33

Mine wasn't, she was a Young Conservative. But she was the first girl in the Rotherham district to have an Eton crop, will that do?

harpsichordcarrier · 14/04/2011 13:38

YES! and also one of the first communists in this country (she was heavily politicised by the terrible waste of the Great War and all the slaughtered young men and the callousness of the 'ruling' classes. She was very proud of her membership card and was arrested for turning a bus over in the General Strike protesting at the conditions for the working classes. She was a bus conductress at the time.
There was even a file on her (and my grandad) in the Secret Service/M15 whatever - I found this out when I was positively vetted for a job about 20 years ago.

ThingOne · 14/04/2011 13:46

My great grandmother was a suffragette. She was an elected alderman/something-like-a-councillor, the first woman in her region. All three of her girls went to university. My grandma was a doctor who lost her job when she got married in the early thirties, although she then worked through most of WWII and a lot of the time after that.

Mine were absolutely not communists. Perish the thought! They were a sort of Scottish Tory. I keep meaning to research it.

I'm enormously proud of them. When my gma was old, and slowly (but comfortably) dying in hospital, my mum and I took great pleasure in helping her cast her last vote in the internal BMA elections. She cast all her votes for women.

TeiTetua · 14/04/2011 14:04

My dad told me that his mother was "an awful old working-class Tory" who thought it was terrible that women got the vote, and even worse that they demanded the vote, and she'd grumble any time she saw a woman wearing trousers.

We have to be honest about history. Not everyone was on the right side.

iskra · 14/04/2011 14:08

oh absolutely TeiTetua - my father's family were all fairly conservative & South African (read: racist, in this case) to boot. None of them were suffragettes.

I suppose people with stories to tell are more likely to post on this thread though.

Original poster
ElephantsAndMiasmas · 14/04/2011 14:14

Oh yeah it's great to hear about how all our grandmothers reacted to these issues - and sometimes it's interesting how things change around within families over time :)

Iskra - a suffragist?

Harpsichord - your gran sounds FASCINATING! I am picturing her in conductress uniform tipping the bus over :)

OP posts:
garlicbutter · 14/04/2011 14:37

My posher grandmother (granma) was. The other was an under-kitchen-maid, literally sleeping in the fireplace like Cinderella, and had more pressing matters on her mind than the vote. Granma & Granpa were both activitist for social change and did quite a bit to improve inclusivity in education. Granma didn't throw herself in front of horses (wasn't in London, for a start) but she did leaflet, speak at meetings and form protests :)

Unfortunately war, god and Granpa's dubious fidelity had knocked the stuffing out of her by the time I was old enough to appreciate her mind.

TeiTetua · 14/04/2011 15:03

If anyone wants a reminder about militant versus moderate feminists of 100 years ago, look up Millicent Fawcett.

msbuggywinkle · 14/04/2011 15:31

My granny was a 50's housewife. She was on her way to studying architecture when she met my Granddad and that was the end of that Sad

My great grandmother was a spy in France during WWII though, she had some amazing stories to tell!

garlicbutter · 14/04/2011 15:33

Oh, WOW!!! [vastly impressed emoticon]

thomasbodley · 14/04/2011 15:40

A few generations back, yes. I'm going to out myself here if I'm not careful, but have close relations who are direct descendants of the Pankhurst sisters.

My paternal grandparents also marched with Gandhi in Gujurat which was absolutely not the done thing for a British family in India in the 1920s.

I'm doing nothing to live up to my ancestors, sadly.

Prunnhilda · 14/04/2011 15:41

My grandmother was too poor and too isolated (way up in N Scotland) to be a suffragette.
She is a tough-as-old-boots, live-and-let-live sort of woman and I love her dearly, but I won't forget how she tried to teach me, aged 10, the right way to wring a cloth. Grin Because girls needed to be taught these things.
She ran after her menfolk and that was the way it was.
She lives alone with a mountain of books and her Wii Fit now. I suspect she's come round a bit to feminism, now she's got a taste of the freedom that all the fuss is about!

EngelbertFustianMcSlinkydog · 14/04/2011 18:12

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

msrisotto · 14/04/2011 19:47

My gran will have been too young to be a suffragette but she was a nurse in the war and she went travelling abroad on her own which was apparently unheard of.

msrisotto · 14/04/2011 19:49

I can't help but feel that she suffered for it though, abusive husband who tried to get her committed when the marriage broke down. :(

Hulababy · 14/04/2011 19:50

Both my nanas are too young to have been suffragettes.

hester · 14/04/2011 19:51

My grandmother was too young to be a suffragette, but my great-grandmother was one of the first women to qualify as a lawyer (in Germany). Her cousin was a communist and a doctor who set up an abortion clinic. Not a great idea in 30s Germany, especially as they were Jewish, so she went to the Soviet Union (and met a sticky end, obviously).

My mum used to buy me Spare Rib. I definitely inherited my feminism.

umf · 14/04/2011 20:06

Grandmothers way too young.

Great-grandmother too busy bringing up 3 children in a cottage without piped water or electricity. And that's the 1930s, not the previous century.

But she put her foot down and insisted that her husband let their daughter take up her grammar school place, despite the uniform costs. She threatened to leave him, which was pretty extreme in those days.

Three generations later, I like to think she'd be pleased to know that her support for education eventually enabled both her granddaughter and great-granddaughter to complete doctorates.

aliceliddell · 15/04/2011 17:40

One grandmother thought Emmeline Pankhurst (who she saw) was unladylike. So, no suffragettes. But my mother was a card-carrying Trotskyite and spent her last days reading Trotsky's works. Her ashes were scattered at Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery.

nulgirl · 15/04/2011 17:49

My granny who is now 85 did an electrical engineering degree at night school at university during the 40s. She was the only woman and she met my grandpa on the course. She then gave up work to have her 5 kids but continued to do all the accounts/ strategic decisions for my grandpa's electrical engineering company. Between them they built it up into a business with a turnover of millions and employing over 100 people. She is a very good role model and I am very proud of her.