HISTORIC ENGLAND


Inside St George’s Hall, Liverpool © Historic England


Sefton Park, Liverpool, Merseyside © Historic England


ST GEORGE’S HALL, LIVERPOOL The Hall was the scene of an imaginative protest by the local branch of the WSPU. In reaction to the WSPU’s campaign of direct action against the government, political meetings by the Liberal Party were tightly controlled with entry only by ticket – or in some cases with women excluded altogether. In May 1909 Earl Crewe and Augustine Birrell MP were awarded honorary degrees by the University of Liverpool in a ceremony at St George’s Hall. Mary Phillips, the local WSPU organiser, managed to get into the Hall the night before and hid in the organ loft and under the stage. After 24 hours without sleep she interrupted Birrell’s speech to protest against the imprisonment of local suffragette Patricia Woodlock. It was several minutes before she was found and removed from the Hall.


St George’s Plateau, outside of the Hall, was used for large local demonstrations. In 1908 the local Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage (one of the earliest provincial branches of this organisation) arranged a large demonstration with platforms for militant and constitutional suffrage societies.


SEFTON PARK PALM HOUSE, LIVERPOOL Sefton Park was subject to an attack by militant suffragettes in November 1913. The attack was one of a number of attempts to cause criminal damage in public parks nationally. A park keeper discovered a homemade bomb in the porch of the palm house; its fuses had been lit but had blown out in the wind. In keeping with the WSPU policy, the perpetrator was not formally identified, although it is likely to have been carried out by Kitty Marion, a self-confessed suffragette arsonist and bomber who had suffragette friends in Liverpool, and who pasted press cuttings relating to this attack in her scrap book.


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Listed Heritage Magazine September/October 2018


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