FREE TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER The Free Trade Hall is where the British militant suffrage campaign began. The WSPU was formed in Manchester in October 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst and a group of women from the local Independent Labour Party (ILP). For two years the WSPU organised small meetings in and around Manchester and pressed the IPL to honour its commitment to giving votes to women.


The WSPU changed its tactics on 13 October 1905. Two of its young members, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney, went to a Liberal Party election meeting at the Free Trade Hall and hung a banner reading ‘Votes for Women’ over the balcony, demanding to know whether a Liberal government would give votes to women. After a scuffle they were ejected from the hall then arrested. They refused to pay a fine, so went to prison, starting nine years of militant direct action by women determined to get parliamentary votes.


The Hall stands on the site of the 1819 Peterloo massacre in which volunteer soldiers set upon crowds demanding political rights, a fact often invoked by suffragettes who saw themselves as part of a longer tradition of direct action.


AYLESBURY PRISON, AYLESBURY As the starting point for the suffragette’s largest mass hunger strike, Aylesbury Gaol holds a significant place in the campaign for women’s suffrage. It housed a number of suffragette prisoners arrested during large demonstrations by the WSPU. They were incarcerated in Aylesbury Gaol in March 1912 after a window-smashing raid in London, because Holloway Prison, the usual suffragette prison, was full. On 5 April, the prisoners began a secret hunger strike which went undetected for several days. When the authorities found out, hunger strikers were fed by force, although four were released on health grounds.


The Aylesbury hunger strike spread to other prisons, with over 80 prisoners taking part. Aylesbury became the focus for protests against forcible feeding and on 13 April 1912 over 100 protesters marched on the gaol to hold a meeting at the gates. Suffragette prisoners waved handkerchiefs from their cell windows.


SMEATON’S TOWER, PLYMOUTH HOE On 19 April 1913 a homemade suffragette bomb, consisting of a cylinder packed with explosive matter, was found at the entrance to Smeaton’s Tower. ‘Votes for women’ and ‘death in ten minutes’ were painted on the outside, but the wick, which had been lit,


Continued >> Listed Heritage Magazine September/October 2018 97


The former female wing at Aylesbury Prison © Historic England


Smeatons Tower, Plymouth Hoe © Historic England


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