Off to the Polls: for the first time in 1918

 

Women's Freedom League badge, c. 1907. TWL2004604

The Women's Library at LSE Library

The ‘Victory’ election of 1918 was a landmark moment for the whole country. After 50 years of campaigning to get the vote, women all over the country were walking into polling stations and exercising their democratic right to vote.¹

Before the First World War, only property-owning men were allowed to vote in parliamentary elections, which excluded many poor men and all women. The Representation of the People Act in 1918 abolished the property qualification, allowing all men over the age of 21 to vote. Women, some women, also got the vote. The general election called immediately after the armistice with Germany was the first under the Act and the first election since 1910.

To vote, women needed to have property which had an annual rent of at least five pounds (equal to perhaps £1000 today) and be over the age of thirty.² This amounted to about 8.4 million women, at that point approximately a third of the electrorate.¹

The Voters

Here are just some of those first-time voters taken from the 1918 Electoral Roll³ for Hertford’s All Saints Division.

Coming hard on the heels of Armistice Day, many of the women voters would have been grieving the death of loved ones. Women like Ellen Bean of 1 Riverside, who had lost her husband Edward on the Western front in 1917 and was bringing up a young son on her own. Others had lost sons. Harriet Waller of 15 Railway Place, lost her son Albert, just 2 months before in Greece.

There were female business owners on the electoral role for the first time. Emily Parker ran her tobacconist shop at 15 Market Place. While in Fore Street (number 59), Jane Miller had her servants’ registry called Majesty Office. At the other end of the same street (number 3) was the Fancy Goods shop of Mary and Frances Hilton. All long-established businesses managed by single women.

During the war years, opportunities for women to earn money had increased as male labour became scarce. Susan Wicks, of 46 Bullocks Lane, travelled down the hill every day to the Chamois Leather Glove factory at Horns Mill, working as a glove machinist. Others worked at home, sometimes as dressmakers, like the unmarried Lizzie Law of 22a Fore Street or the widowed Annie Dale, at 29 Ware Road.

Those with little training could take up domestic service. Fanny Ginn (of Thornton Street) was working this way for a dental surgeon at 6 Ware Road. While Fanny Cadmore served as housekeeper for the live-in staff at the Graveson & Co. drapers’ shop in Market Place. There may have been the possibility of working in the family business, as there was for Minnie Alethea Frogley who worked as a tobacconist’s assistant in her father’s Fore Street shop.

Further up the social scale, women with a degree of wealth in their own right, got the vote for the first time. Long-time social activists like Ella Ginn from Queens Road, as well as Elizabeth Gilbertson of Mangrove Lane.

Female teacher made up a significant part of the new voters in this district. Elizabeth Medcalf Morris ran the Glengarriff private school at 55 Ware Road. From 1902 Christ Hospital in Fore Street became entirely for girls. Seventeen women employees appear on the register from the school. Jessie Barton and Annie Armstrong were assistant school mistress, while Eleanor Macdonald worked as one of four Infirmary matrons.

We cannot tell how many of the women above actually voted on Saturday, 14 December 1918, but they all had, for the first time, the opportunity to do so. After a campaign that lasted 50 years, did they feel excited, nervous, or relieved? In the end, controversial politician Noel Pemberton Billing claimed the seat as an independent member of parliament.

References

¹ The National Archives. The ‘Victory’ election: the 1918 General Election. 14th December 2018. https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/victory-election-1918-general-election/

² Museum of London. Vote for Women: the ground breaking election of 1918 election.

https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/1918-election-first-time-women-voted

³ 1918 Electoral Roll for Hertford. Available at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies.