Suffragette movement in leeds (Hyde Park)

On the 26th ofJuly 1908 100,000 people attended a suffragette demonstration on Woodhouse Moor, organised by the Womens Social and Political Union.


Mary Gawthorpe was the leader of this march, being highly involved with politics from a young age.

The next stepping up of the Suffragettes’ campaign was a big demonstration at the opening of Parliament on 23 October 1906. Mary and a large group of women had gathered in the central lobby (many more outside). When they learned the government would not support a suffrage bill, Mary leapt on a chair and began to address those in the lobby. The police arrived and bundled the women into the streets, where the protest continued. 10 arrests were made and the women were bailed to appear in court the next morning. Mary was sentenced to two months imprisonment and found out about the appalling conditions in Holloway Women’s Prison. After five weeks the women were all released, because of the by-election pending in Huddersfield, where it was realised that the imprisonment of women demanding the vote was electorally embarrassing. The Liberals just held on to the seat. On their release Mary and Annie Kenney spoke to a huge crowd gathered to acclaim them, and there was a big banquet in honour of the ex-prisoners at the Savoy Hotel. The action against women’s demonstrations became increasingly violent, and Mary was so badly injured by stewards at a meeting in February 1907 that she was too ill to appear in court. The internal injuries that she suffered were one cause of a great deal of ill health that she suffered on and off thereafter. Not necessarily connected was the appendicitis for which she was operated on at the New Hospital for Women in London – by Elizabeth Garret Anderson – the first woman to qualify as a doctor – in August 1907.

The day on Woodhouse Moor was a great success with a resolution put advocating ‘Votes for Women’. It was carried by a huge majority as reported in the Leeds Mercury. The image was in a collection of newspaper cuttings which once belonged to Leonora Cohen (1873 – 1978), a suffragette who lived in Leeds but gained notoriety when in 1913, in order to publicise her cause she attempted to break the glass showcase in the Jewel House of the Tower of London containing insignia of the Order of Merit. A note wrapped around the iron bar she used read “This is my protest against the Governments treachery to the working women of Great Britain.” She was arrested several times over the years, once when she went on a hunger and then a thirst strike while in custody in Armley Prison.