By Chloe Leanne Lamy
Edited by Alice Routledge and Mark Potter
To be a peripheral actor in history is to be on the side lines of action and to not have a great
role. Women in the East End of London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
cannot be described as peripheral actors due to their activism and involvement throughout this period, which led to profound changes and events which have gone down in history as pivotal moments. Women in this period further laid the foundations for the feminist movement to take off, improved working conditions for both men and women and made positive changes throughout their communities. The Suffragette movement, the match-maker strikes and trade unions and involvement in local politics make the term ‘peripheral actors’, when used to describe women in the East End at this time, completely wrong and inadequate. Women were not peripheral actors but the ‘leading ladies ’of the East End, transforming lives in both the short term and the long term.
A key area of women’s activism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the
women’s suffrage movement. With groups such as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS) and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) growing, women
could hardly have remained peripheral actors. On October 13 1905, the WSPU used its first
militant actions to campaign for the right to vote; Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney went to the Free Trade Hall in Manchester to campaign for women’s suffrage and ended up in prison for a week after spitting at a policeman and refusing to pay a fine.[1] By January 1913, almost one-thousand women had gone to prison for women’s suffrage, with many doing hunger strikes and being force-fed. [2] Clearly, this displays women having a major role in the suffrage
movement.
Women in the East End especially had very strong characters, and it could be argued they could not help but get involved in movements such as women’s suffrage. Even without the suffrage movement, women were heavily involved in other affairs such as work and the family economy.[3] Therefore, it was inevitable that women would impact the history of the East End but this was made easier with the strength of the suffrage movement.[4] In 1906, due to street protests, Henry Campbell Bannerman agreed to see a deputation of women’s suffrage organisations, and working women marched all the way from the East End to attend.[5] It is clear, therefore, that in the suffrage movement, women were not peripheral actors but had a clear and major role at the forefront of the campaign of the right to vote. The suffrage movement laid the groundwork to larger feminist movements campaigning for rights for women such as the Dagenham strikes at Ford in 1968. Women working at the Dagenham factory walked out due to being paid fifteen percent less than men for doing the same job.[6] This resulted in the Equal Pay Act of 1970, conveying that it was these early movements that gave East End women the strength to carry on campaigning for their rights just as their ancestors did; this was ongoing topic throughout the history of the East End and continues today.
Match-making was a major industry in the East End of London with thousands of girls and
women employed in these factories.[7] Conditions in match-making factories were horrific with women working up to fourteen hours a day for less than five shillings a week, sometimes even less due to fines for talking or dropping matches.[8] Working with phosphorus was also very dangerous for these women; staining their skin and causing coughs, shortness of breath, chest pain, congestion of the lungs, nausea, vomiting and liver failure.[9] Many also contracted ‘Phossy Jaw’, which many women died from due to exposure to this dangerous chemical.[10] In June 1888, the Fabian Society met to discuss the working conditions of a match-stick factory in Bow.[11] This is where Annie Besant, a middle-class woman, produced a paper called ‘White Slavery in London’.[12] This exposed these terrible conditions in the Bryant and May factory through interviews with the women who worked there.[13] The owner of Bryant and May tried to ridicule this paper by asking the women to sign that the paper was a lie, however many refused and around 1,200 women and some men walked out on strike.[14] This hit the national papers, questions were asked in parliament and they received public and financial support.[15] Although the strikes did not directly result in a pay raise for these women, the strikes achieved many other aims such as the fine system being removed. Similarly, in 1911 in Bermondsey, approximately fifteen-thousand women went on strike to protest low wages and bad working conditions.[16] This secured a rise in wages at Pinks jam factory from nine to eleven shillings a week.[17] This highlights the crucial role that women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries played. Women were especially vital to the development of rights within the workplace in the East End, especially for working class women and the matchmakers. Without their efforts, men and women would have continued to endure the terrible working conditions of factories suffering diseases and, in some cases, death. These issues would not have gained attention if not for women such as Annie Besant producing vital papers on these matters which due to her middle-class status gave the working-class women a voice that was not often taken
into consideration. The matchmaker strikes of 1888 have gone down famously in the history
of the East End and the women that took part in these, therefore, were not peripheral actors but the leading ladies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, changing the lives of the matchmakers and changing the course of the history of the East End.
This can also be seen in the involvement of women in trade unions; not being peripheral actors but influencing the history of the East End through their engagement. The Women’s Trade Union League was formed in 1874 by upper-middle class women who wanted to improve working conditions for women through trade unions.[18] Further, Mary MacArthur, for example, created the National Federation of Women’s Workers (NFWW), bringing together several women’s unions which by 1914 had twenty-thousand members.[19] In 1909 the NFWW managed to persuade the government to pass the Trade Boards Act which tried to fix minimum wages in exploitative industries which employed mostly poor, working class women.[20] Overall, these examples highlight that women were not peripheral actors in the history of the East End but had a pivotal role in securing major societal and political changes in relation to the workplace.
Local politics within the East End also saw heavy involvement from women in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Julia Scurr was a prominent figure in the local politics of the East End. She was first elected to the Poplar Board of Guardians in 1907 and kept this position until she died.[21] In July 1905, Scurr organised a march of one thousand women from the East End to Westminster to lobby the government for welfare provision for the unemployed and in November of the same year a further four thousand women married to unemployed men marched from Poplar.[22] Whilst guardian in June 1912 Scurr produced a report on the lack of day rooms and recreational space at the Bow infirmary and although her male colleagues dismissed this report it still stands as an important example of women trying to enact positive change on their communities despite the drawbacks of being inferior to men.[23] Some wrongly argued that it was actually the 1894 act which allowed women to stand as guardians that enabled women to enact change on their communities.[24] These women, however, took it upon their own initiative to stand as guardians and to publish reports such as Julia Scurr, meaning men had little to no impact on whether these women were peripheral actors. Further in 1912, Scurr organised food for the children of the dock strikers.[25] Hence, Julia Scurr was not a peripheral actor but strove to provide positive changes for her community whilst rallying women to not only stand up for their own rights but also the rights of their husbands; meaning fewer women were peripheral actors and more women took part in campaigns and marches. The act of providing food for the children of the strikers also shows how women were not just about their own causes but also the issues of others in their communities, making them far from peripheral as they were fully involved in many people’s struggles and demands for rights. Another example of a strong female character was Henrietta Alder who was one of the first women to be elected as a local councillor in 1910 for the Hackney division.[26] From a Jewish background, Alder had originally worked as a school manager for twenty years but had been interested in the welfare of women and children.[27] Alder clearly impacted Hackney and its community by holding her position for so many years. She was another woman who was far from a peripheral actor thus reinforcing the idea that women cannot be described as peripheral due to their impact and holding key positions within their communities.
The historians Sarah Jackson and Rosemary Taylor make the argument that we need to
remember that during this time women were ‘second-class citizens’ and although this is
broadly agreeable, it would be ignorant to disregard the immense impact women in the East
End of London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had on different areas of life.[28] Jackson and Taylor rightly argue, women still managed to make profound changes in the history of the East End, which transformed lives for the better with movements such as the match-maker strikes.[29] Further, it cannot go without mentioning the long-term impact of female activism during this time which can explain gaining the right to vote, driving campaigns for worker’s rights and making lasting, positive changes within their community. Community was an important factor of East End life, as it still is today, and news of women’s activism and positive changes would have travelled through the East End, creating a large ‘audience ’for the profound impact women had and enhancing this impact by spreading it across the community. It is for these reasons that women during this time cannot be described as peripheral actors but as mentioned earlier, as the leading ladies of the history of the East End.
Notes
[1] Cowman, Krista, ‘Incipient Toryism’? The Women’s Social and Political Union and the Independent Labour Party, 1903-14’, History Workshop Journal, 53 (2002), p.129.
[2] Cowman, ‘Incipient Toryism’, p.130.
[3] Helen Rogers, ‘The Good Are Not Always Powerful: The Politics of Women’s Needlework in Mid-Victorian London’, Victorian Studies, 40/4 (1997), p. 589.
[4] Edward Higgs, ‘Women, Occupations and Work in the Nineteenth-Century Census’, History Workshop Journal, 23/1 (1987), p. 59.
[5] Katherine Connelly, Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire, (Pluto Press, 2013) p. 22.
[6] Jackson, Sarah, Taylor, Rosemary, East London Suffragettes (Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2013), p. 136.
[7] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 17.
[8] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 17.
[9] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 18.
[10] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 18.
[11] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 18.
[12] Louise Raw, Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Match women and their Place in History (London: Continuum, 2009) p. 6.
[13] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 18.
[14] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 18.
[15] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 18.
[16] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 19.
[17] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 19.
[18] Teresa Olcott, ‘Dead Centre: The Women’s Trade Union Movement in London 1874-1914’, London Journal, 2/1 (1976), pp. 33.
[19] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 19.
[20] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 19.
[21] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 20.
[22] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 21.
[23] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 20.
[24] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 20.
[25] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 21.
[26] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 20.
[27] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 20.
[28] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 21.
[29] Jackson and Taylor, East London Suffragettes p. 21.
Bibliography
Secondary Sources
Connelly, Katherine, Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire. Pluto
Press, 2013
Cowman, Krista, ‘Incipient Toryism’? The Women’s Social and Political Union and the
Independent Labour Party, 1903-14’, History Workshop Journal, 53, 2002
Higgs, Edward, ‘Women, Occupations and Work in the Nineteenth-Century Census’, History
Workshop Journal. 23/1, 1987
Jackson, Sarah, Taylor, Rosemary, East London Suffragettes. Gloucestershire: The History
Press, 2013
Olcott, Teresa, ‘Dead Centre: The Women’s Trade Union Movement in London 1874-1914’,
London Journal. 2/1, 1976
Raw, Louise, Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Match-Women and their Place in
History. London: Continuum, 2009
Rogers, Helen, ‘The Good Are Not Always Powerful: The Politics of Women’s Needlework
in Mid-Victorian London’, Victorian Studies 40/4, 1997
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