Arrested Suffragettes: Ball to Barclay

​Lilian Ball was arrested on 5 March 1912 and charged with breaking a window, with a hammer, worth 3 shillings at the Royal United Services Institution, Whitehall. It was remarked upon in court that the amount of damage was immaterial, what mattered was the fact that she had maliciously intended to do damage and she was therefore sentenced to two months imprisonment with hard labour. The records indicate an alternative surname of Smythe, but this appears to be an alias relating to an arrest in 1914.

The Labour Member of Parliament, George Lansbury, wrote to Reginald Mckenna, the Home Secretary the day after Lilian’s sentence protesting at its severity ‘Surely the magistrates are not going to lose their heads and go from one extreme to the other in this matter.’ A note on the file says that no reason existed to revisit Lilian’s sentence.
 
When the Pethick Lawrences and Emmeline Pankhurst were charged in 1912 with conspiring to incite women to commit criminal acts, Lilian was summoned as a witness. It was stated that Lilian was a married woman living in Tooting, south London who earned a living as a dressmaker. Another record notes, she was born in 1878. When Lilian entered the witness box, the newspapers reported that she broke down in tears and it took some time for her to be able to take the oath. She attested that she was a member of the Balham branch of the WSPU. Her first foray into protesting was in 1910 as part of a deputation to the House of Commons. However, she hurt her foot and was conveyed by carriage to Caxton Hall to recover. In November 1911 Lilian recounted that she received a message to attend the WSPU headquarters. There she was given a bag of stones which she tied around her waist concealed by her long coat. The bag was then produced in court. Lilian emphatically denied giving it to the police asserting that they had obtained it while she was in prison. At the WSPU headquarters, she recollected, that along with two other women, she was instructed to go to the back of the House of Commons and get to the windows. The three of them wandered around in the vicinity for about three hours and then went home. The bag of stones remained untouched at her home until she went to prison and this was where the police found the bag. 

In March the following year, Lilian stated she received another message, ‘Militancy alone can bring pressure to bear on the Cabinet’. Lilian submitted her name as willing to act. In return, she received an invitation to attend the Gardenia Restaurant, where she was handed:  'Instructions to volunteers: ‘When arrested and taken to Cannon Row or other police station you will, after an interval, be bailed out; then return to your home or hostess. In the morning you should surrender at the time mentioned on your charge sheet at the police court, bringing with you a bag with everything you are likely to need during your imprisonment. (Signed) E. Pankhurst.’' Lilian believed she had left the piece of paper on the table of her employer, Mrs Fagent.
 
A woman, at the Gardenia Restaurant, asked Lilian how long a prison sentence would be feasible. Lilian replied that she had made arrangements to leave her home for seven days. She was sent to the Royal United Institution with a hammer attached to which was a note ‘Better broken windows than broken promises.’ The advice was to conceal the hammer up her sleeve. Lilian believed she was despatched there as the panes of glass were small and thus with a limited opportunity for damage, the prison sentence would be short. Lilian broke the window and was immediately arrested. Frederick Pethick Lawrence appeared in court to obtain bail and stand surety.

The day after, Lilian was found guilty and sentenced. Asked why she thought she had been called as a witness Lilian responded that she had signed a petition while in prison. She could think of no other reason. Lilian’s belief that her signing a petition had drawn her to the attention of the authorities appears to be well-founded. On 12 March, Lilian  submitted a petition for a reduction in sentence. Briefly, Lilian recounted the invite to the Gardenia restaurant and why her desire for a short sentence led her to the Royal United Services Institute. Lilian closed ‘I should esteem it a great favour if you could help me in anyway by shortening my sentence.’ A handwritten file note suggests that Lilian’s petition should be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions as ‘it seems just possible that this woman might be willing to make a statement.’ Despite the authorities, ultimately, coercing Lilian into being a witness, there is nothing to indicate that she benefited from a reduction in her sentence.
 
Lilian was not arrested again until 11 February 1914, when she was charged with obstruction in Whitehall. Seven suffragettes were organised into three separate groups, each addressing the crowd while one member of each group rang a bell to attract attention. The police ordered them to move on, their refusal resulting in their arrest. In court, they stated that they were protesting at the absence from the King’s Speech of franchise for women. Lilian was jailed for four days for refusing to find sureties. This was not a criminal offence, and therefore technically Lilian was not convicted of any offence.

The Women’s Freedom League wrote to the Prison Commissioner regarding two of their members which indicates Lilian had abandoned the WSPU in favour of the League. The letter protests that as Lilian was unconvicted, the authorities did not have the power to take fingerprints from her forcibly. Correspondence between the Home Office and the Prison Commissioners indicates that a decision to take fingerprints, regardless of the status of the prisoners, had been taken the previous December, in part because, if it was not done, the weakened state of suffragettes refusing food led the medical officer ‘being of the opinion that it was not advisable to apply the necessary force to overcome the resistance of the prisoner.’ A similar letter was sent to the Home Secretary. While the authorities denied any use of force, the rules were modified so that fingerprints could not be taken by force if only a minor offence had been committed so long as the prints were not required for evidential purposes or the women was or had in the past refused food.


Lilian was arrested again on 26 March 1914, but no report relating to this has been found. Her final arrest was on 16 July 1914,  where all the defendants gave their surnames as Smith or Smyth. Their offence was chaining themselves to the door of a police court in Francis Street in the West End of London. During the lunch interval, the women had left the court and chained themselves to the court doors by first chaining all five of them together and then to the doors. The only way the police could secure their release was to wrench off the door handle. They were then conveyed to a police station still chained together, only on arrival was it possible to disconnect the five women.


They were all charged with obstruction, having arrived in court for their hearing dressed in white, bearing the colours of the Women’s Freedom League. Lilian was sentenced to five days imprisonment.

Gertrude Ballam © Museum of London

​Gertrude Ballam was arrested on 27 March 2 1914.

She was charged with obstruction alongside, Elsie Cummin, for protesting outside the Director of Public Prosecution’s offices wearing sandwich boards and handing out handbills. The reason for their protest was that although two police officers had stated they were aware of “activity” between another officer and a fourteen-year-old girl no action had been taken. They were sentenced to fourteen days in the absence of payment of an alternative fine.


Gertrude was born Louisa Gertrude in 1871 to Ambrose, a bootmaker and Emma. Gertrude had two younger brothers:  Arthur and Alfred.  Her father, Ambrose, died in 1883 which left the family struggling. Gertrude and Arthur were admitted to the Harrow Road Workhouse the following year and from there were sent to Ashford Residential School. By the 1891 census, the family were reunited, while Alfred was still at school Emma was employed as a cook, Gertrude as a dressmaker and Arthur in an ironmongers.

In time Gertrude started to employ people in her dressmaking business. In 1908 she wrote a letter which was published in the Vote. The government was keen to ascertain how many married women were employed and asked employers to complete a return recording the number of unmarried women, married and widowed they employed. Gertrude set out her intended response in the Vote, which example she hoped others would follow, “I shall certainly not volunteer such particulars, but state instead, “When women are directly represented, so that they can give expression to their opinions and wishes regarding curtailment of employment, & etc, I will give voluntary particulars, but consider it beside my duty to do so now.”


Gertrude’s mother died in 1909 and like many Gertrude appears to have avoided the 1911 census.

​She died in 1951.

Nora Balls © Museum of London

​Nora Balls was arrested on 23 November 1910.

Born Norah Elizabeth, in 1886, in Tynemouth, she was the daughter of William and Elizabeth. Her father was a mariner spending most of his time at sea, and he is not recorded at home on any census return from 1891 to 1911. Nora had a younger brother William Daniel, known as Daniel, who was six years younger. She joined the WSPU and was primarily active in the North East. She was at one time Secretary of the Tynemouth Branch of the Local Government Association.

Norah travelled south to take part in a raid on the House of Commons in 1910. Charged with obstruction, the charges against her were dropped when Winston Churchill decided that to continue would make the women martyrs.


Nora continued to campaign until the outbreak of the First World War, like so many she is not recorded on the 1911 census. She ran a canteen for soldiers during the war and afterwards helped to establish the Girl Guides in Northumberland. Her interest in politics did not wane, and she served as a Town Councillor standing as an Independent candidate. She was also appointed as a Justice of the Peace. Her desire to help others in any way possible continued up until her death in 1980.


Harry Bark was arrested on 29 July 1913.

He was charged with obstruction, along with two other men, following attempts to prevent the police from conveying away Annie Kenney at the London Pavilion. This was the same incident for which William Ball, see blog, was arrested. It was made evident in court that Harry was believed to be the instigator who had incited others to act. He was fined 20 shillings or fourteen days imprisonment.

His occupation was given as traveller. It is not clear to what extent he was a supporter of the movement or was just caught up in the moment. In either event, no further trace of him has been found.


Grace Barber was arrested on the same day as Nora Balls, just like Nora, she was charged with obstruction, but the charges were dropped. 

Grace provided a statement to Henry Brailsford and Jessie Murray outlining her experience during what became known as Black Friday. Grace describes herself as a ‘passive resister’, and therefore any violence committed against her person was ‘unprovoked.’ Arriving at Parliament Square on 18 November, it was mostly clear of any protestors, and only the police remained. When Grace was two yards away from the line, the police rushed towards the new arrivals. ‘I was pushed, grasped by the back of the neck and propelled forward with great force. This was followed by an almost stunning blow on the base of the skull which sent me to my knees.’ When Grace was slow to pick herself up and move on, another policeman hit her in the back three times, blows she could feel for a week afterwards. With a friend, Grace walked to the opposite side of the square where a woman sitting in a taxi invited them to get in. It was only then that Grace realised her ‘double leather dog-skin motor glove was cut’ and her knuckle ‘cut to the bone.’
 
Despite this treatment, Grace returned four days later. This time her ‘motor veil’ was twisted by a police officer ‘trying to choke’ her. Several people intervened, not, initially, realising that the man dressed in civilian clothes was a plainclothes officer. Grace went back again the following day. This time several police officers ran down the steps towards her. One used the height gained by being on a step to rain blows down on Grace’s head. She complained of pains in her head for several weeks afterwards as well as suffering from a cough caused, Grace believed, from the blows to her back. She closes her statement ‘I am not a person likely to exaggerate violence, as I am used to hard knocks and bruises , as I play every sort of game and get many falls hunting.’
 
Grace was born in 1879, the daughter of Thomas, a colliery owner, and Frances. One of eight children, Grace had a privileged upbringing. When her father died in 1893, he left an estate worth in today’s money 18 million pounds. Around 1904, her widowed mother purchased Barnby Moor House in the village of Barnby Moor, near Retford. It was a substantial house with numerous outbuildings and landscaped grounds.

Grace never married and continued to live at Barnby Moor House after her mother’s death in 1930. The 1939 register states that Grace was a Justice of the Peace and an air warden living with a lady’s maid and two other servants.

She died in 1955.
 
​

Outside Buckingham Palace ©Museum of London

​​The next entry is for Lady Barclay arrested on 24 July 1914 for causing obstruction when attempting to deliver a letter from Mrs Pankhurst to the King at Buckingham Palace along with Miss Fitzgerald. No evidence was presented, and both were acquitted.

Lady Barclay joined, and was a major funder of, the WSPU. She was President of the Anglo - French Society intended to unite the women of France and the United Kingdom in their fight for suffrage. Born Marie Therese Teuscher in Brazil, the 1911 census return states she was of German origin. She married Thomas Barclay, a Scottish barrister and Liberal politician. Knighted in 1904, he was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize on several occasions for his work on the Entente Cordiale between France and England before the First World War. The couple had two daughters.

The press hailed her arrest as one of a noblewomen and member of the aristocracy but this was clearly not the case as although clearly well connected and circumstanced the family were, however, not aristocratic.  

Whatever her husband’s view, Thomas did not support any attempt she may have made to exclude herself from the 1911 census ensuring she was recorded.

The advent of the war halted her campaigning. 

​She died in 1945.