Edwy Clayton

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The police arrested Edwy Godwin Clayton in May 1913 and charged him with conspiracy alongside Annie Kenney, Harriet Kerr, Agnes Lake, Rachel Barrett, Laura Lennox and Beatrice Sanders. Before the trial started, George Lansbury, Johnston Forbes Robertson, Henry Nevinson, H J Gillespie and Henry Harben signed a letter published in the newspaper, Votes for Women, asking readers to donate to the costs of Edwy’s defence as he had ‘no private means out of which to pay for an adequate defence.’

The trial opened at the Old Bailey the day after Emily Davison had died at Epsom Races. Despite the trauma of the impending trial, Edwy and his co-defendants had attended. Fifty women dressed in white, the clergy and Sylvia Pankhurst, Ben Tillett, Frank Smith and Edwy preceded the hearse, which was covered in flowers. Behind the hearse were Edwy’s co-defendants.  

​At the trial, the police produced a document found at Annie Kenney’s flat in Mecklenburg Square, purportedly in Edwy’s handwriting, outlining a scheme to smash fire alarms or attack Government buildings, timber yards or cotton mills. Another document, presented in evidence, written by Edwy, suggested, it was claimed, that the proportions, presumably of chemicals, were not yet correct but this would shortly be resolved and would be ready in a few days. Annie asked the inspector, who presented the evidence, if he knew for sure the document was hers beyond it was found in her flat. The inspector admitted he did not know. Another witness, whose tea hut in Kew had been damaged by fire, alleged that one of the other defendants had informed them that the only way was to attack Government property. All the defendants were found guilty. Edwy was sentenced to twenty-one months in the third division. Each was ordered to pay one-seventh of the costs, an unusual step in a criminal case.

While on trial, Edwy had sold the furniture at his family home to Ethel Purdie, the first woman to qualify as an accountant. Her firm was the auditor to the Women’s Freedom League.  The Director of Public Prosecutions took Ethel to court alleging that the sale had taken place to prevent Edwy having his furniture seized to meet the court costs. The Director of Public Prosecutions did not, however, serve a similar writ on Edwy as they could not locate him. A letter was produced in which Ethel offered to buy the goods. The prosecution stated: ‘that this sudden offer required explanation.’ In addition, there was no sign of a cheque made payable to Edwy.

The defence argued Ethel, who had been told of the furniture for sale by Dr Jessie Murray, a suffrage supporter, was not a militant suffragette and the sale had taken place in the ordinary way of business. Ethel Purdie had paid by bearer cheque, in effect cash, and sent a further sum to Clara, Edwy's wife. Ethel had paid less than Edwy had originally asked. The prosecution asserted that even this was too much as the goods, less seven kept pictures, had fetched even less at auction. Ethel pointed out that this was probably because of the presence of a plain-clothes police officer and a Treasury official at the auction. The pictures had been held back not because they were to be returned to Edwy but because Ethel had been advised it was not the right time to sell. The judge held that ‘the sale was genuine’.

Edwy was released on 23 June 1913 under the Cat and Mouse Act after he went on hunger strike. He then disappeared. A little over a year later, Votes for Women published a letter sent from Edwy with a foreign postmark. He wrote: ‘I neither received nor desired to receive, payment for any help given by me to the women’s movement. My sole reward has been the happiness derived from personal participation, as a volunteer helper, in this campaign against prejudice, ignorance, disease and brutality.’ Soon after the advent of the First World War, Edwy was ‘pardoned’ under the suffragette Amnesty Agreement.

Edwy was born, in 1858, in Lambeth, south London, the son of Alfred, an architect and Elinor. Edwy’s grandfather was also an architect who worked on the building of the Corn Exchange in London from 1827. Edwy’s father designed the railway station at Tynan in County Armagh and another at Glaslough, again in Ireland. Initially, the family lived in Lambeth but by 1871 they have moved to Islington. The 1881 census return stated that Edwy, who appears to have been an only child, was a qualified chemist and teacher of chemistry. Edwy and Clara Tilbury had the banns for their marriage read on three consecutive Sundays in their parish church, St Mary’s in Islington during the same month as the census was taken. A newspaper announcement connected Edwy to two naval ancestors; this militaristic connection was to prove, in later years, poignant.

During the 1880s, many advertisements appeared in the newspapers for a variety of products citing the tests they had been subject to. For example: the Western Times, 28 December 1883, included an advertisement for the Well Park Brewery. Their ale had been submitted for testing by ‘the great Analyst’, Arthur Hassell, and found to be ‘bright, clear, and sparkling, and possessed the true hop flavour’. The advertisement was placed by Arthur Hassell and Edwin Godwin Clayton aka Edwy.  Arthur Hassell was a well-regarded physician and chemist who wrote The Microscopic Anatomy of the Human Body in Health and Disease. Published in 1846, it was the first text of its kind. Hassell researched water quality and the adulteration of food which led to the Food Adulteration Act 1860. Ill-health, however, led him to spend most of his time abroad. Hassell described Edwy in his autobiography, The Narrative of a Busy Life: An Autobiography, as a ‘dear friend’, describing the research the two had undertaken together.

Edwy continued to advertise using Hassell’s name for several years after his death. He appears to have been trading as The Analytical Sanitary Institute based in Holborn Viaduct until around 1906. Three years later, Edwy published a work entitled ‘A compendium of food-microscopy with sections on drugs, water, and tobacco’. 
 
Edwy and Clara first lived in Southwark. The family was completed with the arrival of Hilda Faith, known by her middle name, in 1883, who joined Cuthbert Edwy Ansell born the year before. By the 1891 census, the family had moved to Richmond, living at 3 Bath Terrace. Edwy was working as an analytical chemist, thus his work with Arthur Hassell. Around this time, Edwy joined the volunteer rifle corps rising to second lieutenant. Faith attended the Richmond School of Art where she won a prize in 1901. She went on to win several more prizes over the years at a variety of competitions.

The suffrage campaign was a family affair. Clara was appointed secretary of the Richmond Branch of the WSPU in 1909. Their then home, Glengariff, Richmond Road becoming a hive of suffrage activity. Faith advertised art lessons in the suffragette newspaper to be delivered at the family home. During the summer of 1909, Faith and two other women distributed pamphlets in Chesham, Buckinghamshire announcing a meeting of the WSPU. Faith chaired the gathering which explained the ideals of the campaign manfully carrying on despite torrential rain which began to fall as the meeting opened. As the weather cleared, Miss Jacobs delivered her speech. The following month, Faith presided at a meeting in High Wycombe, narrowly avoiding injury when the box she was standing on gave way.

After an Autumn and early winter of meetings, the January 1910 General Election saw Faith and her mother, Clara, campaigning in the Fulham constituency where the WSPU band paraded to draw attention to the cause. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and Christabel Pankhurst addressed the voters. On polling day, a wagon and car decorated in WSPU colours toured the constituency as over forty women, including Faith and Clara, continued to rally support. The result, a defeat for the Liberal candidate and success for the Conservative, was hailed by the Votes for Women newspaper as ‘magnificent.’
 
Edwy joined the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement and The Men’s League for Women Suffrage. In 1910, the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies nominated Edwy as their candidate in the forthcoming election for South Salford in opposition to the Liberal Hilaire Belloc. A seat, Edwy lost. By 1912, Faith had joined the Church League for Women’s Suffrage becoming the organiser for Richmond and Kew.

​For a brief period in 1900, Cuthbert worked as a clerk on the Great Western Railway. Cuthbert was then employed as a pupil assistant, in 1903, to number and label books for the Royal Society of Medicine; a job he held for two years. From there he was appointed the librarian at the Manchester Medical Society at whose heart was the library. Cuthbert appears to have been involved in the founding of the UK British Medical Library. He is the only one of the family to be recorded in the 1911 census; living in Manchester employed as the Chief Librarian of the Scientific Society. Five years later, Cuthbert appeared before a tribunal as a conscientious objector. He had converted to Catholicism and was currently working as a social worker having moved south from Manchester. By this time, Edwy was living in Hampstead.

Following the tribunal, Cuthbert went to work for the Quaker Friends War Victims Relief Committee. Initially, he undertook farm work but then he was posted to Holland and later Poland and Belgium providing ‘medical care, education and economic support to vulnerable people and communities.’ Cuthbert continued with this work until 1921. The same year he gave a lecture in Sunderland about his eighteen months working in Poland and the conditions there and in central Europe. It was an insight Cuthbert provided on several further occasions. He later travelled to Russia, an experience he also spoke about, in part to raise awareness and also to raise funds. Cuthbert was at pains to point out that he could confirm relief did go to the intended recipients. At one talk alone Cuthbert raised over £16. One newspaper reported that Cuthbert spoke harrowingly of ‘the famine area and of the unhappy refugees flying from hunger and walking hundreds of miles in search of food.’ Over the next two years, Cuthbert continued to raise funds and awareness.

Later in life, Cuthbert worked as a travel lecturer and organiser. He died in 1966, Faith having predeceased him by six years. Sadly, Faith became incapacitated and spent many years in Claymore Mental Asylum in Ilford, Essex.

​Edwy died in 1936.