The Ball Family: William, Jennie & Ethel

This blog’s research has revealed another family; the Ball family. Working class, fallen on hard times with a drive to obtain equality for sons and daughters.
 
Ethelthreda Ball, also recorded in the Amnesty Record as Edith Ball, Editha Warwick Bell, was arrested in November 1910 for throwing stones at the windows of the Home Office. According to the report in Votes for Women, dated December 2nd 1910, the reason for her actions was her anger at the sentence handed to her mother the day before. Her mother was Mrs Jennie Ball who decided to join the suffrage movement, having worked in a tailoring firm for several years for low wages and, hearing about the treatment of women at Winson Green prison. Gennie was a founder member of the Suffragette Crusaders. 
 
In the arrest record, daughter and mother are recorded as Ethelthreda Ball and Jennie Ball but next to the latter’s entry, it states see Bell where under the entry of Jennie Bell her arrests are recorded. The Amnesty Record also records William Ball. They are all from the same family: William, his wife Jennie and daughter Ethel. Some sources record that another prisoner Lilian Bell was also their daughter but I have not found any evidence to support this. 
 
William was born in 1863 in Tamworth, Staffordshire. His father worked as a gardener in Tamworth with William working alongside him as an assistant. The family was large and all the children went out to work as soon as they could, the 1891 census records his twelve-year-old sister employed as a nursemaid.
 
Jennie was, in fact, born Jane Mary Warwick in 1873, again in Tamworth. When her parents, Frederick and Henrietta married, Frederick was a widower. He was an innkeeper and left sufficient monies when he died in 1875, under £300, to be recorded in the probate records. Two years later, Jennie’s mother died leaving Jennie an orphan. What happened to Jennie until the 1891 census return is not clear as no trace of her can be found. 
 
By 1891, she was married to William and living with his parents, those of his siblings still living at home and their two-year-old son, William. Jennie was working as a tailoress where she gleaned her first-hand knowledge of low wages for women. William continued to work as a gardener. The couple appear to have lived in Tamworth and Birmingham. Their eldest son was born in Birmingham, and their second child, Ethel, in Tamworth. The 1901 census, records four children: Ethel, Harold, May and Horace. The family appears to have been suffering financial hardship, another child, Lionel, born in 1895 was adopted.  Later reports written, regarding William’s imprisonment and treatment, suggest that he had been a master gardener and then a master tailor. The 1901 census records, however, William being employed as a salesman and Jennie as a tailoress; both employing other workers. It seems more likely that Jennie was the skilled worker and William ran the business. In any event, the business ran into financial difficulties.  
 
 
For breaking a window, Jennie was sentenced in 1910 to a fine of £5 and the cost of the window or one month’s imprisonment. The following day, Ethel was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment without the option of payment of a fine. Jennie was due for release on December 23 1910 and Ethel the following day.  
 
 
The following year, mother and daughter were arrested again, sentenced to fourteen days and twenty-one days respectively - to be released on December 11 and December 18 1911. Jennie had broken a window at 55, Parliament Street with the damage stated to be twenty-five shillings. She stated that it was better to break a window than to go to Parliament Square to protest and be treated badly. Openly admitting she would do it again, Jennie refused to pay the damages or the fine of ten shillings. Ethel had broken three windows at the Colonial Office at a cost of four pounds and fifteen shillings. During her evidence, she stated that she had been moved to take direct action in protest at the sentence given to Emmeline Pankhurst of one month. The arrest record only records Ethel’s first offence not the second. 
 
Only days after their release, William was arrested for wilful damage of two windows at the Home Office with damages costing five pounds. At his trial, he refused to give either his address or occupation. When questioned at the scene, he told the police officer that the stones, of which there were three, made it clear why he was protesting. Wrapped around the three stones were bits of paper stating that the windows had been broken as a protest on the sentence passed on Mr McDougall of two months for assaulting Lloyd George and for the Manhood Suffrage Bill which had been introduced without any hope of it extending the vote to women. At his trial, William stated he had sons and daughters and wished for them to be treated equally. He was sentenced to two months hard labour. Upon the announcement of the sentence a young woman, possibly Ethel, shouted out “Shame!”  See the blog about Genie's postcard retelling William's plight
 
William refused food in prison or to wear the prison uniform. Stripped he was force-fed twice a day. After a month, according to the prison officers, he became confused wandering and ranting. William began to eat but, only a few weeks later, the authorities declared him insane transferring him to a mental asylum at Colney Hatch in North London admitting him as a pauper. Jennie had been writing to the authorities requesting information about her husband but had not received a reply. She was not informed of his transfer to the asylum. When she eventually established what had happened, Jennie secured his release for treatment privately. 
 
Hugh Franklin, one of only a few men imprisoned for their fight for women’s suffrage, was well-connected and was horrified by William’s treatment. Hugh Samuel, a relative of Franklin’s, was, at the time, Postmaster General. Hugh wrote to him asking him to investigate the treatment of William. The case was referred to the Home Office which appointed George Savage, a psychiatrist, to investigate. His report was seen by many as a cover-up as it cited William’s poor mental abilities and personal life as the reason for his falling into mental collapse. Thus, attempting to distance his mental state from the force-feeding. It was alleged that William had been transferred only at the end of his sentence when no one came forward to collect him. This was untrue as Jennie had continuously attempted to obtain information from the prison. 
 
Charles Mansell Moullin, a surgeon, a supporter of women’s suffrage and a campaigner against force-feeding, examined William on his release from the asylum. His findings did not agree with those of the medics in George Savage’s report. Moullin felt the Savage Report excluded evidence regarding William’s physical state which would not support their claims. Moullin also pointed out that William had undergone various tests to establish his mental abilities but these had centred around topics that, in all likelihood, it was known he would not have known the answers to. William’s story became a platform from which both sides endeavoured to vindicate their position. 
 
William’s experiences did not put him off as he was arrested again in October 1913. Annie Kenney had been released under the Cat and Mouse Act. In breach of the terms of her release, she was to speak at the London Pavilion. The police arrived to arrest anyone breaching their release under the Act. Initially, Annie evaded them by arriving before the police. She was about to start speaking when the police climbed onto the stage. Annie tried to make a getaway but failed and was bundled out of the theatre with members of the audience trying to stop the police. Outside the trouble continued with people climbing onto the taxi in which Annie was being held by three officers. Eleven arrests were made, one of them was William. He was sentenced to twenty days in Pentonville Prison. An anonymous person paid his fine and he was released two days later. 
 
Jennie’s activities with the Suffragette Crusaders appear to have started around 1915 using the colours purple and yellow. The group was part of the militant suffrage movement based in the East of London. An advertisement in Vote for Women, dated August 13th 1915, gives some indication of their specific activities. It seeks donations to enable them to carry on with their work providing “meals at less than cost price to the Sweated Women Workers of SE London.”  
 
The government introduced compulsory registration of all men and women aged between fifteen and sixty-five with the registration date being August 15 1915. Not only was it a means of ascertaining how many men had yet to sign up for active service, it would record how many women were available to replace men in the workforce. Many women’s groups protested arguing for equal pay, work conditions, and guarantees of continued employment after the war. When registration was opened on August 15, the difference between the sexes was underlined by the use of different coloured cards for males and females.  
 
Militant groups organised a protest for the first day of registration, the Suffragette Crusaders was one such group.  The advertisement mentioned above, also, requested the loan of a car in the days leading up to the protest to carry banners. An announcement in the same edition set out details of the march from East to West across London. The two groups organising this aspect of the march were the Suffragette Crusaders and the East London Federation of the Suffragettes. Two separate processions were to unite at Queen’s Hall, Langham Place; one from south London and one from southeast London. One slogan used was “A Woman who does a Man’s Work must have a Man’s Pay.” At the last minute, the Queen’s Hall withdrew their permission for the use of the hall when they discovered the women were working class. Undeterred, they persuaded the Portman Rooms to allow them to use their premises. 
 
Charlotte Despard chaired the meeting for over three hours sitting alongside Sylvia Pankhurst. Various resolutions were passed about working women’s conditions and the right of women to vote if they were doing a man’s work. After August 1915, no further press coverage has been found.  
 
Ethel married Gylbert Kershaw, a civil engineer, in 1935 in Birmingham.
 
William is not traceable after 1913.
 
Jennie died in 1953 in Kent.  ​