Aethel Tollemache
Aethel Tollemache (c. 1875– 26 May 1955) was a British suffragette.[1]
Life
[edit]Tollemache was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1875.[2] Her parents were Reverend Clement Reginald Tollemache and Frances Josephine Simpson. She had two sisters, Mary and Grace.[3] They lived in Batheasten Villa in Bath, Somerset.[4][5]
Tollemache was close friends with Mary Blathwayt of Eagle House. In November 1907, Tollemache and Blathwayt attended a Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) meeting at the Victoria Rooms, Bristol,[1][6] where they heard speeches by Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and Annie Kenney.[7] After the meeting she joined the WSPU and her sisters and mother soon became involved with the cause.[3]
Tollemache took part in the suffragette boycott of the 1911 census with a group of fellow boycotters.[2] She also participated in militant activism, such as pouring tar in post boxes.[8] In November 1911, she was arrested and imprisoned for fourteen days for window smashing in London. She had broken windows of the Liberal Club. After her release from prison, a welcome home party was organised by the Bath branch of the WSPU.[9]
In 1913, when Tollemache spoke in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, with Barbara Wylie, the women had to be escorted to the railway station by the Police in order to protect them from a crowd of young men who had howled at and rushed at them.[10]
On 21 May 1914, she was arrested following a protest outside Buckingham Palace and went on hunger strike in Holloway Prison.[1]
After World War I, Tollemache became a pacifist and vegetarian[11] and joined Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes.[3] She was arrested in Leytonstone, London, while collecting signatures for a peace memorial but was released with a warning.[3]
She died in 1955.[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d Crawford, Elizabeth (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. pp. 688–689. ISBN 978-1-135-43402-1.
- ^ a b "Miss Aethel Tollemache". Database - Women's Suffrage Resources. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
- ^ a b c d Boyce, Lucienne (11 April 2019). ""Madder than ever": The Tollemache Family of Batheaston". Francesca Scriblerus. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
- ^ Hammond, Cynthia Imogen (2012). Architects, Angels, Activists and the City of Bath, 1765-1965: Engaging with Women's Spatial Interventions in Buildings and Landscape. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 190. ISBN 978-1-4094-0043-1.
- ^ Gray, Catriona (28 October 2018). "From suffragette hideout to hippie commune: inside a fixer-upper castle in Bath". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
- ^ Hammond, Cynthia (1 January 2013). "Suffragette City: Spatial Knowledge and Suffrage Work in Bath, 1909-14". Bath History.
- ^ Atkinson, Diane (2019). Rise Up, Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-4088-4405-2.
- ^ Holton, Sandra; Purvis, June (4 January 2002). Votes For Women. Routledge. p. 240. ISBN 978-1-134-61064-8.
- ^ Crawford, Elizabeth (15 April 2013). The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey. Routledge. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-136-01062-0.
- ^ Boyce, Lucienne. Swindon, Wiltshire and the Suffragettes. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
- ^ Duthie, Sky. (September 2019) Vegetarianism and the British Left, c.1790-1900. PhD thesis, University of York. p. 297.
External links
[edit]- Photograph of Tollemache on a postcard via the London Museum
- Roll of Honour of Suffragette Prisoners 1905-1914 via the National Archives