Struggle and Suffrage in Morpeth & Northumberland: Women's Lives and the Fight for Equality

By Craig Armstrong

A portrait of the battle for voting rights in a rural English county, and the dramatic life and death of one fierce suffragette.

For much of the nineteenth century, the women of Northumberland occupied crucial, though largely underappreciated, roles in society. Aside from the hard life of raising families in an area where money was often hard to come by and much of the available work was labor-intensive and dangerous, women were also expected to help bring money into the household.

In what was a largely agrarian county, female laborers, known as bondagers, were widely respected for their contribution to the local economy, though there were those who criticized the system for forcing women to undertake hard manual labor. The farming economy in Northumberland depended so much on female labor that many men found it easier to be taken on by an employer if they were able to bring a suitable female worker with them.

The period was also one of considerable upheaval. There were a number of prominent Northumbrian suffragists, and the local radical suffragettes launched attacks in the area. Morpeth was a very early supporter of women’s suffrage and the mayor and local council actively supported the cause, though they remained largely opposed to the actions of the suffragettes. Among other topics, this book follows the story of London-born Emily Wilding Davison, whose mother was Northumbrian and had a wide network of relations in the county. After her father’s death, her mother relocated to the Northumberland village of Longhorsley and Emily spent long periods with her, recuperating after her numerous hunger strikes. Famously losing her life after being struck by the king’s horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, Emily was buried with great ceremony in a quiet churchyard and to this day remains one of Morpeth’s most famous (adopted) daughters, her grave a site of pilgrimage for supporters of women’s rights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526719676

Craig Armstrong

Born and bred in Northumberland, Dr Craig Armstrong is an experienced historian with a special interest in the history of the North East of England and the Anglo-Scottish Borders. He has expertise in 19th and 20th century history with a particular focus on social and military history.Dr Armstrong currently splits his time between teaching at Newcastle University and working as a freelance researcher and writer on the history of North East England and Scotland.

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Introduction

Northumberland was, and remains, a sparsely populated county and, according to the 2001 census, had the lowest population density in England with just sixty-two people per square kilometre. The total population in 2001 was just 307,190. These factors impacted on the development of the county and the population throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries dwelled largely in small – by British standards – market and former market towns and in widely scattered small villages and hamlets.

For the women of the county, life could at times be harsh and a degree of resilience and self-reliance was often a necessity. Although traditionally a patriarchal society, women, especially older women, had significant and often unseen influence upon their menfolk. Lying on the Scottish border as it does, Northumberland and its inhabitants had been strongly influenced by border history and many observers stated that the Northumbrian character was more in keeping with the Scottish borderer than their English neighbours. This, to a large extent, remains true, and the historical and cultural links remain strong between the two areas. Some even claimed that this had an influence upon attitudes towards marriage and sexual behaviour among both men and women.

The largely rural county was dependent upon agriculture, and a unique system that relied upon female labour developed and continued throughout the period. Other than agriculture, the county developed an economically powerful and influential coalfield in the south-east, while fishing played a significant role in the coastal economy. Until 1400 Newcastle had been a part of the county, but this city had then been designated as a county in its own right, although it still exerted a strong economic and social influence over Northumberland. It was only in 1844 that the historic shires of Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire and Norhamshire were incorporated into the county, having previously been under the power of the bishops of Durham.

This book considers in a very broad sense the lives of the women of Northumberland. An in-depth study of every aspect of women’s lives in the county is impossible given the brevity of the current book, but it is hoped that a very good idea of the challenges that faced the women of Northumberland can be discerned from these pages.

Particular consideration is given to the impact of the suffragist movement and, especially, to the life and untimely death of Miss Emily Wilding Davison. The radical suffragette has become one of the heroines of Northumberland, spoken of in the same awed tones as those reserved for women such as Grace Darling. Miss Davison’s memory has become a rallying cry for feminism in the region (and beyond), but the truth is that she was not born in the county (although she had extremely strong family links to Northumberland and loved the county throughout her brief life) and spent relatively little time here. Nevertheless, Emily, a complex character whose life remains, in some respects, shrouded in mystery, has become synonymous with Northumberland and its women’s spirit of determination and independence.

The book also includes two chapters giving a very brief overview of the impact that the two world wars had upon the women of Northumberland and the significant part they played in maintaining morale, supporting the armed forces, protecting the home front and working as part of the war effort.

CHAPTER ONE

Victorian Northumberland

For those women who were born into and lived in rural Northumberland opportunities and options were far more limited than for their counterparts who resided in the larger towns. Agriculture in Northumberland was unique in England during the Victorian period in the number of women who were employed in labour and by the employment terms that governed their lives. In the rural parts of the county, the system known as bondage held sway for many years.

The women hired on as bondagers at the annual hirings, which were a feature of the Northumbrian market towns. At these hiring fairs agreements would be made between the farmers and male labourers (known locally as hinds) whereby payment, both in cash and in kind, would be agreed along with accommodation and, for much of the century, a common contractual stipulation that the labourer would also provide a bondager for a term of either six or twelve months. The bondager, unlike the hind, was guaranteed pay only for the days she worked and wages varied depending upon the type of labour that was carried out on a particular day. The bondagers could be clearly identified as they wore a form of unofficial uniform consisting of a distinctive bonnet (quite often referred to as an ‘ugly’), headscarf, blouse (often blue), sackings around the legs and striped woollen skirts, below which were, if they were lucky, hard-wearing boots.

There were two other options within the field of agriculture for Northumbrian women. In the south of Northumberland, particularly around Newcastle and Morpeth, women frequently hired themselves on as casual labour on a daily basis. This was especially common during important periods such as the harvest, but was, obviously, dependent upon the closeness of town and farm, along with the fact that such a woman required another source of income.

The other category of female labourer was the cottar. This was a field that was open only to single women or widows and such women were hired directly by the farmer for a specified contract period. The contract most often included a rentfree cottage and some basic provision of coal and potatoes throughout the term of the contract (usually twelve months). In return for this provision the cottar agreed to be available to work on the farm when required for an agreed daily wage. In some cases a mother and daughter were taken on and this was referred to as a double cottar. For the cottar such an agreement provided a degree of security in terms of both employment and living conditions, but the use of cottars was growing increasingly uncommon as the system had several weaknesses. It depended upon a farmer having sufficient empty cottages on his property to employ cottars and there was some moral disquiet over women working in such conditions where they were removed from a patriarchal family structure. For the farmer, it was often more economical to fill a vacant cottage with a hind and his family or a hind and hired bondager.

The conditions faced by female agricultural labourers varied widely, depending on factors such as the attitude of their employer and the traditions of the area. The dukes of Northumberland, for example, were keen throughout the nineteenth century to be seen as improving the lot of their farm labourers and to limit and even eliminate the dependence upon bondagers on their lands. They were, however, a rare example and, despite a steady decline in female labour as the century went on, female agricultural workers still made up 25 per cent of the farm labourers in Northumberland and 12.5 per cent of the total for the entirety of England during the 1890s. So vital was the contribution of the female farm labourer to the agricultural economy of Northumberland that in 1867 the Hexham Board of Guardians stated that the prohibition of female labour would simply lead to a prohibition on farming in the county.

The peculiar system of relying upon female agricultural labour in Northumberland arose from several factors, but one of the most important was the sheer scarcity of labour in the sparsely populated county. Rural Northumberland in the nineteenth century was very sparsely populated indeed, and villages were few and widely scattered. Even the villages themselves would often have been classed as nothing more than hamlets by those used to the larger populations of the south. A great many of the population lived on isolated farms in cottages that varied immensely in terms of living conditions. Employment choice for women was further limited by the scarcity of industries such as textile manufacture and, for many women from the area, the higher wages on offer for farm labourers was a continuing attraction and draw.

The isolated communities of Glendale in north Northumberland typify this. In the census returns throughout the century for Glendale it can clearly be seen that women far exceeded the numbers of men. The population of the area declined throughout the century, but it is clear that men were leaving in greater numbers and at a greater rate than were women.

Glendale, with its dependence on sheep farming, was an area that remained popular with bondagers and in 1851 the census reveals that 24 per cent of women were involved in agricultural work and 15 per cent were noted as being full-time agricultural labourers. This compares with similar average figures of 8.5 per cent and 3 per cent respectively for the rest of Northumberland. Twenty years later, the number had decreased to 16 per cent, but this was partially explained by the fact that the category of farmer’s wife had been eliminated from the total, despite the fact that the vast majority of farmer’s wives could certainly be said to be working on the land.

This difference in the ratio between men and women had other effects upon women’s lives in the rural hinterlands. Women living in such areas were far less likely to get married, and when they did so, they were often older. The census of 1871 reveals that in Glendale an astounding 52 per cent of women aged 20 to 45 were unmarried compared to an average of just 34 per cent in the rest of England and Wales. This was not solely down to a scarcity of men. The census returns also show that fewer men got married in the area and this is perhaps explained, at least partially, by the transitory nature of the hiring system which saw people moving from area to area on a yearly and sometimes even more frequent basis.

Bondagers were hired almost solely on the basis of their perceived physical strength and hardiness. The hiring fairs must often have been akin to slave auctions, with farmers and hinds assessing women who wished to be employed, in a purely physical and distant manner. The job status of the women was clearly shown by those who remained unhired wearing tickets, these being replaced with red ribbons upon agreement of a contract.

A study of the bondagers of Glendale shows that many lived in with established families consisting of a hind, his wife and children. These bondagers were most often between the ages of 15 and 24 and a substantial number of them came from Scotland (with smaller numbers from Ireland). Even those from Northumberland were often found far from the place where they had been born and kinship links for such