Beginnings: The 1866 Petition for Women’s suffrage on the Isle of Wight
- Mapping Women's Suffrage
- Nov 4, 2025
- 3 min read
by Becca Aspden
In my last blog I talked about my research into the women who lived (for the most part) and campaigned on the Isle of Wight and had established family roots and homes there. For this mini blog, I want to go back to the beginning to look at how the fight for votes for women on the Island began.
The movement on the Island began with the 1866 female suffrage petition signed by about 1,500 women across the country and presented by Liberal MP John Stuart Mill to parliament in 1867 calling for an women’s suffrage amendment to the 1867 (Second) Reform Act which gave new voting rights to more men. Three women from the Isle of Wight signed the petition. These were Ellen Cantello, Elizabeth Thompson, and Sarah James.
Ellen Cantello and Elizabeth Thompson were sisters. Their parents were William and Elizabeth Cantello, who were members of the chartist movement formed by working class people to demand political rights. William was a publican in Newport and landlord of the Eight Bells pub, which is still open today! The Cantello sisters also had two brothers, John, who was a portrait painter, and William, who made what is suspected to be the first example of a machine gun before disappearing into complete obscurity.
Ellen Cantello was a well-known watercolour artist. She lived in London in the 1860s and was a member of the Royal Society of Watercolourists, the highest honour for a female painter as women were barred from entering the Royal Academy. Many of Ellen’s works are held in storage at Carisbrooke Castle. When she signed the 1866 petition for female suffrage, she was living at 69 High Street in Carisbrooke. Ellen remained single and never married.
Less is known about her sister Elizabeth other than that she married, unlike her sister. While the identity of the man Ellen married has been difficult to ascertain, her husband had died by 1891. Therefore, the 1891 census shows Ellen and Elizabeth living together at Hope Road in Shanklin on the Island. Ellen died in 1898 in Lake, leaving £253 to her sister Elizabeth (equating to £28,600.29 in July 2025).
Even less is known about the other Isle of Wight 1866 petition signee, Sarah James, other than that she lived at St James Street, Newtown, at the time of signing the petition. As signatures for it were often collected through local door knocking, established social connections and other networks such as family and friends, it is highly likely that Sarah knew sisters Elizabeth and Ellen in some capacity. Perhaps they were friends, belonged to a local church or other social group, or Sarah was perhaps related to them by marriage or in some other way. We can only speculate on this.
However, together, these three women represented the beginnings of a women’s suffrage movement on the Isle of Wight although the seeds they sowed would not flourish until the early twentieth century when the popularity of the women’s suffrage movement across the country reached its height. Nonetheless, their actions represent a key moment in the Island’s suffrage story and in its wider history of women’s political activism.
My special thanks to Hannah Griffiths for sharing her work on this topic with me which was instrumental to this blog and the concept for my URSS project on women’s suffrage on the Isle of Wight.
About the Author
Becca Aspden is an undergraduate Warwick history student and URSS researcher. Originally from the Isle of Wight, she has a strong passion for local history and heritage. She has written multiple exhibition pieces for the IW Steam Railway as a conservation volunteer. She became interested in women's suffrage through her degree and is continuing her research on the Island's suffrage movement and other local history projects
Bibliography
Griffiths, Hannah. 2018. ‘Ellen Cantelo, Elizabeth Thompson and Sarah James - Isle of Wight Hidden Heroes’, Isle of Wight Hidden Heroes <https://iwhiddenheroes.org.uk/ellen-cantelo-elizabeth-thompson-and-sarah-james/>
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