The Suffragettes in Bristol.
- Mapping Women's Suffrage
- Nov 13
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 17
by Becca Aspden
During my stay over in Bristol on my way home to the Isle of Wight for summer break, I read about two prominent members of Mrs Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) who lived and fought for women's suffrage in Bristol during the campaign and whose stories I found fascinating and inspirational: Annie Kenney and Lilian Lenton.
Annie Kenney was described as the ‘suffragette mill girl’ due to her working-class background. She started working in a mill aged just 10 years old. Annie was first arrested in 1905 for speaking out at a Liberal Party meeting held by Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey who were at that time in the Liberal government and voicing opinions against votes for women. She attended the meeting with one of leader Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughters, Christabel Pankhurst. The two disrupted the meeting and were arrested by police, Christabel for allegedly spitting though she denied this. Nonetheless, the incident made newspaper headlines and the suffrage campaign saw a surge in membership across all societies around the country.
Annie was instrumental in shaping the WSPU into the organisation it became, helping organise early WSPU meetings in London. Annie's work in Bristol began in 1907 when she became the WSPU organiser for the Southwest. She was paid £2 a week to organise and increase participation in Bristol. On her arrival, she was welcomed by suffrage campaigners Anna Maria and Mary Priestman who helped her get started.
She regularly interacted with Mary Blathwayt and the Blathwayt family who lived in nearby Bath and supported suffragettes recuperating after they had been released from prison – often having been on hunger strike and forcibly fed – a brutal practice from which many suffragettes’ health never recovered. Annie was herself arrested 13 times enduring such hardships. She took part in the suffrage ‘boycott’ of the government’s 1911 census survey by ‘resisting’ it while living in Bristol. She provided her occupation as ‘suffragette’ on the census (not in the government’s eyes a legitimate occupation!) but refused to give further information. Annie also claimed to have organised a mass evasion of the 1911 census in Bristol but based on official records, it is hard to conclude whether this was exaggerated or not.
Annie would continue her activism after leaving Bristol and even became a surrogate leader for the WSPU after Christabel Pankhurst fled to France to evade capture by the police in 1912. Eventually, she resigned from the movement after the birth of her son, choosing to live a quieter, domestic life. There is now a statue dedicated to her in Oldham where she was born. Annie remains one of the few working class women who gained a prominent role in the votes for women campaign.
While Annie Kenney moved to Bristol to help grow the city's movement, Lilian Lenton’s activism began in Bristol. Lilian took part in the suffrage boycott of the 1911 census which she evaded altogether while living at 32 Pennywell Road, Bristol. Then aged just 20 years old, she was absent from her home when census officials called and is thought to have evaded together with her mother.
Lilian joined the WSPU in 1912, and her first arrest swiftly followed as she participated in the window-smashing campaign organised by the WSPU that year. She was imprisoned for 2 months under the pseudonym ‘Ida Inkley’ – she would use many of false names during the campaign. Her militancy continued including with her setting fire to the tea pavilion in Kew Gardens in 1913. She did this with fellow suffragette Olive Wharry. I was fortunate enough to visit Kew Gardens recently and was able to see where the tea pavilion once stood (it is now the pavilion bar and grill) and the Palm House, which was also targeted by suffragettes around the same time as Lilian and Olive’s arson escapade.
After being arrested over Kew, Lilian went on a hunger strike for 2 days: a tactic often employed by suffragettes to secure early release from prison (though it began as a protest at their being imprisoned as ‘criminals’ rather than as political prisoners). She was forcibly fed (a brutal, painful practice) by a nasal tube while on hunger strike until she fell ill from food wrongly being forced into her lungs instead of her stomach. This led to a furore of criticism (including from the usually hostile press) being aimed at the Home Office which denied the forced feeding despite records that clearly proved otherwise.
Lilian’s life of militancy continued in a cycle of imprisonment, hunger strike, and release. Later, in a 1960 interview with the BBC, she described how her ‘speciality was escapes’ and highlighted the incompetence of the police from whom she escaped unnoticed on numerous occasions, outwitting them with the help of fellow suffragettes. Under the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act passed quickly by the government in 1913, the police surveilled suffragettes on release from prison to recover their health, so they could immediately re arrest them the moment they set foot outside.
You can listen to Lilian’s interview here https://www.bbc.co.uk/videos/c72p2n2479go
Lilian was unsatisfied with the terms of the Representation of the People Act when it was passed by government in 1918 after the war, to allow some women over 30 to vote who met certain property qualifications. Lilian from an ordinary background could not vote despite meeting the age requirement due to her lack of property, a poor repayment for all her personal sacrifices in the fight to win votes for women. Nonetheless, she continued her suffrage work as editor for the Women’s Freedom League’s (WFL) Bulletin paper and as a travelling organiser for the society. The WFL was a splinter group from the WSPU formed in 1907 that had kept a much greater focus on working class women’s plight.
Both women, Annie and Lilian, discussed in this blog made huge personal sacrifices in the hope of women being able to vote. They helped the WSPU evolve nationally as well as specifically in Bristol itself by challenging the most influential figures in government with their actions while risking their lives and health for the cause. For Lilian Lenton this fight continued on through the WFL even when the government failed to grant her and other women like her the vote in 1918, until it was secured for all women on the same terms as men some 10 years later in 1928.
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
Liddington, Jill, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014) p.320.
Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866 -1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999) pp.341-42.
‘BBC Archive 1960: Lilian Lenton Suffragettes’ (2024) BBC <https://www.bbc.co.uk/videos/c72p2n2479go>
Bell, Bethan, ‘Actresses and Arsonists: Women Who Won the Vote’ (2018) BBC News <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42635771>
BBC News, ‘Annie Kenney: Statue to Mark “Overlooked” Suffragette’ (2018)<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-45918651> [accessed 9 June 2025]
Coughlan, Sean, ‘Imprisoned Suffragette Letter Discovered’, BBC News (2018)<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-45576262> [accessed 9 June 2025]
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