The Suffragettes and Jujitsu

[C. Flower]

I just caught an item on Newstalk in which Elizabeth Garrud, a suffragette who practised jujitsu was discussed. She was already a practitioner when she joined the movement and was teaching self defence to women and children.

http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&...NICMGELzCLduEg

As a suffragette, she formed and led a defence guard of 30 trained women, who acted as a defence and security force for suffragette demonstrations, in which hundreds of women were arrested and assaulted by the police. They were the Bodyguard Unit of the Womens' Social and Political Union (WSPU).

As well as physical defence, they also carried out reconnaissance, scouted escape routes etc.

An exemplary group of women, who took an important part in the campaigns that eventually brought about womens' suffrage in Britain.

Many of the leaders were jailed, went on hunger strike, were released and then re-imprisoned, returning to hunger strike, under the 'Cat and Mouse Act'.
Force feeding, now considered as torture and too dangerous to apply, was also used on them.

The vote was finally gained, sadly, in exchange for support in World War 1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Margaret_Garrud



Woman kicked on the ground at the "Black Friday" demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament.

http://martialhistory.com/wp-content...ck-friday2.jpg

The right to vote was hard-fought, in some cases quite literally with fists and weapons. ....On November 18, 1910, (Black Friday) in response to the Prime Minister quashing a women’s voter bill, 300 suffragettes marched on the House of Commons. In a public relations disaster for the government, police were caught on film assaulting unarmed women attempting to march past. ...Militant suffragettes eventually upped the physical level of their own campaigns and smashed shop windows, burned and even bombed on occasion. When caught and imprisoned, they went on hunger strikes which led to forced feeding through nasal tubes, yet another government public relations disaster.

[fluffybiscuits]

These women really have to be looked up to. They fought and won for their right to have the vote but were sold out by the government in return for support for WW1...

[C. Flower]

These women really have to be looked up to. They fought and won for their right to have the vote but were sold out by the government in return for support for WW1...

In the UK, women 30 and older, who owned property, were given the vote at the end of WW1. In 1928 this was extended to all women 21 and over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...315234076.html

Fascinating - MacSwiney, Devalera, Markieviscz, WT Cosgrave and many others debated a Dail motion on votes for women from 21, on the same terms as men.
A very lively debate indeed.

http://historical-debates.oireachtas...203020023.html

According to this blog, women did get the vote at 21 in 1922.

Can anyone confirm this ?

http://www.vote.ie/why-vote/it's-your-right!.html

Edit: Women in Ireland got the vote from 21 in 1922, six years before the UK.

http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/cumann-na-mban/

[fluffybiscuits]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Markievicz

Markievicz had a big role to play in suffrage movements.

Thanks for the links CF interesting reading...

[Spectabilis]

This book was a revelation to us in the early days of the Irish Women's History Association and the Association for Women's Studies.

Rosemary Cullen Owens, Smashing times: a history of the Irish women's suffrage movement, 1889-1922 (Dublin 1984).

Rosemary also published a history of Louie Bennet, a a suffragist and trade union activist in 2001. Other books by her include Umanageable Revolutionaries on women and N=nationalism and a history of Irish women from 1870 to 1970 which was published in 2005.