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Derbyshire's Suffragettes and Suffragists The Growing List...


Annie Wheeldon (right), along with her two daughters (centre) and a prison-warder

Anne Brewer Mickleover , Derby- 1908/09 Joint NUWSS Branch Secretary

Bridgette Martin

Daisy Bullock Adsett Cottage, College Street

Mrs Mary Anne Clayton - Chesterfield based printer, bookseller and dealer of antique china, Chaired a meeting on women's suffrage in Dronfield on Sept 8th 1874

Mrs Ashwell Cooke Brakendale, Lightwood Road Buxton. First Secretary of Buxton NUWSS IN 1913

Mrs Sowter/ Sowler? Field House, Duffield NUWSS Branch Secretary 1913

Elsa Gye

Miss Goldthorpe 5 Lord Street Glossop

Miss N.C. Hague 12 Drummond Road

Winifred Jones Chesterfield

Alderman Frederic Longdon - was also a Quaker, mill owner and founder of the Derby Coco and Coffee House on Osamaston Rd Derby.

Bridget Martin Darley Abbey Vicarage 1908 /09 Joint NUWSS Branch Secretary

Winnie Mason Derby

Alfred Mason Derby

Ruth Prinsep, Derby

Miss C.D. Simpson Lynton

Frances Sutcliffe 9 Hartington Road, Branch of Chruch League for Women's Suffrage formed in Buxton in 1913. She was also a member of NUWSS, the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association and the Yorkshire Ladies Council of Education

Alice Wheeldon Derby

Hettie Wheeldon Derby

Mrs Worthington (Kirkstyles, Duffield) NUWSS Branch Secretary 1912

NB to this list we wish to add

Hannah Mitchell - Alport Castles, Hope Woodlands, Derbyshire Peak District. Hannah was the daughter of a farmer, she was the fourth of six children. her father taught her to read but she was not permitted a formal education. In her early years she spent much time at home helping her mother with domestic chores and grew up with the expectation that she would look after her father and brothers, which she resented.

It was in her formative years Derbyshire that she became acutely aware of gender inequality in the domestic sphere. She also observed the seemingly inevitable early marriages of girls around her to "farm lads", in order to avoid having children out of wedlock, and was keen to avoid the same fate. She later said in her autobiography that her mother was a bad-tempered and violent woman who sometimes made her children sleep in the barn. At age 13 she became an apprentice dressmaker, to earn extra money for her impoverished family but by 14 she left home to live in Bolton, Lancashire after an argument with her mother , where she found work as a dressmaker and in domestic service. We maintain that by age 14, Hannah was nearly at adult as the seeds for her subsequent activism were already sewn and had begin to grow. We therefore lay claim to the amazing suffragette that she would later become. To read more click here.

Florence Nightingale - Florence was of course born in Italy but she grew up between her two family homes at Embley, in Hampshire and Lea Hurst, in Derbyshire. Florence maintained her links with Lea until her death on 13 August 1910


We found reports of Suffrage meetings being held at Derby Town hall as early as February 9th1875, chaired by Alderman Frederick Longdon, Lydia Becker and Caroline Biggs were speakers. However the signing of The 1869 Petition by 27 women at Smedley's Hydro Matlock suggests much earlier suffrage activism.....

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