Swindon in the Past Lane

On general release from today, the film Suffragette puts fictional character Maud Watts at the very heart of the Votes for Women campaign. The film focuses on the increasingly violent tactics employed by the suffragettes and the level of danger the women were prepared to risk in the battle for enfranchisement. Confusing pre release publicity announced that Helena Bonham Carter would be playing Swindon suffragette Edith New, however, with the film set in 1912, it soon became obvious that the Helena Bonham Carter character was based on a different source, as our Edith had already returned to teaching by that date. Carey Mulligan gave a compelling performance as young mother Maud Watts whose early involvement with the Votes for Women campaign begins because of the plight of fellow laundry worker Violet Miller, played by Anne Marie Duff. The stories of Maud and Violet throw emphasis on the working class members of the Votes for Women campaign in contrast to the more familiar upper ...

In July 2015 the first publicity material was released for a new film called Suffragette. The fight for female enfranchisement had ended in 1928 when the final restrictions were removed and all women over the age of 21 received the vote; yet this is the first time the story has been told on the cinema screen. Early publicity included a trailer  and posters of the lead characters - Meryl Streep, who plays a cameo role as Emmeline Pankhurst; Carey Mulligan as Maud, a ficitional character central to the story line and Helena Bonham Carter as Edith New. Regular readers of this blog and the local history magazine Swindon Heritage will know that Edith New was born in Swindon. She grew up in Old Town and taught at Queenstown Infants' School. In 1901 she moved to London to teach at Calvert Road School in the tough dockland area of East Greenwich. Emmeline Pankhurst with her daughter Christabel formed the Women's Social and Political Union at their Manchester home in 1903. The cha...