Swindon in the Past Lane

Today marks the anniversary of Emmeline Pankhurst's birthday, although the date is still up for debate. Emmeline always celebrated her birthday on July 14 aligning her arrival with that other revolutionary happening, Bastille Day. It is more generally accepted that she was born in Manchester on July 15, 1858, the second of Robert and Jane Goulden's ten children. Emmeline Pankhurst Emmeline's involvement in socialist politics began in the 1890s when she joined the fledgling Independent Labour Park with her husband Richard Pankhurst. Her conviction that the only way women could improve their situation, still very much one of subordination to men across every stratum of society, was to campaign for the parliament vote. In 1903 the widowed Emmeline and her daughter Christabel founded the Women's Social and Political Union in Manchester and three years later moved their organisation down to headquarters in London. Mrs Pankhurst under police escort On May 19...

Nicki Western, Marketing, Events and Premises Manager at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, arrived at the Swindon Heritage History Day weighed down with some extremely heavy bags. Among the museum artefacts she had brought with her was a selection of the ever popular Alfred Beaney photographs. Here's a blogpost I published in December 2012 about the Beaney archive. Swindon Museum and Art Gallery has possibly the largest family album ever - and they want to know the names of everyone pictured in it. The albums contain 40,000 photographs taken in the 1940s-70s by local man Albert Beaney.  Alongside his commissioned work Albert would travel the streets of Swindon on his motorbike, taking photographs of the children at play.  He would then return with his prints in the hope of selling them to the childrens' parents. Consequently only addresses and street names were recorded in his notebooks - the names of those pictured remain unknown. In 1998 the collection, a priceles...

In 1906 the suffragette campaign entered its most violent phase. Over 500 women had been imprisoned by 1909 and right up there among the militant activists was a Swindon schoolteacher. Edith Bessie New was born 17th March, 1877 at 24 North Street, Swindon, the fourth of Frederic and Isabelle New's five children. Frederic worked as a railway clerk at the GWR Works and Isabelle was a music teacher. An assistant mistress at Queenstown Infant School from 1899-1901, Edith subsequently left her Swindon home to teach in the deprived areas of Deptford and Lewisham. It was after hearing the charismatic Emmeline Pankhurst speak at a meeting in Trafalgar Square that Edith joined the Women's Social and Political Union. In February 1907 a deputation of suffragettes marched on the House of Commons in protest at the omission of votes for women from the King's speech. What had begun as a peaceful demonstration ended in a violent confrontation with police. Edith was among those arr...

As Lydiard House closes its walled garden doors on another successful  NGS Open for Charity Sunday, SPL takes a trip to neighbouring Cirencester on the trail of a once lost daffodil. The Bowly family roots are dug deep in Cirencest er.   From millers and  brewers to local politicians and a slavery abolionist, the Bowly’s have left their stamp on the town.   But one Bowly wife had family roots of a different kind – daffodil roots. Born in 1851 Sarah Aldam Bowly nee Backhouse, like her husband, came from a Quaker family.  Her father, William Backhouse began work in the Newcastle branch of the family banking business, but his first love was horticulture and in particular, daffodils. Sarah and her four brothers, the children of William’s second marriage to Catherine Aldam, grew up at St. John’s Hall, near Wolsingham Co. Durham where her father owned 669 acres, an ideal setting for William’s studies and where he wrote his major horticultural work, N...

W.W. Wakefield Conservative MP With the war in Europe over, Winston Churchill faced increasing pressure at home to call a General Election.   Winding up the wartime National Government he went to the country to ask the electorate to give their mandate to his Conservative Party. With the town’s newly honoured former MP, Sir Wavell Wakefield, contesting the Marylebone seat, Lieutenant Col. Alistair Gibb became the Conservative candidate in Swindon where he hoped to hold on to his predecessors 975 majority.  His adversary was Labour candidate Thomas Reid. Among the 59,898 names on the new electoral register were 4,679 service voters.  However since its compilation, hundreds of war workers billeted in the area had returned to their homes. “I regard it as the greatest compliment I have yet received that all the boo boys should have followed me here tonight,” said Col. Gibbs, addressing an eve of poll meeting held at the Drill Hall.  Meanwhile, at a Part...

Our fourth and final event of the day.  First the lights went out then Hilary Devey was thirty minutes late.  Was she worth the wait? Frankly, no.  Five minutes into the interview and I was hoping for another power cut. Inconsistencies and contradictions peppered her recollections in conversation with fawning award winning Times columnist Deborah Ross. I couldn't keep up with at which point her son went to the boarding school that introduced him to heroin or when she was wrapping him in tinfoil to keep him warm in the home she couldn't afford to heat yet where she employed a nanny. Much was made of the men in Hilary's life but when asked which lucky Dragon might take her fancy - Duncan, Peter or Theo, she failed to understand the question.  Deborah also struggled with names and faces and referred to 'little Ewan McGregor' who apparently now introduces Dragons' Den.  I'm assuming she meant economist and journalist Evan Davis and not the Scottish born H...

Meet the ladies from the West Swindon Library Reading Group, minus Brenda and Joy.  The group meets on the first Thursday of the month and during their five year history the numbers have ebbed and flowed.  Today Val keeps in touch from her home in Australia while October's meeting saw new member Dee join the group, a cross pollination from Swindon's Big Sing Thing. The group leader is former library assistant Lesley whose job it is to find a general consensus when choosing books, not always an easy task. Reading tastes vary from Anthea who can down a good book in two days to Glenys who is a stickler for reading the group choice whether you like it or not. "Sometimes the blurb makes them sound better than they turn out to be," said Audrey.  The Radleys  by Matt Haig, a tale of an everyday vampire family, received a thumbs down while The Help by Kathryn Stockett was a big success and led to a trip to the cinema to see the film version.  Ano...