Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:44, 10 January 2025

Aethel Tollemache (c. 1875– 26 May 1955) was a British suffragette.

Life

Tollemache was born in Rangoon, Burma in 1875. Her parents were Reverend Clement Reginald Tollemache and Frances Josephine Simpson. She had two sisters, Mary and Grace. They lived in Batheasten Villa in Bath, Somerset.

Tollemache was close friends with Mary Blathwayt of Eagle House. In November 1907, Tollemache and Blathwayt attended a Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) meeting at the Victoria Rooms, Bristol, where they heard speeches by Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and Annie Kenney. After the meeting she joined the WSPU and her sisters and mother soon became involved with the cause.

Tollemache took part in the suffragette boycott of the 1911 census with a group of fellow boycotters. She also participated in militant activism, such as pouring tar in post boxes. In November 1911, she was arrested and imprisoned for fourteen days for window smashing in London. She had broken windows of the Liberal Club. After her release from prison, a welcome home party was organised by the Bath branch of the WSPU.

In 1913, when Tollemache spoke in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, with Barbara Wylie, the women had to be escorted to the railway station by the Police in order to protect them from a crowd of young men who had howled at and rushed at them.

On 21 May 1914, she was arrested following a protest outside Buckingham Palace and went on hunger strike in Holloway Prison.

After World War I, Tollemache became a pacifist and vegetarian and joined Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes. She was arrested in Leytonstone, London, while collecting signatures for a peace memorial but was released with a warning.

She died in 1955.

References

1. ^ Crawford, Elizabeth (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. pp. 688–689. ISBN 978-1-135-43402-1.
2. ^ "Miss Aethel Tollemache". Database - Women's Suffrage Resources. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
3. ^ Boyce, Lucienne (11 April 2019). ""Madder than ever": The Tollemache Family of Batheaston". Francesca Scriblerus. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
4. Hammond, Cynthia Imogen (2012). Architects, Angels, Activists and the City of Bath, 1765-1965: Engaging with Women's Spatial Interventions in Buildings and Landscape. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 190. ISBN 978-1-4094-0043-1.
5. Gray, Catriona (28 October 2018). "From suffragette hideout to hippie commune: inside a fixer-upper castle in Bath". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 10 January 2025.
6. Hammond, Cynthia (1 January 2013). "Suffragette City: Spatial Knowledge and Suffrage Work in Bath, 1909-14". Bath History.
7. Atkinson, Diane (2019). Rise Up, Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-4088-4405-2.
8. Holton, Sandra; Purvis, June (4 January 2002). Votes For Women. Routledge. p. 240. ISBN 978-1-134-61064-8.
9. Crawford, Elizabeth (15 April 2013). The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey. Routledge. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-136-01062-0.
10. Boyce, Lucienne. Swindon, Wiltshire and the Suffragettes. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
11. Duthie, Sky. (September 2019) Vegetarianism and the British Left, c.1790-1900. PhD thesis, University of York. p. 297.

External links

• Photograph of Tollemache on a postcard via the London Museum
• Roll of Honour of Suffragette Prisoners 1905-1914 via the National Archives

• 1875 births
• 1955 deaths
• British suffragettes
• Eagle House suffragettes
• Suffragette 1911 census boycotters
• Tollemache family