The 18 March 1911 issue of the Hastings and St Leonards Observer had the following letter.
AGAINST WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE. RESULT OF A POLL OF HASTINGS WOMEN VOTERS. Madame Amy Wolfen, of 6, Warrior Square-terrace, asks us to publish the following: —
As the Conciliation Bill proposes to enfranchise the women municipal voters, the Hastings and District Branch of the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage has made a canvass of all the women voters of the borough of Hastings by means of a post card enclosed in an envelope and sent by post.
The wording on the card was as follows: — “Do you wish for a Parliamentary vote ? Please answer Yes or No, and post this card.”
The cards returned were counted on Friday, 10th March, with the assistance of the Hon. Secretary of the Hastings, St Leonards, and East Sussex Suffrage Society. The result was as follows: — Out of 2,610 cards, 1,244 were not returned: 921 were endorsed No; 425 were endorsed Yes, and 20 were neutral.
The Hon. Secretary of the Society in favour of Suffrage kindly came to see fair play, and, naturally, does not otherwise associate herself with the canvass.
The mention of women voters meant those entitled to vote in local elections as householders. I have written before on the subject of opposition to women’s suffrage in my post on No votes for women ! An 1889 plea.
Perhaps surprisingly, as the newspaper was hardly a friend of women’s suffrage, on the same page there was an article on ‘Boycott the census’, regarding a meeting held by the Hastings and St Leonards Women’s Suffrage Propaganda League, in an ‘at home’ at its offices on Grand Parade. Miss Neilans of the Women’s Freedom League spoke, and said that ‘to her it was almost a revelation when a woman told her she would like to boycott the Census, but could not because HER HUSBAND WOULD NOT LIKE IT and although they got on very well, she could not leave the house on one night – as the speaker suggested – without his permission… It was proposed that women who resisted should open their houses on the night of April 2nd, and fill them with friends and sympathisers, and simply say their houses were full. The official occupier would write: ‘No votes for women. No information,” or words to that effect on the Census paper. The penalty only applied to the householder, and supposing there were twenty people in a house it could be shared at 5s a head.’ [Hence a total fine of £5. The census was on the 2 April 1911].
So who was Amy Wolfen ? She was the daughter of a senior Admiralty Clerk, Gibbs Harrison, and in the 1891 census was Matron of the Poor Children’s Convalescent Home, West Hill Road, St Leonards.
In 1900, at Paddington, age 50, she married William Wolfen, a widower twenty years her senior. He had been born in Germany and after living for a while in England, where he married his first wife, lived from the late 1850s or so in Sydney, Australia, as a merchant trading with India. He lived in St Leonards from 1886 and became a naturalised British citizen. There are many details about both him and Amy at the Friends of Hastings Cemetery entry for William Wolfen including mention of Amy’s extensive philanthrophic work, which I will not repeat in this post.
The couple settled down to domestic bliss at his residence, 6 Warrior Square Terrace, with six servants. Sadly, William died there after only about 18 months. He left £54031 in his estate, equivalent to £5.7 million in today’s money.
Besides her activities to try to prevent women getting the Parliamentary vote, Amy wrote in again in the same year about a different matter.
The Insurance Act of 1911 is widely regarded as the beginning of the modern welfare state. It also ushered in the end of the poor laws. David Lloyd George was the minister responsible for it. The Conservatives at first praised it, then split, with most opposing it, but did not repeal or change it when they came back in power.
The Hastings Observer, 25 November 1911, gave extensive coverage to objections to the Liberal government’s bill, which was passed and went into effect in 1912. The headlines were ‘The servant tax. A great national petition against the stamp clause. Countess Brassey a leader in the agitation.’
The bill had a clause about domestic servants. Each servant would have to pay 3d a week out of wages, while employers had to match this with another 3d. The money would be paid into a government fund which would be used for sickness benefits and also in some industries (not servants) for unemployment benefits.
Ellen Desart and Sybil de V. Brassey jointly wrote a letter about arranging a protest meeting at the Albert Hall, saying that ‘while their benefit to servants is a matter of grave doubt, it is certain that, as framed, these clauses are vexatious and unsatisfactory to them, and also to their employers – the majority of whom are women – and especially to small householders and those employing occasional help.’ Many titled ladies were lending their names in support of the opposition. Sybil de Vere Brassey (1858-1934) was the second wife of local Liberal politician Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey (1836-1918), and was an enthusiastic supporter of women’s suffrage. No men were listed as supporters.
Amy Wolfen wrote this letter:
To the Editor of the Observer. SIR, — Several persons having expressed a desire that a house-to house canvass for signatures to the form of the Insurance Tax Protest League should be organised, I have undertaken it and shall be glad to see or hear from any one who will undertake to get signatures.
I will supply the forms and allot districts. I have divided the town into 37, and have already ladies working in eight districts.
I have had many years experience with servants and have found them one of the greatest comforts in life, and I would further any legislation for their benefit, but feel that the cost of this tax is out of all proportion to its benefit, and believe it will harm them.
Yours truly
AMY WOLFEN
6, Warrior Square-terrace,
St Leonards
I wonder what the reaction on being canvassed was from those householders who did not employ staff.
Amy’s servants in the 2 April 1911 census, who provided such comfort in her 20-room house at 6 Warrior Square Terrace, where she lived with her 16-year-old niece, were:
Caroline Simmons, 49, housemaid, born London
Ellen Weller, 23, housemaid, born St Leonards on Sea
Kate Naish, 45, cook, born Southampton
Felix Foord, 25, butler, born Hastings
Only one of these was among the six servants in the 1901 census at the same address. This was Felix, who was a page.
In the same issue, there were two critical letters by local servants. Dorothy Smith of 46 Tower Road West wrote in to say that, working as a general servant to keep herself and her invalid mother, Mr Lloyd George was going to rob people of 3d per week ‘to help keep people who will not help themselves’. She would refuse to pay the stamp and any fines, and would willingly go to prison.
E.S.D. of Hollington Park Road wrote in to say that she was one of five servants and none of them would procure the card [for the stamps]. She stated that she did not want to be a slave of Lloyd George.
In an anonymous list of objections to the bill in the same issue, the last three were that
It confers no benefit at all, except the services of an underpaid and overworked State doctor, when the mistress provides board and lodging for the sick servant.
Because mistress and servant are paying the equivalent of four weeks benefits when the average “expectation of sickness” in the case of a servant is one week.
Because it forces servants to pay for that which they do not want.
Amy had views on another matter. In the Hastings Observer, 22 February 1913, there was a long letter by her arguing against the proposal to build a bandstand and permanent seating in the portion of Warrior Square closest to the seafront. She listed seven objections, including ‘The Parade at the end of the Square is the most wind-swept spot in the whole Line. If I want to get into a tram in windy weather I go round by Western-road to the bottom of London-road, as I cannot cross at the end of the Square.’ As most of my readers will know, the bandstand was never built.
Amy Wolfen died in 1920 at 29 Chapel Park Road.
There is a detailed account of both Amy Wolfen and her husband William Wolfen on the Friends of Hastings Cemetery website.