When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison stepped out in front of George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby on 4 June 1913, she guaranteed her place in the history books alongside the likes of the Pankhursts, Sophia Duleep Singh and Millicent Fawcett. But what about the unsung heroes who toiled away behind the scenes and played their own roles in the fight for women’s votes – women such as Anne Padfield’s relation Rosaline McCheyne?
Anne, who was born and brought up in Essex and whose maiden name is McCheyne, began researching her ancestors when she was a teenager. “All four of my grandparents came here from Scotland as children. At the end of the 19th century, there was a huge slump in arable farming in Essex. One of the big land agents in the county had the bright idea of advertising in Scottish newspapers for dairy farmers to move down and take over places that had become derelict because the tenants had gone bust.” The landlords offered very low rents, because the dairy farmers would get the farms back on their feet.
“You got one Scottish farmer coming down, and then half of his cousins would come down a year or two later. Most of the farmers were from Ayrshire, which was a really good dairying area. My grandfather, Allan Craig McCheyne, originally came from Moniaive in Dumfriesshire.”
Having uncovered generations of farmers in her tree, it was a pleasant surprise for Anne when she came across Rosaline McCheyne, née Franklin (1870–1954), who married Anne’s first cousin twice removed Herbert McCheyne. “I knew Rosaline’s daughter Georgina, a distant cousin, very well when we were growing up – she mentioned once, almost in passing, that her mother was a suffragette.” Rosaline married Herbert, a cousin of Anne’s grandfather.
Herbert’s family didn’t all go into farming, though. He and some of his brothers migrated to London, and Herbert became a carpentry teacher. The couple had a house in Bow, in the east of the city. “They lived in Fairfield Road, a few hundred yards from the Bryant and May match factory where the match girls’ strike began in 1888.” The London branch of the family would often visit Anne’s side and stay at their big old farmhouse Mountnessing Hall, near Shenfield.
Anne didn’t begin researching Rosaline until 2018. It was the centenary of the Representation of the People Act that gave women the vote subject to a property qualification, and a lot more material about the suffragettes was published online. That gave her the push that she needed.
“Basically I had the name and not much more than that. I also took out a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive, and when I searched for Rosaline’s name I was amazed to find dozens of references to her in the Woman’s Dreadnought, the publication of Sylvia Pankhurst’s militant organisation the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).
“When I searched for Rosaline’s name I was amazed to find dozens of references to her in the Woman’s Dreadnought“
Like Rosaline, Sylvia lived in the East End of London. “Sylvia was so appalled at the hardship and poverty of working-class women that she wanted to help improve their living conditions, as well as campaign for their voting rights,” says Anne. Rosaline, according to the Dreadnought, had also been very busy with the cause. “She was on this committee, she was organising that event, people had to write to her if they wanted to go on this march or this outing, and she was running a mother-and-baby clinic where the poor could get free milk for their babies.”
Googling her relation’s name, Anne was amazed to find a reference to an exhibition at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives. She decided to pay the archives a visit to see the exhibition and find out what records they held. “They had original copies of the Woman’s Dreadnought there, and I was able to look at some of the minutes of the meetings of Sylvia Pankhurst’s committee – the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS),” says Anne.
“The minutes confirmed that Rosaline, having been an early recruit to the cause in 1913, joined Sylvia Pankhurst’s committee in February 1914, and soon became joint secretary (effectively the organiser) of the Bromley-by-Bow branch, on top of her numerous other activities. Although Rosaline worked very hard on the committee, there are only very rare references to her making a comment. I got the impression that she was a doer rather than a talker. She was very much behind the scenes and that was one of the interesting things – that she didn’t give speeches or lead marches or anything, she was always in the background doing the more boring stuff.”
“She didn’t give speeches or lead marches or anything, she was always in the background doing the more boring stuff”
The exhibition held another surprise. “Jane McChrystal, a local historian, had chosen to research Rosaline as one of those committee people who work quietly behind the scenes, helping everything run smoothly. Rosaline’s panel included a photograph, which I was very excited about because the only one I had of her was taken when she was well into middle age. There was a picture of her at the suffragettes’ mother-and-baby clinic in Bromley-by-Bow.”
“I arranged to meet Jane,” says Anne. “She knew a lot about Rosaline’s suffragette work and the movement, but she didn’t know anything about her family history. While I knew all the family background, but I didn’t know a great deal about her activity in the suffragettes. So we shared our research, which was great. Jane has written it up in a series of essays, and we still email each other.
“It’s amazing to think that Rosaline was sitting on a committee with Sylvia Pankhurst, and that they obviously knew each other well and were in frequent communication.
“Talking to Jane, I remembered Georgina telling me that her mother had been involved in some sort of rally in a park. It had been broken up by the police, although Rosaline wasn’t injured. Jane instantly recognised this as the 1914 May Procession to Victoria Park, when Sylvia and many of her ‘bodyguard’ had been arrested, suffering shockingly rough treatment by the police. Mothers like Rosaline with young children – Georgina was seven at the time, and her brother Don was four – were not expected to march with Sylvia’s bodyguard, since they could not afford to be imprisoned. Instead, Rosaline was in charge of the bail money.” This was to be paid to free any suffragettes who were arrested during the rally.
But in 1915, something happened to make Rosaline step back from the cause that had been so important to her. “It’s a real mystery. One minute she was doing everything, and the next it says in the committee notes that Mrs McCheyne was going to be moving house so she couldn’t continue any more,” says Anne.
However, the McCheynes didn’t move – in fact, they lived in their house in Fairfield Road for another 10 years. “Rosaline even went to a couple of committee meetings after she’d resigned. I wondered whether she’d suffered from burn-out – she’d done far too much, and perhaps as one of life’s volunteers she thought she’d just have to step right back.”
“There were also definite signs of other volunteers falling out with each other,” Anne reveals. “There was more pressure on committee members, too, as the movement changed pace.” While Sylvia’s organisation was becoming more aligned with the Socialist movement and the Labour Party, Anne discovered that Rosaline’s husband Herbert was active within the local Conservative association. So perhaps there was a clash of politics at home as well.
An announcement in the Dreadnought, almost certainly written by Sylvia Pankhurst herself, reads: “Mrs McCheyne and Mrs Mantle have carried on in the most splendid way the work of our Bromley Office and Baby Clinic ever since they were started… All the ELFS members know Mrs McCheyne, for she was one of our first recruits in East London, and has always been one of our hardest workers… We all thank her and hope that we shall see her from time to time.”
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Anne is very proud to have such a principled woman in her tree. “I wonder if she realised how important her work was, or how long-lasting it would be? I’m just glad she got to vote.”