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NLA News - home February 2003 Volume XIII Number 5
Portrait of Muriel Matters from the Women’s Freedom League Portrait of Nellie Martel. Reproduced from Votes for Women (London: Reformer’s Press, 1907–18) Portrait of Dora Montefiore, Sydney, 1923. Reproduced from frontispiece of From a Victorian to a Modern ([London]: E. Archer, 1927)

Portrait of Muriel Matters from the Women’s Freedom League
Pictures Collection

Portrait of Nellie Martel
Reproduced from Votes for Women
(London: Reformer’s Press, 1907–18)

Portrait of Dora Montefiore, Sydney, 1923. Reproduced from frontispiece of From a Victorian to a Modern
([London]: E. Archer, 1927)

Sister Suffragists: Australian Women Activists in England

Ann Nugent unearths the largely untold stories of three women prominent in the suffrage movement in Australia and England as documented in the National Library’s collections

Unlike their sisters in England, Australian women gained the right to vote after a relatively short and bloodless struggle. With the regrettable exception of Aboriginal people, universal suffrage was achieved federally with the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902.

At least three women who had been active in the Australian suffrage movement left Australia and joined women’s rights movements in England. They were Nellie Martel, Muriel Matters and Dora Montefiore.

Muriel Matters during the 'Votes for Women' caravan tour of villages in the south of England in 1908

Muriel Matters during the 'Votes for Women' caravan tour of villages in the south of England in 1908
Pictures Collection

Nellie Alma Martel was one of the first three women to stand for election to the Federal Parliament in the Senate elections of 1903. In those elections, Vida Goldstein stood for Victoria and Mary Ann Moore Bentley and Nellie Martel stood for New South Wales. Martel secured a creditable 19 946 votes although none of the women were elected.

In 1891, Martel joined the Womenhood Suffrage League of New South Wales (WSL). Here she met leading feminists and Sydney intellectuals. In 1897 the WSL petitioned the Federal Convention, then meeting in Adelaide, to have the women’s vote written into the federal agenda, a politically astute move which opened the way for women’s suffrage at both federal and state levels. This historic petition was signed by the WSL executive, with ‘Nellie Alma Martel’ as ‘Recording Secretary’.

Two years after her electoral defeat, Martel went to England where she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in London. A photograph from this time shows Mrs Martel with Mrs Pankhurst and other committee members at work in the WSPU headquarters. Records of Martel’s WSPU activity are found in its weekly journal, Votes for Women. According to Votes for Women, Mrs Martel served on the WSPU Committee at least until 17 September 1908.

On 12 May 1905, soon after her arrival in London, Mrs Martel led a contingent of 400 working women to the House of Commons, where Mrs Pankhurst and her followers had assembled to hear the Suffrage Bill introduced. When time for the Bill was cut short, the women were indignant and left the House. The police outside ordered them to disperse; however, a deal was brokered and the women were told they might meet at the gates of Westminster Abbey. At this point Mrs Pankhurst called on Mrs Martel as the only woman voter to lead the women to the meeting place. No arrests were recorded on this occasion.

Nellie Martel with Mrs Pankhurst and other committee members at works in the Women’s Social and Political Union in London

Nellie Martel with Mrs Pankhurst and other committee members at works in the Women’s Social and Political Union in London
Pictures Collection

In a demonstration on 21 June 1906, at the house of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Asquith, four suffragists were arrested and three of them sentenced to six weeks in Holloway Prison. A surviving handbill advises that at 3 pm at Victoria Park on Sunday, 15 July, Mrs Montefiore and Mrs Martel will speak in ‘protest against the unjust and vindictive sentences passed on the three Women Suffragists’.

In another incident at the House of Commons, October 1906, Mrs Martel and Mrs Montefiore were ‘frog-marched’ away by police. Mrs Montefiore was sentenced to two months imprisonment in Holloway, but Mrs Martel seems to have avoided prison.

Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Martel toured the West Country as part of the 1908 WSPU campaign to unseat the Government candidate in the Newton Abbot by-election. After the declaration of the poll, the two women were walking back to their lodgings when they were violently set upon by a group of young Liberal supporters. Mrs Pankhurst wrote: ‘It was many months before either Mrs Martel or I recovered from our injuries.’

For all her involvement in the suffrage and political movements in both Australia and England, Nellie Alma Martel’s life is under-recorded. After 10 December 1908, Mrs Martel’s name no longer appears in the WSPU Programme of Events, nor is her penny pamphlet, The Women’s Vote in Australia, listed among the WSPU publications. The only outsider’s view of Nellie Martel that I have been able to find is a comment from the sharp pen of Rebecca West. In a letter dated 1909 West writes, ‘I was agreeably surprised with Mrs Martel. She’s a dear old soul in spite of the hair, and takes the crowd tremendously.’

Mrs Montefiore heading a Deputation of the Women’s Social and Political Union at No. 10 Downing Street, 3 March 1906. Reproduced from From a Victorian to a Modern ([London]: E. Archer, 1927)

Mrs Montefiore heading a Deputation of the Women’s Social and Political Union at No. 10 Downing Street, 3 March 1906
Reproduced from From a Victorian to a Modern ([London]: E. Archer, 1927)

Unlike Martel, Muriel Matters was an efficient self-publicist. From all accounts, she was a strikingly attractive woman with a mass of golden hair. Born in Adelaide in 1877, Martel trained in elocution and music and later worked as an actor in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1905, she left Australia for London where she devoted herself to radical causes. In 1907 she joined the militant suffragist Women’s Freedom League.

Matters had a flair for presenting her radical messages in spectacular ways. In 1908, she took the first ‘Votes for Women’ horse-drawn caravan on a tour of villages in the south of England. A photograph in the Library’s Pictures Collection shows a pert Muriel Matters sitting in the driver’s seat holding the reins.

In 1909, Matters really made the headlines. The Daily Mail, 17 February, ran a banner ‘Handbills from the Clouds’. Matters had ascended over London in a balloon, equipped with a large supply of handbills and flags and a megaphone. On one side of the balloon in large black letters were the words ‘Votes for Women’ and on the other side ‘Women’s Freedom League’. Suffragists in motorcars followed the airship, delivering one-minute speeches through megaphones and distributing handbills.

The same newspaper report refers to Muriel Matters as ‘the heroine of the “Grille” incident in the House of Commons’. On 28 October 1908, Matters had chained herself to the brass grille that prevented visitors in the ladies’ gallery from being seen from the floor of the House. Matters was removed, still declaiming the cause of women’s suffrage and still attached to the grille. Suffragists hailed her speech as the first delivered by a woman in the House of Commons.

Suffragettes' procession along Pall Mall, London, c.1910. Adela Pankhurst Walsh Papers, MS 2123; Manuscript Collection

Suffragettes' procession along Pall Mall, London, c.1910
Adela Pankhurst Walsh Papers, MS 2123 Manuscript Collection

Although popular accounts associate Matters’ jail sentence with the grille episode, she claims she was arrested on a ‘trumped up charge of obstruction … outside St Stephen’s portals’. Whatever the charge, she served a month’s imprisonment in Holloway.

After serving her sentence, Matters worked for prison reform. Above all, from 1907 to 1914, she was an indefatigable campaigner for women’s suffrage. The Hastings Observer described her as a ‘public speaker of the first order’. In 1913, week after week, the Kent Argus reported her speaking program for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The Library holds a copy of Matters’ anti-war pamphlet, The False Mysticism of War, which is a printed version of an address she gave on 30 June 1915. In 1924, she stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate for Hastings for the House of Commons. She died in Hastings in 1969.

The third of the group, Dora Montefiore, was born in 1851 into a prosperous Surrey family. In 1881 she married George Barrow Montefiore (son of wealthy merchant Joseph Barrow Montefiore) in Sydney. When her husband died at sea in 1889, she was shocked to learn that, as the widow, she had no automatic rights to the guardianship of their two children.

As a result Montefiore turned to political action. The first committee meeting of the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales took place at her home, 77 Darlinghurst Road, on 6 May 1891. Although instrumental in establishing the WSL, her involvement in it was brief. Montefiore left Australia in 1892 and spent some years in France before returning to England.

In England, Montefiore renewed her political activism. Initially she was an executive member of the London-based National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, led by Dame Millicent Fawcett. By 1905 she had joined the Pankhursts’ WSPU.

In October 1906, Mrs Montefiore was arrested and imprisoned for demonstrating in the Lobby of the House of Commons. She served seven days before being released after suffering a breakdown. At this point she broke with the WSPU. In her autobiography, From a Victorian to a Modern, she writes, ‘Between the period of my leaving Holloway and going abroad with my daughter on 9th January, 1907, I broke off all my working relations with the Women’s Social and Political Union, as there were more points than one on which Mrs Pankhurst and I found ourselves in disagreement. I could not reconcile myself to seeing young girls resisting, with physical force, the police.’ Although radical in her politics, Dora Montefiore believed in maintaining ‘lady-like’ behaviour even in extreme circumstances. In 1907 she joined the Adult Suffrage Society, becoming its honorary secretary in 1909.

Arrest of Mrs Pankhurst. Adela Pankhurst Walsh Papers, MS 2123. Manuscript Collection

Arrest of Mrs Pankhurst
Adela Pankhurst Walsh Papers, MS 2123
Manuscript Collection

Mrs Montefiore’s hobbyhorse was taxation without representation, the situation of voteless women. In 1906, she refused to pay her taxes and locked the gates of her Hammersmith residence against the bailiffs. A large banner proclaiming: ‘Women should vote for the laws they obey and the taxes they pay’, hung from her summerhouse. During the six-week ‘siege’, Mrs Martel brought placards and flags to hang on the railings of ‘Fort Montefiore’, and other suffragists brought food supplies.

When asked why she was refusing to pay taxes, she replied: ‘my income is derived mainly from property in Australia, where I for many years resided … I never objected to paying taxes in Australia, because there women have votes both for the State Parliament and the Commonwealth.’

In her lifetime, Mrs Montefiore travelled a great deal, promoting international socialism and women’s suffrage. She was fluent in French and German and took great delight in addressing continental gatherings in their own languages. In 1910 she made a lecture tour in the United States and attended the Socialists Convention in Chicago. In 1912 she toured South Africa. Dora Montefiore was an ardent socialist, and in 1920 she was elected to the Provisional Council of the United Communist Party of Great Britain.

 

The National Library will
celebrate Women’s
History Month 2003 in
March with a series of
public events.
For further information visit
www.nla.gov.au/events

 

In 1921, her son Gilbert died from the effects of gassing in the war. She wished to visit his grave and her grandchildren in Australia, but the Australian Government refused her entry on account of her communist affiliations. Ultimately she was allowed in on the condition that she did not involve herself in communist activities. In Sydney she had a great time meeting her old friends and party comrades, including Adela Pankhurst (Walsh) with whom she had been in Holloway Prison. In 1924 she represented the Communist Party of Australia in Moscow.

Dora Montefiore died on 21 December 1933.

A hundred years ago, these three women were prominent in the struggle for women’s suffrage in Australia and England, yet their stories are largely untold. In writing this article, I have relied on published sources; more detailed evidence of their lives might lie in less accessible archives. Mrs Martel’s life history in particular tantalises us with the promise of a fuller story waiting to be told.

ANN NUGENT is a freelance writer living in Canberra

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