Vera Holme as WSPU Chauffeur (The Women’s Library, LSE/Flickr )

Individuals

Discover the story of some of the most influential personalities in the Suffrage movement and the role the motor car played in their campaign.

Dr Ethel Williams (1863-1948)

Ethel Williams (The Wellcome Collection/CC-BY)

Dr Ethel Williams (1863-1948) was a physician, radical suffragist and pacifist, incredibly active in the movement in the north-east of England. In 1900, the Newcastle Women’s Suffrage Society was founded, with Williams as its president, then, in 1915, she became chairman of the North-Eastern Federation of the NUWSS (formed in 1910).

Whilst serving as secretary of Newcastle Women’s Liberal Association, Williams worked closely with the local labour movement to help support women’s suffrage, she provided a car to spread propaganda for both the Labour party and female emancipation.

Williams was the first female doctor in Newcastle, as well as the first woman to own and drive a car in the north-east of England in 1906, demonstrating her great importance within Newcastle’s suffrage campaign.

She participated in her first procession in London in 1907. She provided the movement with a means of transport to reach meetings and to spread the word of the campaign.

During the First World War, as a founding member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Williams encouraged and ensured that the fight for female suffrage continued in Newcastle.

She was known to continue using her car in the war to quickly help those in need, and co-founded the Northern Women’s Hospital in 1917. This highlights the crucial role her car played to help both the suffrage movement and the war effort during the twentieth century.

Sources:

Crawford, E., The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 (London: Routledge, 2003), p.710.

Haines, C. M. C., and Stevens, H. M., International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950 (California: ABC-CLIO, 2001), p.331.

Holton, S. S., Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.66.

Oakley, A., Women, Peace and Welfare: A Suppressed History of Social Reform, 1880-1920 (Bristol: Policy Press, 2018), p.234.

Dr Mary Charlotte Murdoch (1864-1916)

Hull in ‘The Story of the East Riding, Yorkshire’, 1912 (Toronto University/Internet Archive)

Dr Mary Charlotte Murdoch (1864-1916) was a physician and suffragist born in Scotland, who made a name for herself in Hull. In 1904, she became the founder and president of Hull’s Women’s Suffrage Society and was also friends with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society’s (NUWSS) Millicent Fawcett.

In 1905, Murdoch was concerned with the conditions of work places for working women, consequently she launched the National Union of Women’s Workers in Hull, demonstrating her life-long prominent activism.

Murdoch was the first female doctor in Hull, as well as the first woman to own her own car in the area. This motor ownership proved her to be incredibly useful to the suffrage movement, which she was already connected to, in public campaigns and out-of-town trips.

Her car was decorated with the colours of the suffrage movement and she was known to drive with great speed, prompting her friends to name her ‘the world’s worst driver’.

Murdoch’s car offered Hull’s women’s suffrage movement a significant advantage above opposers. Beyond this, however, Murdoch and her car came to great use during the First World War; once Murdoch had cleared her own air raid station of injuries, she would often use her car to pick up injured people throughout the whole city.

Her car became an important symbol of her work as an activist and as a physician, as well as in women’s suffrage.

Murdoch’s car became widely renowned in the city. When she died in 1916, the car was covered with flowers in tribute of her work as a suffragist and as a doctor, and preceded the hearse in an elaborate funeral procession.