GOING PUBLIC

“A crowded and overflowing meeting in support of Women’s Parliamentary franchise was held at the… Royal Concert Hall, St Leonards on Saturday afternoon.”

Hastings and St Leonards Pictorial Advertiser, 18 March 1909

To reach a wider audience, campaigners needed to make their views heard in public. All over the country they hired public halls and invited speakers to put the case for votes for women. Popular venues in Hastings included the Royal Concert Hall in Warrior Square.

Local suffrage societies invited well-known campaigners such as Millicent Fawcett or Emmeline Pankhurst to speak and advertised all meetings though the local press. Flowers, suffrage colours and banners of the local societies decorated the halls, which were usually packed to overflowing.

Above: Flanked by local banners, Emmeline Pankhurst, WSPU leader, rallies activists at a meeting in December 1912 in Hastings. Hastings Pictorial Advertiser

Above: A suffragette puts the case for votes for women (originally published in Punch magazine).

Standing on stage speakers put the case passionately for the women’s vote, interrupted from time to time by clapping and cheering from the audience. Not all the responses were sympathetic. Women soon became very skilled at dealing with boisterous hecklers, often young men, who tried to shout them down.

As well as huge meetings in public halls, suffragists and suffragettes also held meetings in churches and smaller local halls in and around the different areas of Hastings. In 1913 a meeting took place in Silverhill, where many working-class women attended. 13