Sash that said it all

‘VOTES for Women’ on a suffragist’s sash – a bold slogan that conveys an iconic struggle still in living memory.

by DIANNE JONES

Just four weeks after young Suffragette Emily Davison threw herself under the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913 a Cuckfield suffragist probably wore the sash on a mass march to London.

Last week, the Mid Sussex Times carried an article about the march from Brighton to Hyde Park where 70,000 women from all over Britain held a rally to call for the vote.

Photographer Douglas Miller, who had a studio in Boltro Road, Haywards Heath, took photographs of the marchers at Clayton and Burgess Hill on July 22, 1913, and we featured two of the pictures in last week’s article.

This week, Robin Whyte, a trustee of Cuckfield Museum, invited us in to see the suffragist’s sash and a photograph held by the museum showing the marchers as they left Cuckfield on bicycles and on foot to continue their journey to London.

The picture, showing them sheltering under umbrellas in the rain, was also taken by Miller, whose wife had joined the march.

Historian Frances Stenlake, who is a former curator of Cuckfield Museum, alerted us to the photograph after reading our article and confirmed that marchers had stayed overnight in the village.

She said: “I wonder whether the overnight stay was spent by at least some of the suffragists at Horsgate, home of the elderly Richard Bevan and his younger daughter Edith.”

Frances, who has written extensively on the Bevan family, has discovered that Edith had two suffragist friends in Cuckfield, Susie Armitage and Chute Ellis.

Frances said: “All three are listed in the July 22 [1913] Mid Sussex Times as being among those who greeted the ‘processionists’ at Hassocks, accompanied them to Cuckfield, and were with them as they set off for Handcross.”

Museum trustee Robin Whyte added: “Richard Bevan was an influential banker and Cuckfield benefactor. The marchers probably stopped overnight at Horsgate House [in Hanlye Lane] but it’s something we haven’t quite got to the bottom of.”

Historians Mark Dudeney and Eileen Hallett wrote about the march in their popular book From Pycombe to Cuckfield which features some of Douglas Miller’s photographs.