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Alice Hawkins (Stafford, 1863 – Leicester, 1946) was a leading English suffragette among the boot and shoe machinists of Leicester. She went to prison five times for acts committed as part of the Women’s Social and Political Union militant campaign.Frank Meeres Suffragettes: How Britain’s Women Fought & Died for the Right to Vote 2013 144562057X They included Alice Hawkins, who worked among the boot and shoemakers in Leicester,Ned Newitt A People's History of Leicester: A Pictorial History of Working ... 2008 Women's Suffrage Alice Hawkins ( 1863-1946) was one of Leicester's leading suffragettes. She went to prison five times for various acts committed as part of the WSPU's militant campaign for the vote. Mrs Hawkins was a mother of five children and worked as a machinist at Equity Shoes. She had been active in the ILP and in 1910 became president of the breakaway Independent National Union of Boot and Women Shoe Workers. Alice Hawkins on her way to prison in July 1913, ...Elizabeth Crawford The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 2003 1135434026 "She lived for a time at Cradley Heath with the women chainmakers, before moving to Leicester, where she lived with Alice Hawkins and painted women shoemakers. She then travelled to Wigan to study women "pit brow" workers and, from there, back down to Staffordshire to the potteries and then onto Scarborough, on the east coast, to paint the Scottish fishwives who followed the herring fleet. Her husband Alfred Hawkins was also an active suffragist and received £100 when his kneecap was fractured as he was ejected from a meeting in Bradford. In 2018 a statue of Alice was unveiled in Leicester Market.
In June 1908, Flora Drummond invited Hawkins to speak at the Hyde Park rally on 21 June 1908. The event was advertised on a Thames barge outside the Houses of Parliament, saying 'Cabinet Ministers Specially Invited'. The Pankhursts sent a chauffeur-driven car to collect her and local children followed the vehicle.
Hawkins was jailed a second time in 1909 as she tried to force entry into a public meeting where Winston Churchill was speaking in Leicester, at which suffragettes had been specifically barred. In this case the lead role was played by her husband, Alfred, who volunteered to raise the issue. During Churchill's speech, Alfred asked Churchill to explain how he could ' stand on a democratic platform' while women did not have a vote and he was ejected from the event. Alice was protesting outside when she too was arrested. Alfred paid the fine, but Alice again opted for prison. This time it was in Leicester jail and she went onto hunger strike.
Alfred also defended Alice when heckled by men in a crowd where she was speaking saying 'get back to your family!" She was able to say 'here is my family they are here to support me" as Alfred was demonstrably for the cause, which some but not by any means all suffragists could claim. Alfred suffered for his support, when he was eventually awarded £100 compensation after having his leg broken during a suffragette protest on 26 November 1910. His case had been taken up by the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement after he was thrown down some stairs after protesting against Winston Churchill during a Liberal party meeting Bradford. The judge ruled that he had been ejected without warning after merely asking a question and that was an assault.
When then 1911 census was enumerated, Hawkins participated in the suffragette census boycott. Her third imprisonment was later in 1911 after throwing a brick through a Home Office window in full view of a policeman. When her son Tom died of a brain tumour in 1912, she wrote to Emmeline Pankhurst in deep sympathy. She was jailed twice more in 1913, first for throwing ink into a Leicester post box, and then a last time for digging a slogan into a golf course at night.Daily Mirror Oct 2015 My ancestor was just a poor factory worker but she fought for women's rights "Suffragette, which stars Carey Mulligan as fictional washerwoman Maud Watts also stars Kate Barratt whose great great grandmother was a real Suffragette"BBC 24 January 2018 Suffragette Alice Hawkins' family praise Leicester statue She received a Hunger Strike Medal from the WSPU. Hawkins was one of the prisoners who built a relationship with the female prison warders also working-class women who comforted the prisoners as well as having the job of holding them down to be force-fed.
In 1913 Hawkins was among the representatives chosen to speak with leading politicians David Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey. The meeting had been arranged by Annie Kenney and Flora Drummond with the proviso that these were working-class women representing their class. The boot and shoe industry was particularly unfair in its treatment of women, who did exactly the same work as men but for unequal pay, lived in the poor quality housing and worked in Sweatworking. All the representatives explained that to improve the terrible pay and working conditions of women, their hope was that a vote would enable women to challenge the status quo in a democratic manner. Hawkins explained how her fellow male workers could choose a man to represent them whilst the women were left unrepresented. She was also suspected of being one of the four women who damaged a golf course writing 'no votes, no golf' in horse dung but this was not proven.
Her protests ceased when war was declared in 1914 and the WSPU agreed to cease protests in exchange for having all prisoners released. Home Office report that 1,300 women were arrested over the years in this cause, along with 100 men like Alice Hawkins' husband Alfred.
In 2023, Leicester City Council erected a blue plaque at number 18, Mantle Road, Leicester, in an area known as Newfoundpool, where Hakwins had lived between 1905 and 1910. Leicester suffragette Alice Hawkins commemorated on International Women’s Day Leicester City Council, 28 February 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024 Blue plaque in honour of Leicester suffragette Alice Hawkins unveiled on International Women's Day Leicester Mercury, 9 March 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2024
She has a plaque at her workplace and another on the Leicester Walk of Fame. In 2018, a five-year funding campaign ended when a seven foot high statue was unveiled in market square by four women including Manjula Sood and Liz Kendall. The ceremony was witnessed by Helen Pankhurst, dozens of her relatives and hundreds of people, as part of the centenary celebrations of Votes for Women.
Her great-grandson, Peter Barratt speaks to schools and at public events, a century later, that Hawkins was fighting for women to have equal pay and that is still not achieved, and encouraging all people to use their right to vote. He found the transcript in the National Archives of the delegation including Hawkins of Working Women to Lloyd George, the chancellor, from January 1913. In 2023, he created and performed an Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, with historical re-enactment actress, Ruth Pownall: Alice Hawkins Suffragette - A Sister for Freedom in which he shared family archive material as well as public material.
Hawkins granddaughter, Vera recounted that her grandmother said
"Vera, you must use your vote, we suffered for it".
Later life
Three of Hakwins's sons joined the army in World War I, in different regiments, and all met by chance 10 miles behind enemy lines and a local photographer captured them. When some women were given the vote in the Representation of the People Act (1918), Hawkins was proud of the role that women had taken in the factories and land during the war, and also said that suffragette action had led to this and the right to vote. Due to the property-owning conditions of the Act however, she was unable to vote herself for a further 10 years, at the age of 63. Alfred died in 1928 and Hawkins had to live with her children and families, due to her poverty.
Death and legacy
When Hawkins died in 1946, aged 83, her burial had to be paid for by the state, in a "pauper's grave".
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