Miss Anna Maria Priestman

Other sources: https://www.parliament.uk/1866
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866?1928 (2001): E Malos, Bristol's Other History (1983)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3221/the-priestman-sisters
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3214/how-effective-was-the-votes-for-women-campaign-in-bristol

Family information: Sister to Mary Priestman and Margaret Tanner, who also signed the 1866 petition. Related to the Bright family.

Additional Information: After the 1866 petition, Anna subscribed to the Enfranchisement of Women Committee (EWC) and joined the London NSWS while still living in Newcastle. In 1870, she joined the West of England branch of the NSWS committee and remained on the executive committee of the Bristol and West of England Society for Women's Suffrage until at least 1908. She and her sister Mary were both Quakers and, as early as 1870, refused to pay their taxes in protest at their exclusion from the vote. This passive if illegal tactic was to be used frequently by suffrage campaigners 40 years later, with the formation of the Women's Tax Resistance League. Anna founded the first Women's Liberal Association in Bristol (1881), with the aim of testing Liberal candidates in Parliament on whether they would support women's suffrage, and she continued to test them through the Women's Liberal Federation (WLF) (1886), of which her sister Mary was an executive committee member. Years later, when no progress had been made, she formed and became president of a new society, the Union of Practical Suffragists (UPS), and continued to press Liberal associations like the WLF not to support Liberal candidates in local elections if they did not support women's suffrage. Eventually, this led to her removal as president in 1905 from the Women's Liberal Association in Bristol, which she herself had founded over 20 years earlier. In 1907, Anna and her sister Mary subscribed to the WSPU, undoubtedly frustrated by the lack of progress, but seemed to withdraw their support as the WSPU became more militant. In 1910, they reiterated their support for more constitutional methods of campaigning . However, in 1912, they did give to the election expenses of Labour MP George Lansbury, who stood as suffrage candidate in local elections in London, at the WSPU leadership's behest.

Other Suffrage Activities: Aside from her role in Women's Liberal Associations, Anna had been involved in Anti-Corn Law bazaars and demonstrations through her mother's work for the cause in the 1840s. With her sister and others, Anna formed the first branch of the National Union of Women Workers in Bristol and in 1889, again with her sister, opened a soup kitchen for striking Bristol cotton workers. Anna had tied women workers' poor conditions to the lack of votes for women in 1874, reading a paper titled 'The Industrial Position of Women as Affected by their Exclusion from the Suffrage'. As a Quaker, Anna was a committed pacifist and is said to have died of a broken heart in 1914 at the outbreak of war.