Mrs Alice Maud Mary Arncliffe-Sennett

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/why-i-want-the-vote-by-maud-arcliffe-sennett-in-the-vote
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/g11f_hkxrk6
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); Maud Arncliffe-Sennett, The Child (1938); Clare Eustance, 'Citizens, Scotsmen, "Bairns": Manly Politics and Women's Suffrage in the Northern Men's Federation, 1913?1920', in Angela John and Clare Eustance (eds), The Men's Share? (1997)

Family information: Father an Italian immigrant and wholesale confectioner. Married Henry Arncliffe Sennett in 1898.

Additional Information: Maud initially joined the NUWSS circa 1906. She was on the committee of the London Society for Women's Suffrage (LSWS), which helped organise the NUWSS 'mud march' held in February 1907, to which her family business supplied 7,000 red and white rosettes. Soon after (though it is not clear why), Maud moved from the law-abiding NUWSS to the WSPU, donating funds and drawing on her talents as an actor to give rousing speeches on WSPU platforms. However, the move was short-lived. Maud felt that the WSPU were overlooking her talents and she resigned in 1908, rejoining the NUWSS just in time to carry a banner depicting Queen Victoria in the business women's section of the 13 June procession to Hyde Park. Maud also joined the Women's Freedom League (WFL) for two years, but grew tired of the 'squabbling' and so resigned in 1910 and joined the Actresses Franchise League (AFL), becoming a committee member. Now a 'freelance' suffragette, Maud took part in and was arrested at the 'Black Friday' demonstration in November 1910. In 1911, she broke windows at the offices of the Daily Mail for failing to report the large WSPU rally that had taken place a few days earlier. She was sentenced to a fine or seven days' imprisonment in Holloway, but was let out after only a few hours when, ironically, the editor of the Dail Mail paid her fine. Maud had kept in touch with WSPU members and activities, and in 1913 accepted an invitation to join the committee of the Hampstead branch of the WSPU (shortly afterwards resigning from the AFL committee). Maud was instrumental in forming (in 1913) and maintaining the Northern Men's Federation for Women's Suffrage (NMFWS), which was Scottish-based, non-party and law-abiding. She wished for co-operation between men and women to take a deputation to Parliament (though this was not supported by the WSPU). Asquith refused to meet the deputation but it went ahead nonethless. In 1914, she became a vice president of the United Suffragists (US) and continued her suffrage work during the First World War through the US, the NMFWS and the WFL. She wrote a number of articles for suffrage newspapers during the campaign, as well as an autobiography: The Child. She avidly collected suffrage notes, receipts and other memorabilia in a scrap book ? now kept in the British Library.

Other Suffrage Activities: Maud became an active campaigner for animal rights in the 1930s and was the founder of the Midhurst-Haslemere Anti Vivisection Society.