Mrs Alice Hawkins

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/alice-hawkins-suffragette-working-woman/
http://www.alicesuffragette.co.uk/
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3210/whose-suffrage-campaign-story-should-we-commemorate-with-a-statue

Family information: Married Alfred Hawkins in 1882 and had seven children. Alfred was a member of the MPU.

Additional Information: In 1907, Alice became the first secretary of the Leicester branch of the WSPU. She had met the Pankhursts through her involvement with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and had supplied Sylvia Pankhurst with data from the boot and shoe factory where she worked, so that Sylvia could write her articles on working women's lives (see Other Activities). Alice was imprisoned five times but the official records only list three. The first was for two weeks for obstructing the police in London during demonstrations in 1907. In 1909, she was put in prison in Leicester for five days for trying to get into a meeting being held there by Liberal politician Winston Churchill. She went on hunger strike. She was sentenced to two weeks in prison in 1910, when reacting to the violence inflicted on WSPU demonstrators by the police on 'Black Friday' by smashing the windows of Lewis Harcourt's house. Emmeline Pankhurst paid Alice's fine so that she could return to her children in Leicester. The family were in financial hardship, as Alice's husband had a broken leg and couldn't work. His broken leg (a double fracture) was caused by stewards at a Liberal Party meeting, who beat him up after throwing him out of a Cabinet members' meeting because he interrupted to raise the votes for women question. He spent a month in hospital and four months off work. Alice's husband was a member of the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement (MPU). In 1911, Alice was again in prison for three weeks for breaking windows at the Home Office, and in 1913, she was sentenced to five days for pouring black ink into pillar boxes in Leicester. She went on hunger strike but gave up when friends and family intervened.

Other Suffrage Activities: Alice Joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1892. In 1896, the Equity boot and shoe factory where she worked formed its own Women's Co-operative Guild, working towards good wages and working conditions. In 1906, Alice became interested in the votes for women cause as a necessary extension of her interests in improving working women and men's social and employment conditions. In 1906, she joined the Women's Labour League so that she could jointly promote working women's welfare alongside the vote. She eventually left the ILP because she thought it had a negative attitude toward women's suffrage.