Miss Alice Schofield

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3229/the-womens-freedom-league

Family information: Alice was single when arrested but a year later, in 1910, married Charles Coates. They had three children.

Additional Information: Alice was teaching mathematics at a school in Manchester when she took up the cause of votes for women by joining the newly formed WSPU in 1903. She became unhappy with the undemocratic way that the Pankhursts were running the society, and so left with others, including Charlotte Despard and Teresa Billington-Greig, to form the Women's Freedom League (WFL) in 1907. In 1909, she was arrested and sentenced to one month in prison after taking part in a deputation to the House of Commons. Alice became an organiser for the WFL in Middlesbrough, where the society thrived, and in 1910, she married a relatively wealthy coal exporter, Charles Coates, who had rescued her from an attack at an open air suffrage meeting. They had three children. Alice travelled to Scotland and London to encourage support for the WFL and the women's suffrage cause, and throughout the First World War she remained an active member of the WFL national executive. The WFL was a long-lived organisation and Alice became vice president in the 1930s.

Other Suffrage Activities: Alice was a lifelong member of the Labour Party. In 1919, she became the first woman councillor for Middlesbrough, where she worked to improve education and living conditions for local people. She worked to improve the lives and rights of women locally and nationally throughout her life, and was still distributing leaflets advocating equal pay for equal work for women in 1951, at the age of 69. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970, five years before she died.