Inspired by the vibrant political movement based at Hatfeild Hall and led by the legacy of her sister-in-law Florence Beaumont (described in the first of these two articles), Gwendoline Beaumont stood in the parliamentary elections of 1935, as the first woman to do so in the region. It had taken many long years of campaigning perseverance in peacetime and selfless work in wartime to reach this milestone.
Gwendoline and her sister-in-law had much in common. From 1914 onward, the women worked together to enable Florence to become more widely politically proactive while Gwendoline played a vital family and community role at Hatfeild Hall. Both women believed strongly in the power of kindness. One of Florence’s more famous sayings – “I will not bow to convention if that convention is based on unkindness or stupidity” – was embodied in both of their approaches to war work.
Florence was able to focus on raising funds to support women’s war work and coordinate food parcels to prisoners of war in Germany, while continuing to run the Suffragist Society she set up at Hatfeild in 1910. Able to redirect the focus of the society towards war work without compromising their position on women’s suffrage, both women understood that the war was a chance to demonstrate that women had skills needed by the state, and that this would work in their favour later.
As keen amateur dramatists, Gwendoline and Florence built on their pre-war theatre network and, in the name of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) raised £50 to support a Wakefield bed for 12 months in one of the Serbian NUWSS-funded Scottish Women’s Hospitals. “The Society is making collections at various places of entertainment in the city, through the very great kindness of the managers.” (The Common Cause, 11 June 1915]
The unconventional women living at Hatfeild Hall
The war demanded that these two educated, sophisticated and dedicated women broke with societal conventions, while remaining dedicated to improving the lives of others. Florence was a great fan of bicycling and the wearing of bloomers. Once, when cycling into town from Hatfeild Hall to attend a meeting at the Mechanic’s Institute, a man called after her that she was ‘no lady’.
This was a criticism also levelled at her during the later part of the war when, based in Ripon as a superintendent of Queen Mary’s Auxiliary Corps of Nurses, she risked her reputation as a lady to show kindness to a man clearly suffering from PTSD. From family memoirs we learn about what ‘Aunt Flo’, as her nephews called her, had done. In response to loud knocking, she opened the door of her hut and a Captain Jones, highly intoxicated, fell into the room:
“Uttering, ‘Miss Beaumont, Miss Beaumont (hiccup) I love you so much Miss Beaumont’. This was of course embarrassing. Jones could barely stand and would probably collapse before he got back to his billet and die of hypothermia. Besides, he had had a rough and dangerous time in the trenches in France and was lucky to be alive, and was likely to go back soon to that slaughtering ground. Florence did not send for the military police as that would involve a court marshal. So, with her junior’s help she bedded him down on the sofa in her sitting room still muttering, ‘Miss Beaumont, I love you.’ The next day she gave him a good dressing down and sent him on his way.” [Private family memoirs gifted to the author]
She did not report the incident.
Meanwhile, the lady of Hatfeild Hall, Gwendoline, opened the family home to a family of Belgian refugees and to soldiers wounded in the Gallipoli campaign, thus demonstrating yet more kindness in action (Some Other and Wider Destiny, Elaine Merckx and Neal Rigby).
Working together against anti-suffragist prejudice
When on leave, Florence would return to the family home – and Gwendoline’s unerring support – where her young nephews, Stephen, Robert and Christopher were growing up.
From Hatfeild Hall, Florence would pen ripostes to people such as Miss Milner, who did not believe women wanted the vote.
“As to her question, ‘What to the millions of women who do not want the vote?’ (one is tempted to wonder where they are!). I am sure it will be a great consolation to her, and to them, to remember one little fact which seems to have escaped their notice, namely, that no power on earth can make them vote if they do not wish to do so. So, when the franchise is given to women, they will not be one penny worse; they can still show that they do not want a vote by refraining from visiting the polling booth. Could anything be simpler? – Yours etc.
Florence M Beaumont Hatfeild Hall” (Yorkshire Post, 28 August 1916)
Beaumont family circumstances change
The death in 1917 of Herbert Beaumont, Florence’s father, made living at Hatfeild Hall challenging. Gerald Beaumont, Florence’s brother and Gwendoline’s husband, was away fighting in the war and Florence’s campaigning for equal suffrage and war work kept her from home too for long periods of time. The campaigning continued long after 1918, when only 30% of women were given the vote, alongside all men over the age of 21. This felt like the betrayal begun by Asquith in 1911 had continued under Prime Minister Lloyd George.
With challenges at home being ably and stoically handled by Gwendoline, Florence made the difficult decision, especially after 1919 and the resignation of Dame Millicent Fawcett as the president of the NUWSS, to leave Wakefield and live in London.
The appointment of Eleanor Rathbone as the new president meant the union evolved to become the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC). As a member of the executive, Florence was able to deeply influence policy at national level.
The NUSEC “promoted equality of franchise between men and women but also extended this to the social and economic fields, working family allowances and the political education of women” (Records of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship).
Hatfeild Hall was sold in 1922 to release funds for both Florence and her brother Gerald to pursue their own post-war lives. Gwendoline and her family moved to Woolley Moor Edge, but she continued to support Florence’s continuing campaign demanding equal voting rights for all women.
“The present franchise is not a final solution of the question. We accepted it because we realised that half a loaf was better than no bread, but it was realised by everyone keen on the suffrage that the matter could not rest where it is for very long. Are we content with half a loaf? Are we content to stay where we are? The answer of our national union is emphatic. No. We still keep the question of all equal franchise in the front of our programme. When the government under Prime Minister Asquith offered to remove the existing inequalities between men and women, we thought this extraordinary and soon found that the government had no intention of doing anything of the kind.”
Florence Beaumont 1922 (Aberdeen Daily Journal, 22 August 1922).
On 2 July 1928, exactly 18 years after Florence led the march for equal suffrage through Wakefield, all women over 21 were granted the basic right to vote.
Taking women’s participation in politics to the next level
Even after the death of her sister-in-law in 1929, Gwendoline continued Florence’s political legacy.
A widow after the death of her husband Gerald in 1933, Gwendoline is remembered as being intelligent and personable – perfect qualities, alongside an ability to get along with people from across different classes, to challenge the existing (male) Labour MP William Lunn as a Conservative candidate.
When a general election was called in 1935 there were no female MPs in the British parliament at all.
Campaigning on the equal citizenship vision of the NUSEC, Gwendoline picked up the mantle of her sister-in-law and applied it at a local level. Education, for Gwendoline, was the key to positive change. Placing the wellbeing of women, family, children and education alongside the importance of maintaining peace in a post-war world, she remained, “strongly against our government embarking on any course which may result in war and [I] believe firmly that we must press on, with all our strength, the present policy of guiding and supporting the League [of Nations] in common action with its other members. Do remember, as a citizen, it is your duty to vote.”
Defeated at national level but undeterred, Gwendoline continued her community work making lives better at local level.
Marking the Wakefield suffragists’ legacy
As part of 2026 International Women’s Day Celebrations, Dream Time Creative’s Forgotten Women of Wakefield team will be hosting a blue plaque presentation to Florence Beaumont, Gwendoline Beaumont and Dame Millicent Fawcett. All funds raised by DTC will go towards a Florence Beaumont sculpture due to be unveiled in 2028, 100 years after barriers to all women voting were removed as part of the Equal Franchise Act 1928.
Editor’s note: Hatfeild is the correct spelling of this historic family name, a survivor of efforts to standardise English spelling between the 15th and 18th centuries.
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