Sometimes certain places engender change. Hatfeild Hall in Wakefield, home from 1899 to the Beaumont family, Herbert, Jessie and their children Florence and Gerald (The Express, 5 July 1913), is one of these. It was in the drawing room of Hatfeild Hall, in 1910, that Wakefield’s branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffragist Societies (NUWSS) was established, with Florence Beaumont being a founding member and honorary secretary.
Dame Millicent Fawcett, having become the leader of the NUWSS in 1897, visited often. Hatfeild’s rooms rang out with political discourse and activist plans and, from 1910 until 1922 when the house was sold, the hall played a pivotal role in the fight for women’s rights.
A born feminist
Born in 1876, Florence had a sheer force of will that was apparent from a very early age. Asked at the age 14 what reform was most necessary, her answer was, “that women should vote”. Her belief in equal suffrage led her to attend Newnham College, Cambridge in 1894 to study mathematics, a college that had been endorsed by Millicent Fawcett in its aims to educate women to study seriously, rather than seeing further education as an opportunity to improve their chances of a good marriage. It meant that Florence was able to gain the skills and network to mobilise women to fight for their right to vote.
“Suffragette Attack”
The call for action came in May of 1913, a few short months after yet another women’s suffrage bill was blocked by factions within parliament who had used the bill as a political football to further their own interests. Once again, the government had failed to deliver on a promise made in 1911 by Prime Minister Asquith – a promise that Florence had brought to the attention of Wakefield ratepayers (who included women) by sending a letter, penned from her writing desk at Hatfeild Hall to the Town Clerk asking the Council to receive a deputation from the Wakefield Suffrage Society. When the clerk failed to reply she and her fellow suffragists arrived at the town hall to ask the “Council to petition His Majesty’s Government to grant full facilities as soon as possible for a bill to franchise women householders, and to take such action with respect to the same as might be determined” (The Wakefield Herald, June 17, 1911).
Florence and delegates from the Women’s Unionist Association, Women’s Liberal Association and Women’s Co-operative Guild waited in the committee room, whilst supporters of the cause were in the public gallery. Their request was denied as “the General Purposes Committee, having already decided to take no action on the question of women’s suffrage, the council’s opinion was that there was no useful purpose served by receiving the deputation”. Mutterings of discontent were heard from the balcony. This was deliberately misrepresented by the newspapers, which called it a “Suffragette Attack” by women who tried to “storm the Council Chamber”.
Prime Minister Asquith betrays women
Wakefield has never been a suffragette city. The suffragette cause was born of frustration with the lack of progress made by the suffragist movement, which primarily used peaceful methods such as lobbying, petition and public demonstration. The suffragettes adopted more militant tactics, including protests, civil disobedience and direct action. As buildings had more rights in law than women, it was architecture that bore the brunt of the ire of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union.
Florence constantly reiterated the difference between the two movements with copious letters to newspapers informing the public that “Our policy is non-militant” (Wakefield and West Riding Herald 16 April 1910). It must have been exhausting. However, it did not prevent Florence from responding to a direct call to action by Mrs Fawcett in May 1913, prompted by “Mr Asquith’s failure to keep his promises and his obvious desire almost directly he had made them, to render their fulfilment an impossibility. He refers to his promises to us as a political mistake of a disastrous kind” (The Common Cause, 28 February 1913).
In response, Fawcett announced that:
“To demonstrate throughout the country the protest of law-abiding women suffragists against the delay in granting the franchise, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies is arranging this summer a march to London from all parts of Great Britain” (Staffordshire Sentinel, 10 May 1913).
The great suffragist pilgrimage
Being a suffragist did not protect women from having violence directed towards them. Newspapers fuelled prejudice against women by demonising the actions of the 400 NUWSS societies and 17 federations who marched to London in response to Mrs Fawcett’s call. Joining other federations on the way, each procession was to hold meetings, distribute literature and information, and collect subscriptions and promises on the way, ending in a great Hyde Park meeting on Saturday 26 July.
Wakefield’s march was organised and coordinated from Hatfeild Hall. Florence and her fellow pilgrims joined the march that had walked from Tyneside at Outwood, where their speeches were greeted warmly. A 6000-crowd then gathered in the Bull Ring where they heard from Miss Beaver “who is a fine athletic-built young lady [who] has made a name for herself. She has been named the ‘fighting suffragette’ on account of the fact that at Ripon the other day she showed a man that she knew a little about the ‘noble art of self-defence’” (The Express, 5 July 1913).
permission
Violence against women suffragists
Anti-suffragists had entered Wakefield beforehand to stir up trouble, which began after Florence and her suffragists had marched to the bottom of Kirkgate, where large crowds had gathered to hear speakers from three platforms. At this point, things became violent. Miss Helena Jones, when attempting to get on a platform to speak, was roughly seized by “a number of hooligans” and had to seek safety elsewhere. Heckled by men telling the women they ought to stop at home and mend stockings, ripostes by Miss Burgess reminded men they were perfectly capable of mending their own stockings.
It was not just women who wanted the vote, Miss Beaver informed the increasingly rowdy crowd, but men also wanted women to have the vote. Two thousand men were members of the NUWSS, and they all wanted the same thing: equal franchise.
A young man holding a pro-suffragist flag was attacked. The flag was torn to shreds and the poles broken up. The female speaker at the time, Mrs Thompson, was pushed about so much her back was hurt. Another speaker, Mrs Burgess, received a black eye after a boy threw a stone at her. Mrs Merkle, a third suffragist speaker, was seized by the police “for her own protection” and put first into a wagonette and then locked in a stable. The remaining ladies were bundled into a motorcar but the crowd, now uncontrollable, tried to overturn it.
Only after a hose pipe was deployed was the crowd dispersed. The anti-suffrage society denied they were behind the violence. Florence Beaumont put them straight:
“I have direct evidence from a lady – not, as it happened, a member of our Wakefield Women’s Suffragist Society, who heard the two anti-suffragists speak [about] ensuring the women on the pilgrimage would get a very rough reception. He then said that such meetings should not be allowed to take place” (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 30 August 1913).
Celebrating Florence’s legacy
Living at Hatfeild Hall enabled Florence Beaumont to continue her activist work over the next 18 years which led, ultimately, to equal franchise. Florence has a blue plaque and a building named after her that recognises the vital work she did in the League of Nations and at the Open Door Council, which led to all women over the age of 21 being awarded the vote as part of the Equal Franchise Act of 1928.
It seems incredible in 2026 to think that less than 100 years ago half the population was not properly represented in Parliament. Unfortunately, 100 years after all women were afforded the vote, only 35% of MPs are women. Parliament has a long way to go.
Dream Time Creative and the Forgotten Women of Wakefield, the arts company responsible for bringing Florence’s achievements to the fore, is delighted that a further blue plaque marking her legacy will be sited on Hatfeild Hall to mark International Women’s Day 2026.
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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