Organising barmaids and acrobats

By Jill Mountford

This is the second article devoted to the lives of Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth to be printed in Women's Fightback. The first tells the story of their magazine Urania, launched in 1916 and devoted to confronting the constraints of the gender binary, heterosexuality, and marriage. You can read the article here: bit.ly/urania-wf25. The author will be presenting a talk on Roper and Gore-Booth on 12 March in south London.

The existence of barmaids had been designated a "social problem" since the mid-nineteenth century, and was opposed by moralisers, do-gooders and barmen. In 1907, in the thick of the battle for votes for women, proposals prohibiting women from particular kinds of work were again being discussed, and some became law. Barmaids, high-wire walkers, pit brow women, flower sellers and married working women all came under attack.

Esther Roper and Eva Gore-Booth, two energetic suffragists and organisers of working-class women in Manchester, made it their business to organise opposition to such "protective" legislation. They argued that rather than protecting women, much of this legislation restricted working-class women's right to earn a living. They saw the proposals as patronising, anti-woman, and usually in the interests of working-class men.

When circus riders and acrobats came under attack in 1906 with an amendment to the Dangerous Performances Act, they instinctively knew it was bad news for working-class women. Ostensibly, the amendment sought to protect women performers in circuses, theatres, and such like, but Roper and Gore-Booth thought otherwise. They said it "would reduce the livelihoods of ten thousand female performers in Britain". The Bill established that any person causing a woman to take part in a public performance dangerous to life and limb would be fined £10 (just over £1,000 in today’s money), even where there was no accident. As such, women's employment in this work suddenly became very risky for the employer.

Roper and Gore-Booth took it upon themselves to research the matter and interviewed Dr Albrecht, who worked in the Manchester music hall and theatre district. Dr Albrecht was said to be bewildered by the amendment, pointing out that in the past decade, there had only been one serious accident in Manchester music halls and theatres that he was aware of, and in that instance, it was a man who was injured. They backed this up with an interview with Mr Broadbent, a manager of nine theatres in the Greater Manchester area, who said that he had only seen one serious accident in the past two decades and, in that case, too, a man was hurt. For Roper and Gore-Booth, this meant "case closed".

Neither were against labour laws that kept workers safe, but they were vehemently opposed to any legislation which discriminated against working-class women and threatened their right to earn a living. They argued against restrictive legislation in articles and letters to magazines and newspapers, via deputations to the Home Secretary and other MPs, through demonstrations, and from the platforms of public meetings.

They worked closely with Sarah Dickenson, Sarah Reddish and Selina Cooper in many of their campaigns. These women were mill workers from an early age, strong and determined women trade unionists concerned with organising working-class women to win better work conditions and the right to vote.

DEFYING EXPECTATIONS

Gore-Booth was co-secretary of the Manchester and Salford Women's Trade and Labour Council alongside Sarah Dickenson. Roper had been organising with women workers and trade unionists since she left Owen's College in 1891, where she had been one of the first women allowed to study for a degree. She was part of a five-year experiment to see if women studying at a degree level could cope mentally and physically. She did better than coping, graduating with a first-class Latin, English Literature, and Political Economy degree.

Roper's affinity with working-class women and her belief that only they could fight for and win their rights meant she saw Manchester as the "natural home of a women's movement". She became the secretary of the Manchester branch of the National Society for Women's Suffrage in 1893. By then, there had been a women's suffrage organisation in Manchester for over a quarter of a century, with names such as Elizabeth Wolstenholme, Lydia Becker and Richard Pankhurst among that early crop. The secretary post was a paid position, a vital lifeline for Roper, who was responsible for her 13-year-old brother. Roper's own experiences of poverty and self-reliance, coupled with her feminism, meant she was vehemently in favour of all women having the opportunity to earn a living.

When Roper and Gore-Booth first met in 1896, Roper was recovering from illness at a friend of a friend's house in Italy following five years of relentless campaigning and organising. Gore-Booth, a poet and daughter of an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, was enjoying a holiday with her mother and friends. They fell in love, and within a year, Gore-Booth left her privileged life and 32,000 green acres of the family estate in Lissadell, County Sligo, for the grime and smog of industrial Manchester.

The pair lived and worked together for the next 29 years until Gore-Booth died in 1926. For a few years, much of their focus was on votes for working-class women, but unlike the prominent figures in the Women's Social and Political Union (Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst's group), they were never single-issue activists.

According to Roper, the next ten years "were full to overflowing with organisation, writing, speaking at large gatherings in all parts of England, deputations to Cabinet Ministers and to Members of Parliament. To this was added a new activity, when well-meant and ill-meant efforts were made to restrict women's labour in various fields. On different occasions, women pit-brow workers, barmaids, women acrobats and gymnasts, and women florists were successfully organised in their own defence."

During her first year in England, Gore-Booth published her first book of poetry. It received mixed reviews. She was accused of "pulpiterring" by the Poems and Verses Academy and advised by her close friend W.B. Yeats to "avoid every tendency to teach." Undeterred, she continued to write and publish poetry for the rest of her life.

AGAINST MORAL PANICS

In 1906, the pair were concerned about the moral panic around infant mortality. MPs from all political parties, along with many middle-class women philanthropists, argued the solution to this was to effectively ban married women from working. John Burns, MP for Battersea and self-described socialist, was president of the Local Government Board and argued that "married women's labour was an individual injury, a social mistake, and a commercial blunder." He lobbied for legislation that would prohibit women from working three months before they gave birth and for five months after.

As Roper and Gore-Booth pointed out, the gains made for the infant child having its mother freed from paid labour are soon significantly outweighed by the dangers of malnutrition and poverty. Without financial maternity benefits, they argued, imposed maternity leave was not progressive at all. They pointed out that no employer would be willing to employ married women who are likely to be frequently out of the workplace for eight months out of twelve. And, of course, it is not only married women who get pregnant. They argued that upwards of 74,000 women mill workers' jobs would be under threat by such legislation.

In 1907, barmaids were the subject of another moral panic. The news spread that barmaids were suffering from high rates of depression and suicide. Roper and Gore-Booth considered this absurd and researched and published 'Facts about Barmaids'. They estimated that 100,000 women's jobs were under threat and organised a mass meeting of barmaids in Holborn, London, on 14 March. A series of smaller meetings took place nationwide, recruiting barmaids to the Barmaids' Political Defence League, "an organisation to defend all women working on licensed premises from legislative attempts to restrict or abolish their employment."

The Washington Post reported on the Holborn meeting, lamenting the difficulty of organising the "barmaid type", declaring that barmaids "have not learned the fine art of expressing approval or disapproval at a public meeting and that it was somewhat disconcerting to hear laughter and cries of 'hear, hear' when Miss Esther Roper B.A., was explaining that only four barmaids in ten years have committed suicide."

Roper and Gore-Booth took a deputation of barmaids to meet with William Gladstone, then Home Secretary. He made sympathetic noises, but Gore-Booth warned the women he was insincere and not to be trusted. After months of letter writing, big public meetings, and lobbying MPs, their hard work paid off when a majority of MPs rejected the clause barring women from such employment. Roper and Gore-Booth wrote to The Times thanking "those friends in and out of the House of Commons who so effectively aided the Barmaids' Political defence League in their successful campaign.'"

Forthcoming in a future issue of Women's Fightback : Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, and the dispute about protective legislation between JJ Mallon and Mary MacArthur of the Anti-Sweating League.