Alice Wheeldon
Alice Ann Wheeldon (born Alice Ann Marshall January 27, 1866 in Derby ; died February 21, 1919 there ) was a British suffragette and anti-war activist.
Life
Alice Marshall's father was a worker. She married the mechanic William Augustus Wheeldon in 1886 and they had four children: Nellie (1888), Hettie (1891), Willie (1892) and Winnie (1893).
Alice Wheeldon ran a small used goods shop. She was interested in politics, and whether she became a member of the Socialist Labor Party cannot be proven. She and her daughters were involved in the Women's Social and Political Union , founded in 1903 , which campaigned for women's suffrage with radical means.
With the outbreak of World War I, there was a truce between the upper class dominated suffragette movement and the British government. The Wheeldons were pacifists and remained so after the outbreak of war. They joined the No-Conscription Fellowship , which sought to prevent the military law that introduced compulsory military service in Great Britain in 1916. It contained very limited possibilities of conscientious objection to military service. The son Willie was not recognized and drafted as a soldier in 1916.
The Wheeldon family supported conscientious objectors, so they once offered a young man a night's shelter. This later turned out to be a police spy and provocateur of MI5 . On January 30, 1917, the family was arrested and charged with planning a poisoning attack on Prime Minister David Lloyd George and Labor politician Arthur Henderson . The trial was brought by Attorney General Frederick Edwin Smith from Derby to London at the Old Bailey . Smith prevented the spy from being summoned and thus prevented cross-examination by the defense.
Alice Wheeldon was sentenced to ten years in prison, the daughter Winnie to five years, her husband Alfred Mason to seven years and the daughter Hettie was released. Alice Wheeldon was detained at Aylesbury Prison where she started a hunger strike and was then transferred to Holloway Prison .
Because of her poor health, Wheeldon was conditionally released on January 1, 1918, and died a year later during the European flu epidemic , exhausted . The war opponent John Clarke spoke at her grave . Winnie and Alfred Mason were released on January 26, 1919. The daughter Hettie died in 1920, the son Willie emigrated to Russia in 1921. He was murdered during the Stalin Purge in 1937.
The "Wheeldon case" was also discussed later. In 2009, the biographer Nicola Rippon took the view that the government had orchestrated the attack plan to combat war fatigue in the population and to discredit the growing anti-war movement. Wheeldon's rehabilitation is only progressing bit by bit, in 2013 a commemorative plaque (Blue Plaque) was placed on her home by the Derby community . The descendants of Wheeldon still want a judicial determination of their innocence.
literature
- David Doughan: Wheeldon [née Marshall], Alice Ann. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
- Alice Wheeldon , in: Sheila Rowbotham : A Century of Women. The History of Women in Britain and the United States . London: Viking, 1997 ISBN 0-670-87420-5 , p. 643
- John Jackson: Losing the plot , in: History Today , May 2007
- Nicola Rippon: The Plot to Kill Lloyd George: The Story of Alice Wheeldon and the Peartree Conspiracy . Barnsley: Wharncliffe, 2009 ISBN 978-1-84563-079-9
- Sheila Rowbotham : Friends of Alice Wheeldon. The Anti-War Activist Accused of Plotting to Kill Lloyd George . Pluto Press, 2015 ISBN 9780745335759
Web links
- Literature by and about Alice Wheeldon in the WorldCat bibliographic database
- Alice Wheeldon , website of Deirdre and Chloë Mason, great-granddaughters
- John Simpkin: Alice Wheeldon , at spartacus-educational
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alice Wheeldon campaigners hold Royal Courts of Justice vigil , BBC report, March 11, 2017
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wheeldon, Alice |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wheeldon, Alice Ann (full name); Marshall, Alice Ann (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British suffragette and war opponent |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 27, 1866 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Derby |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 21, 1919 |
| Place of death | Derby |