Annie Kenney

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Annie Kenney (1909)

Annie Kenney (born September 13, 1879 in Oldham , † July 9, 1953 in Hitchin ) was an English suffragette from the working class who became a leader in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Together with Minnie Baldock, she founded the first sub-organization in London. Kenney drew press and public attention in 1905 when she and Christabel Pankhurst had been jailed for several days for assault and obstruction. This was the result of Edward Gray's disruption at a Liberal Party gathering in Manchester over the issue of women's suffrage. The incident is believed to have marked a new phase in the struggle for women's suffrage, as militant tactics were now being used. Annie had friends with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Mary Blathwayt, Clara Codd, Adela Pankhurst, and Christabel Pankhurst.

Early life

Kenney was born in Oldham , in the Greater Manchester area, into a working class family, as the fourth daughter (of 12 children) of Horatio Nelson Kenney (1849-1912) and Anne Wood (1852-1905). She had seven sisters who included Nell (Sarah), Jessie, Jennie, Alice and Kitty. At the age of 10, Annie started working part-time in a cotton factory while attending school. She worked full at the age of 13, which meant 12-hour shifts from 6 a.m. onwards. Hired as a weaver's helper (or “tenter”), part of her job was tending to the spindles and handling the fleece strands when they broke; while doing such an activity, her finger was torn off a rotating spindle. She stayed at the factory for 15 years, doing union work, expanding her education through self-study and, inspired by Robert Blatchford's publication The Clarion , encouraging the study of literature among her work colleagues. She was a regular churchgoer.

activism

Annie Kenney (left) and Christabel Pankhurst show their common goal

Kenney actively joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) after she and her sister Jessie heard Teresa Billington-Greig and Christabel Pankhurst in 1905 at the Oldham Clarion Vocal Club. During a Liberal gathering in the Manchester Free Trade Hall in October 1905, Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst disrupted a political meeting attended by Winston Churchill and Edward Gray by shouting, "Will the Liberal government give votes to women?" (German: Will the liberal government give women the right to vote? ) After unfolding a banner with the words "Votes for Women" and further shouting, they were thrown out of the meeting and arrested for causing obstruction. Pankhurst was held for attacking a police officer after spat on him to provoke an arrest (she later wrote that it was a dry spit, more of a curse). Kenney was held in jail for three days for her part in the protest. She was imprisoned 13 times in total.

Annie Kenney disguised as a mill worker (1906)

Emmeline Pankhurst wrote in her autobiography that "this was the beginning of a campaign the like of which was never known in England, or for that matter in any other country ... we interrupted a great many meetings ... and we were violently thrown out and insulted. Often we were painfully bruised and hurt. " (German: that this was the beginning of a campaign the likes of which England had never seen, or in this matter no other country ... we interrupted a large number of meetings ... and we were forcibly expelled and attacked we hurt in a painful way. )

Kenney and Minnie Baldock founded the first London branch of the WPSU in Canning Town in 1906 and gathered for meetings at 105 Barking Road, the "Canning Town Public Hall". In June of that year, Kenney, Adelaide Knight and Mrs. Sparborough were arrested trying to get the audience's attention in the presence of HH Asquith , then Chancellor of the Exchequer . Faced with the choice of going to jail for six weeks or giving up the fight for a year, Kenney chose jail, as the others did.

Kenney became part of the top leadership of the WSPU by assuming deputy in 1912. In 1913 she and Flora Drummond arranged a meeting between representatives of the WSPU and leading politicians David Lloyd George and Edward Gray . Workers representing their shift should take part. They explained the appalling wage and working conditions they suffered and their hope that the right to vote would enable women to democratically challenge the status quo. Alice Hawkins from Leicester explained that her male colleagues could elect a man to represent her, while the women were left without representation.

Kenney was involved in other militant activities and was often force-fed. She has always been determined to confront the authorities and stress the injustice of the new law, which made it possible for prisoners to be released on grounds of ill health so that they could later resume their detention, somewhat recovered from their hunger strike. This is why it was also called the Cat and Mouse Act , because the prisoners were played with, just as cats usually do with mice. On one occasion in January 1914, when she had just been released from prison and was very weak, the Times reported that at a meeting at Knightsbridge Town Hall, Norah Dacre Fox, Secretary General of the WSPU, described the following have:

"Miss Kenney was conveyed to the meeting in a horse ambulance; and she was borne into the meeting on a stretcher, which was raised to the platform and placed on two chairs. She raised her right hand and fluttered a handkerchief and, covered with blankets, lay motionless watching the audience. Later, her license under the "Cat and Mouse" Act was offered for sale. Mrs Dacre Fox stated that an offer of £ 15 had already been received for it, and the next was one of £ 20, then £ 25 was bid, and at this price it was sold. Soon afterwards Miss Kenney was taken back to the ambulance . Detectives were present, but no attempt was made to rearrest Miss Kenney, whose license had expired. "

(German: Miss Kenney was brought to the meeting in a horse ambulance; and she was carried into the meeting room on a stretcher that was lifted to the dais and placed on two chairs. She raised her right hand and waved a handkerchief, then She lay motionless with blankets, watching the audience, and her license, which she had received under the Cat and Mouse Act, was later put up for sale, Ms. Dacre Fox found that it was already a bid of £ 15 the next bids were £ 20, then £ 25. At that price it was sold. Soon after, Miss Kenney was brought back to the ambulance, in the presence of detectives, but no attempt was made to arrest Miss Kenney, whose license was yes it had become worthless. )

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst called for an end to suffragette militancy and urged women to take an active part in the war effort by taking on jobs traditionally viewed as the prerogative of men, but because of the absence of them Men at the front were not manned. This was announced through the pages of The Suffragette magazine and re-introduced on April 16, 1915 with the slogan that "a thousand times more the duty of the militant Suffragettes to fight the Kaiser for the sake of liberty than it was to fight anti -Suffrage Governments "(German: militant suffragettes are a thousand times more obliged to fight against the emperor for freedom than against governments that refused to vote ).

In the fall of 1915, Kenney accompanied Emmeline Pankhurst, Flora Drummond, Norah Dacre Fox and Grace Roe to South Wales, the Midlands and Clydeside on a recruiting and lecturing tour to encourage the unions to support the war effort. Kenney took her message as far as France and the United States.

Private life

Adela Pankhurst (standing) and Kenney, pictured next to a tree planted by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1909

Annie had a large retinue of close friends within the suffragette movement. She used to share a bed with Mary Blathwayt, Clara Codd, and Adela Pankhurst. She and Christabel Pankhurst went on vacation together to Saak, but it was not clear whether this relationship was ever physical. Mary Blathwayt noted in her diary some of Kenney's sleepmates during her stay at Eagle House, the home of the Blathwayt family. Blathwayt's jealousy was presumed to be the reason for the entry. Annie was tolerated by the Blathwayts. She was a frequent visitor to the “Eagle House” and even planted four trees in contrast to the others (see Annie's Arboretum ). They paid for gifts and watches, and they paid for their medical and dental bills and those of their sisters.

Kenney married James Taylor (1893-1977) and settled in Letchworth , Hertfordshire, after women had been given the right to vote for over 30 years in 1918. A son, Warwick Kenney Taylor, was born in 1921. She died of diabetes at Lister Hospital in Hitchin on July 9, 1953 at the age of 73. Her funeral was fashioned according to the rites of the Rosicrucians and her ashes were scattered on Saddleworth Moor by the family .

Recognition after death

In 1999, Oldham Council erected a blue plaque in her honor at the "Lees Brook Mill" in Lees, near Oldham, where Kenney began her work in 1892.

On December 14, 2018, a statue, funded by public subscription, was unveiled near the site of the former Oldham Town Hall .

Her name and picture (and those of 58 other supporters of women's suffrage) are on the base of the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square , London, which was unveiled in late 2018.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Annie_Kenney  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sarah Jackson: The suffragettes weren't just white, middle-class women throwing stones . In: The Guardian , October 12, 2015. 
  2. ↑ Helen Rappaport: Encyclopedia of women social reformers, Volume 1 (ABC-CLIO, 2001) pp. 359-361
  3. ^ ES Pankhurst; The suffragette: the history of the women's militant suffrage movement, 1905-1910 New York, Sturgis & Walton Company 1911. pp. 19ff.
  4. ↑ Annie Kenney, Marie M. Roberts, Tamae Mizuta: A Militant . Routledge 1994, intro.
  5. ↑ Jessie Kenney (en) . In: Spartacus Educational . 
  6. ↑ Elizabeth Crawford: The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928. Routledge 1999 (2nd ed. 2003) p. 489
  7. ↑ Sarah Jackson: The suffragettes weren't just white, middle-class women throwing stones . In: The Guardian , October 12, 2015. 
  8. ^ Rosemary Taylor: East London Suffragettes. August 4, 2014 ISBN 978-0-7509-6216-2 , Retrieved April 9, 2019
  9. ^ Adelaide Knight, East London Suffragette. Retrieved April 9, 2019
  10. ^ Suffragettes from the working class. Accessed April 9, 2019
  11. ^ "Miss Kenney's Health - Released Suffragist at a Meeting," The Times , October 21, 1913, p. 5)
  12. ↑ parliament.uk : Suffragettes in wartime.Retrieved April 9, 2019
  13. ↑ Angela McPherson, Susan McPherson: Mosley's Old Suffragette - A Biography of Norah Elam . New edition 2011. See: Archived copy ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ISBN 978-1-4466-9967-6 . Retrieved April 9, 2019 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oldsuffragette.co.uk
  14. ^ Martin Pugh: The Pankhursts: The History of One Radical Family. Random House 2013. pp. 209-213. ISBN 978-1-4481-6268-0
  15. ↑ Vanessa Thorpe: Diary reveals lesbian love trysts of suffragette leaders (en-GB) . In: The Observer , June 11, 2000. 
  16. ↑ The Kenney Papers - A Guide. (PDF) University of East Anglia , accessed April 12, 2019 .
  17. ↑ oldham.gov.uk
  18. ↑ Emotions run high as 'beautiful' Annie Kenney statue is unveiled . In: Oldham Chronicle , December 14, 2018. 
  19. ↑ Millicent Fawcett statue unveiling: the women and men whose names will be on the plinth . iNews. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Kenney, Annie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Taylor, Annie Kenney (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English suffragette, suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldham near Manchester
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1953
Place of death Hitchin