‘Bless the Gods for my pencils and paper’: Katie Gliddon's prison diary, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the suffragettes at Holloway
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09612025.2012.724917
ISSN1747-583X
Autores Tópico(s)Autobiographical and Biographical Writing
ResumoAbstract This article discusses the life and imprisonment of the largely unknown middle-class artist and British suffrage activist Katie Gliddon and analyzes her extensive prison diary, secretly written and drawn in her copy of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley at London's Holloway Prison in March and April 1912. By creating a platform for the voices of 'ordinary' prisoners and by opening up a space for a transgressive gaze between suffragettes, 'ordinary' prisoners and female officers, Gliddon's writings allow us to complicate our understanding of cross-class relations within the women's suffrage campaign and in women's prisons more generally speaking. Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. Thanks also to the Women's Library, Beverley Cook at the Museum of London, the National Archives, the University College of London Library Services and Robert Winckworth at the Slade School Archives, Anne Barnes at West Sussex County Council, Helen Conlon and Alan Howell at Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery, Beth McIntyre and Kay Kays at the National Museum Wales Cardiff, Richard Cork, Louise Jackson and, especially, Alison Thomas, who have all helped in the detective work required for this article. Finally, I am indebted to the journal's two anonymous reviewers for useful suggestions and its editor June Purvis for her encouragement. Notes Katie Gliddon, Transcript of prison diary, p. 32. Archives, Women's Library, London, 7KGG/1/1b, Box 1. Page references are usually to the transcript. As the transcribed version is not always accurate, the original should be read alongside it. All subsequent references to Katie Gliddon's papers are to this archival collection. I shall use 'militant' here to refer to illegal activities such as stone throwing and window-breaking and follow common practice by using 'suffragette' to discuss women involved in, and incarcerated during, this struggle, while bearing in mind that these terms have been subject to critical interrogation. Several scholars have noted, for instance, that the distinction between 'militant' and 'constitutional' suffrage activists was not always as clear cut as originally assumed. See Sandra Stanley Holton (1986) Feminism and Democracy: women's suffrage and reform politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Recent research on the history of the suffragettes includes Joannou Maroula & June Purvis (Eds) (1998) The Women's Suffrage Movement: new feminist perspectives (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Claire Eustance, Joan Ryan & Laura Ugolini (Eds) (2000) A Suffrage Reader: charting directions in British suffrage history (London: Leicester University Press); June Purvis & Sandra Stanley Holton (Eds) (2000) Votes for Women (London: Routledge); Laura E. Nym Mayhall (2003) The Militant Suffrage Movement: citizenship and resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Jill Liddington (2006) Rebel Girls: their fight for the vote (London: Virago). The original prison diary was donated to the Women's Library in May 2008, by Katie's nephew Michael Gliddon. For the most comprehensive overview of the suffragettes' imprisonment, see June Purvis (1995), The Prison Experiences of the Suffragettes in Edwardian Britain, Women's History Review, 4 (1), pp. 103–133; Elizabeth Crawford (2001) Prison, in The Women's Suffrage Movement: a reference guide 1866–1928 (New York: Routledge). Barbara Green (1997) discusses prison autobiographies and diaries at some length, especially in the context of the suffragettes' hunger strike. Spectacular Confessions: autobiography, performative activism, and the sites of suffrage 1905–1938 (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Glenda Norquay (1995) makes available some excerpts from prison writings, with little critical commentary. Voices and Votes: a literary anthology of the women's suffrage campaign (Manchester: Manchester University Press). For readings of prison poetry, including Holloway Jingles (1912), see Deborah Tyler-Bennett (1998) Suffrage and Poetry: radical women's voices, in Maroula Joannou & June Purvis (Eds) The Women's Suffrage Movement, pp. 117–126. Two new editions of Lytton's Prisons and Prisoners were published in 1988 (London: Virago) and 2008 (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview). Recent analyses of Lytton include Marie Mulvey-Roberts (2000) Militancy, Masochism or Martyrdom? The Public and Private Prisons of Constance Lytton, in Sandra Holton & June Purvis (Eds) Votes for Women, pp. 159–180; Sue Thomas (2003), Scenes in the Writing of 'Constance Lytton and Jane Warton, Spinster': contextualising a cross-class dresser, Women's History Review, 12 (1), pp. 51–71; Jason Haslam (2005) Fitting Sentences: identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century prison narratives (Toronto: Toronto University Press); Carolyn M. Tilghman (2007) Autobiography, Activism, and the Carceral: an analysis of the prison writing of Lady Constance Lytton, Clio, 37 (1), pp. 69–92. 1911 Newspaper clipping from Croydon Times. 7KGG/4/4, Box 3. The article mistakenly refers to Gliddon as 'Mrs.' Gliddon is largely unknown and I have not been able to find any references to her in the critical literature. Sylvia Pankhurst (1931) refers to Katie's brother Cuthbert Paul who was involved in the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement under the name 'Charles Gray'. Sylvia Pankhurst (1931) The Suffragette Movement: an intimate account of persons and ideals (London: Longmans), p. 391. On 'Charles Gray' see also newspaper clippings about his activism in the Katie Gliddon collection (7KGG/4/1, Box 3); A.J.R. (Ed.) (1913) The Suffrage Annual and Women's Who's Who (London: Stanley Paul) and Sandra Stanley Holton (1997) Manliness and Militancy: the political protest of male suffragists and the gendering of the 'suffragette' identity, in Angela V. John and Claire Eustance (Eds) The Men's Share? Masculinities, Male Support, and Women's Suffrage in Britain 1890–1920 (London: Routledge), pp. 110–134. Work on 'minor' activists includes Sandra Stanley Holton (1996) Suffrage Days: stories from the women's suffrage movement (London: Routledge); Jill Liddington (2006) Rebel Girls; Krista Cowman (2007) Women of the Right Spirit: paid organisers of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) 1904–18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). On the problems with suffrage narratives organised around a few 'major' figures, see Laura E. Nym Mayhall (1995), Creating the 'Suffrage Spirit': British feminism and the historical imagination, Women's History Review, 4 (3), pp. 319–44. Gliddon, Prison Diary 2, sheet 1. 7KGG/1/2, Box 1. Purvis, Prison Experiences; Crawford, Prison. Crawford, Prison, p. 569. Leon Radzinowicz and Roger Hood (1979), The Status of Political Prisoner in England: the struggle for recognition, Virginia Law Review, 65 (8), pp. 1421–1481. Document dated 14 March 1912. National Archives, London, PCOM8/228/15. Petition by Catherine Douglas Smith. National Archives, London, HO144/1032/175314/11; Appeal by Mr Pethick Lawrence (on behalf of his wife) to T.B. Silcock. 2 April 1909. HO144/904/176114. Letter to the Home Office by Governor of Holloway Prison, 28 December 1911. National Archives HO144/1119/203651/66. Sylvia Pankhurst (1922) Writ on Cold Slate (London: Dreadnought), p. 5. Green, Spectacular Confessions, p. 99. Ibid., p. 84. Daisy Dorothea Solomon (1913) My Prison Experiences (London: St. Clement's Press). http://www.twickenhamurc.org.uk/history/1870-1884.htm England Census household data for 'Aurelius Gliddon' for 1891, 1901 and 1911. Alison Thomas (1994) Portraits of Women: Gwen John and her forgotten contemporaries (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 2. Janet Lyon (1992), Militant Discourse, Strange Bedfellows: Suffragettes and Vorticists Before the War, Differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, 4 (2), pp. 100–133. Lyon, Militant Discourse, p. 111. Thomas, Portraits; Lisa Tickner (1994) Men's Work? Masculinity and Modernism, in Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly & Keith P.F. Moxey (Eds) Visual Culture: images and interpretation (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Wesleyan University Press), pp. 42–82. The National Museum Wales, Cardiff, holds two watercolour paintings of Katie Gliddon by Edna Clarke Hall, dated 1912. The New York-based Davis & Langdale Company lists a painting entitled 'Gliddon' by Walter Sickert, dated around the same time, and it is possible that this is Katie. http://www.davisandlangdale.com/Pages/WalterRichardSickert.html It is surprising that Gliddon appears not to have rebelled against the 1911 Census, given recent findings by Jill Liddington and Elizabeth Crawford suggesting that three quarters of London WSPU members resisted or evaded the Census and that London and the Home counties show particularly high numbers of boycotters. We cannot be sure if Gliddon's case simply exemplifies the researchers' conclusion that census compliance was more widespread amongst suffrage activists than they had expected, or whether the artist was recorded by her father (as head of family) against her wishes. See Jill Liddington & Elizabeth Crawford (2011) 'Women Do Not Count, Neither Shall They Be Counted': suffrage, citizenship and the battle for the 1911 Census, History Workshop Journal, 71 (1), pp. 98–127. On occupational information, see http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cats/65/6757.htm. For details of Gliddon's exhibitions, see J. Johnson & A. Greutzner (1976) The Dictionary of British Artists 1880–1940: an antique collectors' club research project listing 41,000 Artists (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club) and http://www.museum.guernsey.net/RC03-06%20Caption.htm Archibald Watson Bain (1927) French Poetry for Children, illustrated by Katie Gliddon (London: Macmillan). Johnson & Greutzner, Dictionary of British Artists; Royal Academy of Arts (1978) Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905–1970: a dictionary of artists and their work in the summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts, Vol. III (Wakefield: EP Publishing). Elaine Silver (née Gliddon), Introduction to transcript of Katie Gliddon's diary, p. iii. 7KGG/1/1b, Box 1. 1967 is the year of death recorded at Worthing Register Office (email from Anne Barnes, West Sussex County Council, 9 November 2010). Katie Gliddon (1967) Mademoiselle Josephine, Quarterly Review of the Guernsey Society, 23 (1), pp. 3–5. Croydon WSPU press cuttings 1911, p. 4. 7KGG/4/4, Box 3. Like her brother, Katie used the alias 'Gray' but varied the spelling ('Katherine' or 'Catherine', 'Gray' or 'Grey'). Newscutting Book, p. 30. 7KGG/4/1, Box 3. Gliddon, For Defence, pp. 2–4. 7KGG/2/1, Box 2. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 1. For the events of 4 March, see also the essay submitted to the West Sussex Old People's Committee Literary Competition in 1965 (7KGG/1/8, Box 2). Gliddon, over 80 years old, received a special mention for it. Guidance Notes on the Papers of Katie Gliddon in Women's Library Archive Contents Lists, p. 9. Holloway received 129 suffragette prisoners on 5 March 1912, of whom 87 were remanded, 17 committed for trial, 25 sentenced. Of the 25, 19 were sentenced to hard labour and six to simple imprisonment. National Archives, London, PCOM 8/228/3. Transcript of letter written on newspaper wrapper in Marylebone Police Station, p. 5. 7KGG/2/1, Box 2. In another letter to her sister Gladys, she writes that she has 'not told Mother about the hard labour because it would frighten her' (pp. 14–15). 7KGG/2/1, Box 2. Prison Diary 2. 7KGG/1/2, Box 1. The sheets were probably secretly sent in with Gliddon's washing, since she comments in an unofficial letter to her mother that 'Mrs Pankhurst got the Matron to let us have our baskets—hence decent notepaper' (p. 25). 7KGG/2/1, Box 2. Silver, Introduction to the transcript, p. iii. According to a note in the original diary (p. 872, 7KGG/1/1a, Box 1), the author intended publication by 'the Women's Press' (the Woman's Press, as it was correctly called). I was unable to find records of publication. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to offer a comparison between the original diary and revisions and the role of the critical commentary by another reader. Future research could offer insights into the process of translating the immediacy of a diary into an (unpublished) autobiographical narrative. National Archives, London, PCOM 8/228/4. Kathleen Richards, She was Sent to Jail for Her Ideas. 7KGG/1/8, Box 2. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 7. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 2. On the role of reading for suffragettes, inside and outside of prison, see Kate Flint (1993) The Woman Reader, 1837–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press) and Maroula Joannou (1998) Suffragette Fiction and the Fictions of Suffrage, in Joannou & Purvis (Eds) The Women's Suffrage Movement, pp. 101–116. Deborah Tyler-Bennett (1998) Suffrage and Poetry: radical women's voices, in Joannou & Purvis (Eds) The Women's Suffrage Movement, p. 120. Shelley's 'Fragment' was probably written for his friend, the radical writer and editor Leigh Hunt, who was imprisoned for attacking the Prince Regent. A.C. Bradley (1905), Notes on Passages in Shelley, Modern Language Review, 1 (1), p. 35. Gliddon, front page of original diary. 7KGG/1/1a, Box 1. Shaw's play Mrs Warren's Profession (1898) fell foul of the censors for its explicit treatment of prostitution and its refusal to condemn and punish the play's 'fallen woman', Mrs Warren, for her actions. George K. Behlmer (2004) Waugh, Benjamin (1839–1908), in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36787. See also the review of Rosa Waugh (1912) The Life of Benjamin Waugh, 'The Child's Champion', 18 December 1912, signed 'L.G'. 7KGG/4/5, Box 3. Gliddon, Prison diary 2, Monday 22 April 1912. 7KGG/1/2, Box 1. Gliddon expresses regret over the drowning of Stead on board the Titanic, an event she only hears about during her family's prison visit. See Women's War, Croydon WSPU Press Cuttings 1910. 7KGG/4/3, Box 3 and related newspaper cuttings on branch meetings from 1911 in 7KGG/4/4, Box 3. Purvis, Prison Experiences, p. 105. Liz Stanley with Ann Morley (1988) The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison: a biographical detective story (London: The Women's Press), p. 84; Purvis, Prison Experiences, pp. 106–107. Deborah Epstein Nord (1995) Walking the Victorian Streets: women, representation, and the city (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Gliddon, Transcript, pp. 37–38. Kabi Hartman (2003) 'What Made Me A Suffragette': the new woman and the new (?) conversion narrative, Women's History Review, 12 (1), p. 41. Gliddon compares prison to 'Bethlehem' (p. 7) and her leader Emmeline Pankhurst to 'a Pope' (p. 13). Judith Rowbotham (2000), 'Soldiers of Christ'? Images of Female Missionaries in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain: issues of heroism and martyrdom, Gender and History, 12 (1), pp. 82–106. Jason Haslam (2008) Introduction, in Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview), p. 31. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 42. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 48. Constance Lytton (1914) Prisons and Prisoners (London: Heinemann), p. 42. Susan Kingsley Kent (1987) Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 3. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 48. Ibid. Ibid. Henry Mayhew & John Binny (1862) The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of Prison Life (London: Griffin); Mary Carpenter (1864) Our Convicts (London: Longman); M.E. Owen (1866) Criminal Women, Cornhill Magazine, 14 (80), pp. 152–160. On the imperial imagination in Carpenter's prison reformism see Anne Schwan (2010) 'Dreadful Beyond Description': Mary Carpenter's prison reform writings and female convicts in Britain and India, European Journal of English Studies, 14 (2), pp. 107–120. Judith Walkowitz (1980) Prostitution and Victorian Society: women, class, and the state (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 4. Ibid., p. 70. Purvis, Prison Experiences, p. 110. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 48. Kent, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, p. 73. Hartman, 'What Made Me a Suffragette', pp. 40-41. Pankhurst, Writ on Cold Slate, p. 22. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 3. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid. Figures for the nineteenth century show that the annual income of prison matrons was significantly smaller than that of all other staff. Seán McConville (1981) A History of English Prison Administration, Vol. I (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). For an account of the working conditions of matrons see also Frederick William Robinson [A Prison Matron] (1862) Female Life in Prison (London: Hurst and Blackett). Although the text was not the authentic report of a prison matron that it purported to be, its descriptions of working conditions have been taken as a good indication of life in Victorian prisons. For a detailed discussion of Robinson, see Anne Schwan (2009) 'From Dry Volumes of Facts and Figures' to Stories of 'Flesh and Blood': the prison narratives of Frederick William Robinson, in Jan Alber & Frank Lauterbach (Eds) Stones of Law—Bricks of Shame: narrating imprisonment in the Victorian Age (Toronto: Toronto University Press), pp. 191–212. Alyson Brown (2002) Conflicting Objectives: suffragette prisoners and female prison staff in Edwardian England, Women's Studies, 31 (5), p. 633. Elsie Duval, A Local Girl Suffragist's Story. To the Editor, South Western Star, 16 August 1912. Archives, Women's Library, London, 7HFD/C/09; Letter by Miss Harriet Roberta Kerr from Holloway Prison, dated 23 June 1913, to Miss Mary Charlotte Tiltman (Miss Mary Hessell). Archives, Museum of London, 74.440. Brown, Conflicting Objectives, p. 634. Ibid., p. 632. Gliddon, Transcript, pp. 27, 35–36. Ibid., pp. 18, 28. Ibid., pp. 27, 28, 46. Frederick William Robinson [A Prison Matron] (1864; orig. 1863) Memoirs of Jane Cameron, Female Convict, Vol. II (London: Hurst and Blackett), p. 93. Lucia Zedner (1991) Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 161–162. Green, Spectacular Confessions, pp. 56–57. Judith Mayne (2000) Framed: lesbians, feminists, and media culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 117. For the women-in-prison genre's context and history, see also Bev Zalcock (1998) Renegade Sisters: girl gangs on film (London and San Francisco: Creation Books); Jenni Millbank (2004) It's About This: lesbians, prison, desire, Social & Legal Studies, 13 (2), pp. 155–190. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 31. Ibid. Leonora Tyson, A Day in Holloway, dated 5 March – 8 May 1912, sheet 2. Archives, Museum of London, SC31. Mary Jean Corbett (1992) Representing Femininity: middle-class subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian women's autobiographies (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 162. Hartman, What Made Me a Suffragette, p. 41. Gliddon, Draft autobiographical account 1, p. 179. 7KGG/1/4, Box 1. Gliddon, Transcript, p. 51. Gliddon, Prison Diary 2, sheet 1. 7KGG/1/2, Box 1. Gliddon, Draft autobiographical account 1, p. 179. 7KGG/1/4, Box 1. On collectivity through hunger-striking and forcible feeding, see Corbett, Representing Femininity; Green, Spectacular Confessions. Additional informationNotes on contributorsAnne Schwan Anne Schwan is Reader in Literary Studies and Cultural Theory and Programme Leader for English at Edinburgh Napier University, UK. She is the co-author, with Stephen Shapiro, of How to Read Foucault's Discipline and Punish (Pluto 2011) and editor of a special issue on 'Reading and Writing in Prison' (Critical Survey, 23 (3), 2011). She has also published articles on narratives of crime and imprisonment in the nineteenth century.
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