Hannah Mitchell (1871-1956)
In 1871, Hannah Mitchell was born on a farm ‘hidden away in a cleft of the hills, in the wildest part of the Derbyshire Moorlands’. She was the fourth of six children. Her mother originated from Yorkshire, and at the age of 12 she went into domestic service. At the age of 21, she came to work at one of the bigger farms in Derbyshire as a maid-servant. It was here that she met her future husband and Hannah’s father, who was employed as a shepherd and a handyman. They fell in love and got married. However, thereafter, her mother was apparently not very happy. Hannah relates how her mother was predisposed to violent mood swings, which her uncle put down to her not being suited to hard-working farm life, with little money: ‘She was no wife for a farmer, especially in such a lonely place’. Hannah's mother vented her frustrations on her children: ‘She would fall into violent passions about the merest trifles and drive us all out of the house for hours; sometimes we would have to spend the night in the barn sleeping on the hay’. Part of the antagonism was because Hannah hated her domestic chores and loved reading, which her mother put down to idleness: ‘My mother honestly thought me lazy because I didn’t like housework, and held that reading was only a recreation, meant for Sundays’. A stranger who passed by the farm gave Hannah a book of Wordsworth’s poems, which she leant by heart as her mother threatened to burn it. As Hannah got older the antagonism between her and her mother got worse: ‘She strove to enforce her will by nagging, ravings and beatings so it was impossible to stay any longer’. Consequently, Hannah decided it was time she and her mother parted company, so she left home permanently, tramping over the hills to stay with her brother and his wife in Glossop.
As for Hannah’s early education; she is taught to read and write by her father and uncle. The nearest school was five miles away, so the children took it in turns as they got old enough to attend: boarding there during the week and returning home at the weekends. Hannah’s mother is reluctant to send Hannah to school, as she wanted all her daughters to learn needlework. But she eventually gives in to her daughter’s constant pleading. However, Hannah only managed to attend school for two weeks as she fell ill and had to return home, and that was that. Subsequently, Hannah is sent away to learn an apprenticeship in needlework. To her surprise, Hannah enjoyed the experience. Unlike her mother, the elderly woman in charge was gentle and kind, and taught Hannah to take pride in her work. After leaving home for good, Hannah spent some time in domestic service, but she found the employment too demanding and it gave her little time to pursue her other interests. She thought that a position as a seamstress would allow her this, and she soon found employment in a sewing shop. Her training in needlework reaped its rewards, and she was able to earn an independent living; although still a poor one. Hannah eventually attains a position as an assistant dressmaker in Bolton. It was around the time of the agitation for better working conditions, and organisers appealed to the workers to join the trade unions and demand their rights. Hannah recalls how thrilled she and her work mates were: ‘we were all very excited when huge bills appeared announcing a meeting, to demand a fixed weekly half-holiday for all shop workers’. One of the male boarders in Hannah's lodgings was a socialist and he showed her some articles about slums and sweated labour, and she began to read the Clarion newspaper. She also met a man who lent her a book about social inequalities, and they began to attend socialist meetings together. Their friendship developed and two years later they were married. She has happy memories of her wedding day, none the least because it took place on a Wednesday: the fought for weekly half-day holiday, rather than on a Sunday when marriages usually took place.
Hannah soon discovered that marriage entrapped her further in the strict division of labour she had experienced in her childhood. Since an early age she had bitterly resented the inequalities between the sexes. She recalls how resentful she had felt at the age of eight, ‘when her brothers were allowed to read or play dominoes when she had to darn their stockings’. Her uncle tried to explain to her why women were not allowed to vote: ‘He tried to show me that as men’s work lay outside the home as breadwinners their needs and their outlook were wider than women’s, whose interests were chiefly centred on the home’. However, Hannah says she would never accept the idea of male superiority of judgement. After her marriage, she bemoans her increased work load. She still works all week, but now she has the added of responsibilities of housework and cooking, which she hated: ‘I think I resented the Sunday work most of all, but as I was busy all week with dressmaking, I had to do all my cooking and baking on a Sunday’. She had always wanted time to read and study and had aspirations to become a writer, but married life hampered her further: ‘Perhaps if I had really understood my own nature, as I came to do later, I should not have married, for I soon realized that married life, as men understand it, calls for a degree of self-abnegation which was impossible for me. I needed solitude, time for study, and the opportunity for a wider life’. After she gave birth to her son the situation worsened: ‘Goodbye to all hopes of study and self-improvement: there would be no time even to read, or for fresh air and walks in the country’. After a very traumatic and a painful labour, together with the worry of bringing up a child on a low income, she resolves never to have any more children: ‘I felt it impossible to face again either the personal suffering, or the task of bringing a second child up in poverty’. Despite all Hannah’s misgivings, family life does not seem to have slowed her down or dampened her desire for something more: ‘Most women get down to their job and try to forget their ambitions, getting a sort of vicarious satisfaction out of their children. I was never able to do this’. After her husband gets a job in the busy industrial town of Ashton-Under –Lyme they move there, and Hannah begins to take a keener and more active interest in politics: she joins the local branch of the ILP and becomes secretary of lectures for the Labour Church. These positions bring her into contact with many well-know figures in the Labour Movement, such as Keir Hardy, Ramsey Mac Donald, and Philip Snowden. In 1904, Hannah becomes a Poor Law Guardian for Ashton.
In Manchester, in 1904, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) formed with Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst as its founder and leader. Hannah is deeply inspired by the suffragette movement, not surprisingly as they articulated her personal grievances: ‘It seems to me now, looking back, that all my previous life had been a preparation for this great experience’. The WSPU first of all recruited from women members of the ILP, and Hannah began to help the Pankhursts with their vigorous ‘Votes for Women’ campaign. She recalls going to the Pankhurst’s home in Nelson Street, Manchester and meeting Annie Kenney and her sister Jenny: ‘They were good-looking, well-mannered young women, wearing dark costumes of excellent quality, with white silk blouses. Both were fine examples of the self-respecting Lancashire mill girl, intellectual and independent. Annie flung herself into the struggle with all the fervour of a religious crusader’. Hannah has fond memories of Annie Kenney, and she speaks well of her on several times: ‘I well remember Annie Kenney for the first time on Stalybridge Market group, and seeing the audience, most of whom had come to scoff, held spellbound by the charm and intensity of her appeal for the rights of her sex’. Hannah was one of the team of speakers, and she relates how they toured the Lancashire towns spreading the Votes for Women message and canvassing for supporters: ‘We held outdoor meetings, stood on the steps of shows or roundabouts, on the market grounds, or at a street corner, on a chair, or a soap box from the nearest shop, often lent only in the hope of seeing some fun’. Following the Free-Trade Hall incident involving Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, Hannah goes to Strangeways prison to greet Pankhurst on her release. She relates how a large crowd had gathered, illustrating how the incident had given the WSPU the spark they needed: 'The two girls who had only a week before had been flung out of the hall like criminals were now the centre figures on the platform, which was filled with sympathisers, while the vast audience which filled the area and gallery showed the keen interest …twenty years of peaceful propaganda had not produced such an effect, nor had fifty years of patient pleading which had gone before. The smouldering resentment in women’s hearts burst into a flame of revolt'. Hannah was actively involved in the sufragette campaign of militancy that followed, where she employed tactics such as picketing polling booths, and disrupting political meetings with the cry, ‘Will the Liberal Government give the vote to women?’ She was arrested on many occasions and put in Strangeways prison. She also describes how she would stand in for the leaders when they were suddenly called away: ‘I was often called upon to deputize for one or other, and to face disappointed audiences who had come to hear these now famous women’. However, as she knew her subject thoroughly, Hannah was generally well received.
In 1907, Hannah suffered a nervous breakdown, which she puts down to the strain of her suffrage work and her poor law work, as well as having to look after her family on 30s a week; in addition, she was not sleeplng well. While she was ill there was a split in the WSPU. Several of the more democratic members, not liking the autocratic leadership of the WSPU and its increasingly violent tactics, formed a new organisation which they called ‘The Women’s Freedom League’ (WFL). Hannah joined this as soon as she was well, mainly because she was upset as none of the Pankhursts had contacted her while she was unwell: ‘I was so deeply hurt by the fact that none of the Pankhursts had shown the slightest interest in my illness, not even a letter of sympathy’. Hannah’s husband got a job with one of the Co-Operative Societies in Manchester, so they moved home again. Hannah joined the Manchester ILP, and she gave talks about socialism, and about sex equality; which was met with derision: ‘my male friends began to look askance, and avoid my company. I was often asked to change the subject when I proposed to speak on feminist topics; this I always firmly refused to do’. She realised that socialist men were quite content to have their suffrage and women not, and that domestic unhappiness was the price many women paid for their political opinions and activities. Thereby, highlighting the deep sexism and institutionalised prejudice that women were up against.
After the Second World War, Hannah became involved in politics again. She came into contact with many men and women who later became members of Parliament; including Ellen Wilkinson (whom she later worked alongside on Manchester City council): ‘Among those whom I regarded as personal friends was Ellen Wilkinson, brilliant and gifted, whom I had known first as a promising schoolgirl, and whose career I watched with affectionate admiration’. The ILP nominated Hannah as municiple candidate for her ward, and she consequetly wins a seat on Manchester City Council; a position in which she is to remain for the next twelve years: 1924-1935. In 1926, Hannah is appointed a magistrate in Manchester; an achievement of which she is very proud, and she marvels at how much she has accomplished in her lifetime: ‘of the many women who have received the honour, few indeed can have attained it in the face of so many handicaps as I had. Ignorance, poverty, the disabilities of women in general and married women in particular, had all been faced in the years of service and study which had preceded this result’. Hannah wrote her autobiography in secret, during the last years of World War II and the years immediately following. Her attempts at getting it published were unsuccessful, although short extracts were published in a few interested journals. After her death in 1965, the full manuscript was discovered among her papers.
As for Hannah’s early education; she is taught to read and write by her father and uncle. The nearest school was five miles away, so the children took it in turns as they got old enough to attend: boarding there during the week and returning home at the weekends. Hannah’s mother is reluctant to send Hannah to school, as she wanted all her daughters to learn needlework. But she eventually gives in to her daughter’s constant pleading. However, Hannah only managed to attend school for two weeks as she fell ill and had to return home, and that was that. Subsequently, Hannah is sent away to learn an apprenticeship in needlework. To her surprise, Hannah enjoyed the experience. Unlike her mother, the elderly woman in charge was gentle and kind, and taught Hannah to take pride in her work. After leaving home for good, Hannah spent some time in domestic service, but she found the employment too demanding and it gave her little time to pursue her other interests. She thought that a position as a seamstress would allow her this, and she soon found employment in a sewing shop. Her training in needlework reaped its rewards, and she was able to earn an independent living; although still a poor one. Hannah eventually attains a position as an assistant dressmaker in Bolton. It was around the time of the agitation for better working conditions, and organisers appealed to the workers to join the trade unions and demand their rights. Hannah recalls how thrilled she and her work mates were: ‘we were all very excited when huge bills appeared announcing a meeting, to demand a fixed weekly half-holiday for all shop workers’. One of the male boarders in Hannah's lodgings was a socialist and he showed her some articles about slums and sweated labour, and she began to read the Clarion newspaper. She also met a man who lent her a book about social inequalities, and they began to attend socialist meetings together. Their friendship developed and two years later they were married. She has happy memories of her wedding day, none the least because it took place on a Wednesday: the fought for weekly half-day holiday, rather than on a Sunday when marriages usually took place.
Hannah soon discovered that marriage entrapped her further in the strict division of labour she had experienced in her childhood. Since an early age she had bitterly resented the inequalities between the sexes. She recalls how resentful she had felt at the age of eight, ‘when her brothers were allowed to read or play dominoes when she had to darn their stockings’. Her uncle tried to explain to her why women were not allowed to vote: ‘He tried to show me that as men’s work lay outside the home as breadwinners their needs and their outlook were wider than women’s, whose interests were chiefly centred on the home’. However, Hannah says she would never accept the idea of male superiority of judgement. After her marriage, she bemoans her increased work load. She still works all week, but now she has the added of responsibilities of housework and cooking, which she hated: ‘I think I resented the Sunday work most of all, but as I was busy all week with dressmaking, I had to do all my cooking and baking on a Sunday’. She had always wanted time to read and study and had aspirations to become a writer, but married life hampered her further: ‘Perhaps if I had really understood my own nature, as I came to do later, I should not have married, for I soon realized that married life, as men understand it, calls for a degree of self-abnegation which was impossible for me. I needed solitude, time for study, and the opportunity for a wider life’. After she gave birth to her son the situation worsened: ‘Goodbye to all hopes of study and self-improvement: there would be no time even to read, or for fresh air and walks in the country’. After a very traumatic and a painful labour, together with the worry of bringing up a child on a low income, she resolves never to have any more children: ‘I felt it impossible to face again either the personal suffering, or the task of bringing a second child up in poverty’. Despite all Hannah’s misgivings, family life does not seem to have slowed her down or dampened her desire for something more: ‘Most women get down to their job and try to forget their ambitions, getting a sort of vicarious satisfaction out of their children. I was never able to do this’. After her husband gets a job in the busy industrial town of Ashton-Under –Lyme they move there, and Hannah begins to take a keener and more active interest in politics: she joins the local branch of the ILP and becomes secretary of lectures for the Labour Church. These positions bring her into contact with many well-know figures in the Labour Movement, such as Keir Hardy, Ramsey Mac Donald, and Philip Snowden. In 1904, Hannah becomes a Poor Law Guardian for Ashton.
In Manchester, in 1904, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) formed with Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst as its founder and leader. Hannah is deeply inspired by the suffragette movement, not surprisingly as they articulated her personal grievances: ‘It seems to me now, looking back, that all my previous life had been a preparation for this great experience’. The WSPU first of all recruited from women members of the ILP, and Hannah began to help the Pankhursts with their vigorous ‘Votes for Women’ campaign. She recalls going to the Pankhurst’s home in Nelson Street, Manchester and meeting Annie Kenney and her sister Jenny: ‘They were good-looking, well-mannered young women, wearing dark costumes of excellent quality, with white silk blouses. Both were fine examples of the self-respecting Lancashire mill girl, intellectual and independent. Annie flung herself into the struggle with all the fervour of a religious crusader’. Hannah has fond memories of Annie Kenney, and she speaks well of her on several times: ‘I well remember Annie Kenney for the first time on Stalybridge Market group, and seeing the audience, most of whom had come to scoff, held spellbound by the charm and intensity of her appeal for the rights of her sex’. Hannah was one of the team of speakers, and she relates how they toured the Lancashire towns spreading the Votes for Women message and canvassing for supporters: ‘We held outdoor meetings, stood on the steps of shows or roundabouts, on the market grounds, or at a street corner, on a chair, or a soap box from the nearest shop, often lent only in the hope of seeing some fun’. Following the Free-Trade Hall incident involving Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, Hannah goes to Strangeways prison to greet Pankhurst on her release. She relates how a large crowd had gathered, illustrating how the incident had given the WSPU the spark they needed: 'The two girls who had only a week before had been flung out of the hall like criminals were now the centre figures on the platform, which was filled with sympathisers, while the vast audience which filled the area and gallery showed the keen interest …twenty years of peaceful propaganda had not produced such an effect, nor had fifty years of patient pleading which had gone before. The smouldering resentment in women’s hearts burst into a flame of revolt'. Hannah was actively involved in the sufragette campaign of militancy that followed, where she employed tactics such as picketing polling booths, and disrupting political meetings with the cry, ‘Will the Liberal Government give the vote to women?’ She was arrested on many occasions and put in Strangeways prison. She also describes how she would stand in for the leaders when they were suddenly called away: ‘I was often called upon to deputize for one or other, and to face disappointed audiences who had come to hear these now famous women’. However, as she knew her subject thoroughly, Hannah was generally well received.
In 1907, Hannah suffered a nervous breakdown, which she puts down to the strain of her suffrage work and her poor law work, as well as having to look after her family on 30s a week; in addition, she was not sleeplng well. While she was ill there was a split in the WSPU. Several of the more democratic members, not liking the autocratic leadership of the WSPU and its increasingly violent tactics, formed a new organisation which they called ‘The Women’s Freedom League’ (WFL). Hannah joined this as soon as she was well, mainly because she was upset as none of the Pankhursts had contacted her while she was unwell: ‘I was so deeply hurt by the fact that none of the Pankhursts had shown the slightest interest in my illness, not even a letter of sympathy’. Hannah’s husband got a job with one of the Co-Operative Societies in Manchester, so they moved home again. Hannah joined the Manchester ILP, and she gave talks about socialism, and about sex equality; which was met with derision: ‘my male friends began to look askance, and avoid my company. I was often asked to change the subject when I proposed to speak on feminist topics; this I always firmly refused to do’. She realised that socialist men were quite content to have their suffrage and women not, and that domestic unhappiness was the price many women paid for their political opinions and activities. Thereby, highlighting the deep sexism and institutionalised prejudice that women were up against.
After the Second World War, Hannah became involved in politics again. She came into contact with many men and women who later became members of Parliament; including Ellen Wilkinson (whom she later worked alongside on Manchester City council): ‘Among those whom I regarded as personal friends was Ellen Wilkinson, brilliant and gifted, whom I had known first as a promising schoolgirl, and whose career I watched with affectionate admiration’. The ILP nominated Hannah as municiple candidate for her ward, and she consequetly wins a seat on Manchester City Council; a position in which she is to remain for the next twelve years: 1924-1935. In 1926, Hannah is appointed a magistrate in Manchester; an achievement of which she is very proud, and she marvels at how much she has accomplished in her lifetime: ‘of the many women who have received the honour, few indeed can have attained it in the face of so many handicaps as I had. Ignorance, poverty, the disabilities of women in general and married women in particular, had all been faced in the years of service and study which had preceded this result’. Hannah wrote her autobiography in secret, during the last years of World War II and the years immediately following. Her attempts at getting it published were unsuccessful, although short extracts were published in a few interested journals. After her death in 1965, the full manuscript was discovered among her papers.
