Looking for Lily Maxwell, who voted in a municipal election in 1867

Now I blame Graham, who posted this picture of Lily Maxwell and the accompanying notes

“First woman to record a vote in a municipal election, November 1867

Lily Maxwell was the first woman to vote in Britain in 1867 after the Great Reform Act of 1832. 

The act had explicitly excluded all women from the voting in national elections by using the term ‘male’ rather than ‘person’ in its wording. 

Maxwell, a shop owner, met the property qualifications that otherwise would have made her eligible to vote had she been male. Her name had been added to the election register and on that basis she succeeded in voting (escorted by Lydia Becker) in a by-election – her vote however was later declared illegal.”

And followed it up with an extract from the Daily News dated November 28 1867 which reported on the "record and acceptance of a vote by a lady, at the Chorlton Town Hall [continuing] it appears that, when a name is on the register, the presiding officer has no alternative but to receive the vote of the person who bears the name when it is tendered...........the name ‘Lily Maxwell is registered (No. 12,326) as that of a person entitled to vote for the Parliamentary borough of Manchester.  Possibly the registrar may have supposed it to be a  masculine name.”

And so I was drawn in.

This may have been a mistake but those early campaigners for widening the franchise were quick to seize the opportunity and Lily Maxwell was accompanied by “Miss Becker, the secretary of the Women’s Suffrage Society of Manchester [and Miss Maxwell] voted for Jacob Bright."

Likewise the establishment moved equally quickly and her vote was later declared illegal by the Court of Common Pleas.

All of which made me want to explore the history of Women’s Suffrage Society of Manchester and also to find out more about Miss Maxwell.

Now there is only one Lily Maxwell listed in the official records for Manchester during the period.

She was born in Scotland in 1801 appears on the 1861 and ’71 census and died in the last quarter of 1876.

And that  is almost it.

We can track her to Ardwick in 1861 when she described herself as House Keeper.

Four years later she had moved to 25 Ludlow Street in Chorlton on Medlock and in 1867 was at  71 Cowcill Street.

And it was while she was occupying this property that she was included on the electoral register.

Here she stayed till her death nine years later.

Of her earlier years before 1861 I can as yet find nothing but I travel in hope.

So she remains an intriguing figure not only for what she did but for who she might have been.

Picture; Lily Maxwell, date unknown but possibly 1867, m08249, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass