A life rediscovered and the campaign to get women the vote part two

Miss Maxwell, possibly 1867

This is Lily Maxwell and until last year ago I knew nothing of her but she has caught my imagination.

She was born in Scotland in 1801 and died here in Manchester 75 years later.

Her early life is still a mystery but in 1867 she was caught in history because in that year she presented herself at Chorlton Town Hall and voted in a Parliamentary election.

Now given that it would be another half century before some women were given a Parliamentary vote and another decade after that before all women over the age of 21 could vote in a General Election Miss Maxwell’s vote is a significant moment.

Well it would have been if her vote had been allowed but it was over turned by a Court of Appeal on the grounds that she had been wrongly registered and so was not entitled to take part in the by election.

The story was covered by newspaper across the country and Punch even published a poem on the event.

Most of the press led with the story that she had been wrongly registered but that the Returning Officer had little alternative but to let her proceed. It was “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.”*

Lydia Becker, 1879

And that was pretty much how I read the story until I dug deeper and discovered that the Manchester Society for Women’s Suffrage had been working during 1867 to put women with the requisite property qualification on the electoral register.

The Society had been founded in January of that year and one of its driving forces was Lydia Becker who was made Secretary the following month.

Miss Becker along with another woman had accompanied Miss Maxwell to Chorlton Town Hall in the November when Lily Maxwell exercised her right to vote.

So not a mistake but a carefully calculated part of a campaign to publicise the right of women to the vote, and while Lily was ultimately unsuccessful as were other women the event did gain national coverage.

The Edinburgh Evening Courant reported that “Miss Lily Maxwell and 1100 other women householders in the township of Chorlton –upon-Medlock have sent in claims to be placed on the list of voters for the city of Manchester.”**

And while most were struck off by the Court of Appeal thirteen who had been over looked by the Revising Barrister were still on the Manchester register at the time of the General Election in November 1868, and nine actually cast their votes.

The society remained an important force having joined in a loose federation with societies in London and Edinburgh in November 1867.

It was then known as the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage until 1897, when along with about 500 other suffrage societies, it joined the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and became the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage.

In 1911 it changed its name to the Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage, part of the Manchester District Federation of the N.U.W.S.S.”***

Miss Maxwell

Their records are in the Archive and Local History Library so will be available from March 22 when Central Ref reopens.

And all of that brings us back to Miss Maxwell who herself seems no accident of history.

She was quite clearly a “progressive” voting for the Liberal candidate in the 1867 by election and continuing to put herself forward again for inclusion on the electoral register.

We first come across here in 1841 living in a shared house on Broughton Street in Cheetham.  She described herself as a farm servant and while she is lost for 1851 she reappears in Ardwick in 1861 and four years later in Chorlton upon Medlock.

And here we can track her through the Rate Books as the occupier at 25 Ludlow Street and then at 71 Cowcill Street.

Sadly both properties have long since vanished along with the streets themselves.
As for Miss Maxwell she entered the Work house in April 1876 and died in the October and was buried at Bradford Cemetery.

Record of Miss Maxwell's death, October 1876

Bradford Cemetery is now Philips Park Cemetery but I can find no record of her burial.

Of course she may have been buried a pauper and the records long since lost, but I shall continue to search.

After all until recently she was just a name beside a photograph with the slightest of mentions.
I think she deserves more.

Pictures; Lily Maxwell, date unknown but possibly 1867, m08249, and the death entry from the Chorlton Union Workhouse records, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, Lydia Becker, 1879, Wikipedia Common,

*Daily News, November 1867

** The Edinburgh Evening Courant, August 14, 1868

***The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=127-m501&cid=0#0