From Smyrna to Birkenhead …. votes for women … coffee sellers …. and heaps more

I wish I could find out more about Ms Florence Antonitte Barry.

Licking Lloyd George, undated

According to my Wikipedia  she “became active in the women's suffrage movement, and joined the WSPU. In 1912, she became a member of the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society (CWSS), later known as the St. Joan’s International Alliance, and was appointed the honorary secretary of the Liverpool branch. She held this post for fifty years. 

Also in 1912, she attended the Catholic Congress at Norwich. She would argue against ideas that politics and religion shared no common ground, stating that ‘in the Church we have the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, so surely we should have political works of mercy too.’

Smyrne, 1903

By 1915, Barry had been appointed to the CWSS National Executive Committee.[3][8] In 1927, Barry was amongst the signers of a letter to The Times newspaper supporting the vote for women over the age of 21.

Barry also liaised with international Catholic organisations and women's rights activists on other issues, such as … the 'physical integrity of women," which meant female circumcision (now known as female genital mutilation). She campaigned against "physical violations" of women.'"*

The same article offers seven references all of which offer little more, and so far a trawl of the Manchester Guardian has revealed no more.

Coffee seller, 1900

But then I only came to know of her existence yesterday when my old “posty” chum David Harrop shared a election of picture postcards which had been owned by Ms Barry.

In all there are 90 of them and many were sent from Smyrna where her father had been born.  They were all written in the years directly before the outbreak of the Great War when the city was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

The Grand Mosque, 1902

They show inhabitants of Smyrna, offer up some interesting comments and appear to have been sent by Florence and other members of the family. 

These alone make the collection an interesting insight into a bit of the Ottoman Empire, but there is more including the humorous card directed at Lloyd George.

In time I will get to see all 90, and by then may have found out more about Ms Barry.

Pictures; Picture postcards from the collection of Florence Barry, 1900-15, courtesy of David Harrop

*Florence Barry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Barry