When all eyes were on Chorlton, the local elections of 1928

Now I know that local elections do not fascinate everyone, but the 1928 election here in Chorlton had got the lot. 

It was fought out against a backdrop of worsening unemployment figures and an expectation that 1928 might be the year that the Labour Party became the largest group on the City Council.

Across the city the Manchester Guardian did not rate the chances of the Conservatives too highly and speculated that of the sixteen seats they were defending they might only hold eight.

The Liberals who were defending just five were reckoned to be safe in four of the five but it was Labour “with fewer seats to defend and a greater number of more vunerable positions [to] attack,” who were making an “audacious bid to secure a clear majority .... and although the attempt is hardly likely to succeed on the present occasion it is by no means a forlorn one.  The Labour representation has been steadily increasing and the at the moment only requires nine additional seats to give it the preponderance it desires”*

So attention focused here, where the Guardian told its readers the Conservatives were defending a slim majority and one that looked all the more under threat because the year before the Liberals had won the seat with a huge majority of nearly 2,500 votes, but as the Guardian went on to warn “it must be borne in mind that at the present occasion Mr Wicks, the Liberal candidate, is opposed by a serious Labour candidate in addition to the retiring Conservative.”

Sadly any campaign literature is unobtainable at present and we are forced back on the newspapers.  The Labour candidate was Alice McIlwrick who had stood the year before in Didsbury and gained  10% of the vote.

I wish I knew more about her.  She lived in various parts of south Manchester, had married at the age of 20 and was confident enough to issue a challenge to her Liberal candidate to “speak for a quarter of an hour in response to a challenge.”  

Moreover she was indeed seen by the Labour Party as a serious Labour candidate as they sent the Labour M.P., R J Davies and the Councillor Wright Robinson to speak on the same platform.

The result was not I suspect what many had expected.  The Conservatives retained the seat with 4, 788 votes to 3, 955 for the Liberals and a very creditable vote of 1,457 for Labour and 14% of the vote.  It was the first time the Labour Party had contested the seat and it would be another four years before they improved on that share of the vote.

What makes the election even more interesting was that it was rerun a month later.  The Tory councillor had died suddenly and the election was held just five days before Christmas.  Again the Manchester Guardian weighed in with the observation that “there are few wards in which Conservative and Liberal opinion is so nicely balanced.  Of the eight elections that have been fought in Chorlton since 1920 four have been won by the Conservatives and four by the Liberals.”

And in an echo of a more recent Lib Dem assertion that the “Conservatives can’t win here” the Liberals pointed out that the Tory candidate‘s majority the month before was just 253 above what he had polled in 1925 while the Liberals had won the year before with a “record majority of 2,329 votes.”

None the less they were equally quick to point out that Labour “cannot possibly hope to win the seat and  suggest that a number of moderate Labour votes go to Mrs Pilling [the Liberal] who is a strong candidate.”

But in the event the Labour vote held with Alice McIlwrick obtaining 12% of the vote, the Liberals dropping three per cent and the Tories gaining an extra six per cent.

Now this may well have been simply because of the lower turn out by the electorate.  In the November election this had been 52% but a month later it had fallen to 28%.

And in part it may also have had something to do with the intervention of the Salford Diocesan Catholic Federation who had reported that “the questions addressed to the candidates on the education question have been answered satisfactorily by Mr Somervile the Conservative candidate; unsatisfactorily by Mrs Pilling the Liberal candidate, and that Mrs McIlwrick, the Labour candidate, has not replied to them.”**

The right of Roman Catholics to establish parochial day schools for children up to fourteen had become an important issue.  The Salford Diocesan Catholic Federation had held five meetings where candidates in the election were "invited to outline their attitude towards this educational problem.  In addition five test questions have been sent to each municipal candidate, and the answers to these will be published during the weekend. The views of each candidate will determine whether he shall have the support of local Catholics."***
The issue had arisen after a dispute in Levenshulme when the Education Committee had refused to approve plans for a parochial school.

Well I suspect the jury will be out until we can find some more first hand accounts of the election but like all these things I am confident they will turn up.

Picture; The Conservative Club and party headquarters, and the result of the election in November 1928.

* Manchester Guardian October 1st 1928
** Manchester Guardian December 18th 1928
***Manchester Guardian October 27th 1928

Sarah Sutton, a life lived out on the Row

There are no pictures of Sarah Sutton, nor to my knowledge has she left a diary, or anything which might tell me about her life.

She was born in 1821 in Withington and lived with her husband in a wattle and daub cottage on the Row*. She died in the same cottage 70 years later. Her husband Samuel was a farm labourer which was about what most people did here in Chorlton in the first five decades of the 19th century.

Sutton's Cottage 1892

Unlike the wives of the well to do or even some of the farming families she had no servants to help her.

In the spring of 1851 she had two children under the age of eight, was married to a labourer and had the added responsibility of an infirm father in law.

So tracking her working day is a good start to understanding the daily routines of running a house.

Keeping a wattle and daub cottage clean was no easy task. Plaster walls tended to crumble, the roof of thatch could be home to vermin, and the stone or brick floors were damp and in need of constant sweeping.

The interior will have been similar to these pictures from a one up one down brck cottage which stood on Maitland avenue until the 1930s.

Her day would begin at six in the summer and not much later in the winter months. One of the first chores was the collection of water. This might come from a well or the pump in the Bailey farm yard opposite. She may also have used the fish pond on the Row, which was next to her cottage. In having a supply so close Sarah was lucky, for other people on the Row the regular daily journey back with a bucket of water would be a much longer journey. And this simple task would be mirrored across the township and beyond.

Downstairs room Maitland Cottage circa 1930

Water was needed for cooking drinking and washing and there would be a number of journeys to collect it. 

The next task of the day would have been laying and lighting the fire. This may have used wood or possibly coal. 

But traditional wattle and daub fire places were large and not suited for burning coal which needs a smaller fire place and an efficient flu to draw the flame. The compromise was to reduce the size of the fire place which would allow the use of coal now readily available from the Duke’s Canal.

The move from wood to coal may have been underway during the 1850s and while no one was selling the fuel in the township in 1851 there were a number of coal dealers recorded a decade later.

Once the fire had been made and breakfast served, there were beds to be aired, plates washed and the floor swept. Rugs and mats were taken out and banged against the wall, and even before the floor was swept and scrubbed in damp weather the stone flags had to be scrapped with a an old knife blade to loosen the trodden in mud.

But this simple task could only be done after Samuel had gone off to work and her son John who was seven to school. This left baby Ann who was just one and would have required frequent attention. It is likely that Sarah could have relied on one of her neighbours living in the same row. The midday meal needed preparing and if her husband was working too far away his meal would have either been prepared before he left or taken out to him which might have fallen to her son John.

Downstairs room Maitland Cottage showing boxed staircase circa 1930

Most rural families like the Suttons had a diet heavily based on vegetables. 

Some of these were available from the cottage garden, including the all important cabbages and potatoes as well as onions, carrots, parsnips and broad beans.

They were lucky enough to have an orchard behind their home and there may have been opportunities to collect some of the windfall.

 And like many cottage gardens there were also currant and gooseberry bushes, raspberry canes and rhubarb. Gooseberries were ready by June and were popular in the north where there were competitions and societies.

Sarah would also have grown some flowers and one that has survived and still grows on the site of her cottage is greater celandine. It has beautiful yellow flowers and like many that Sarah and others would have grown also had medical properties. Greater celandine is toxic but according to various sources in the right doses can be used for therapeutic uses. She may well have used it as a mild sedative to treat asthma, bronchitis and whooping cough along with other complaints including warts. But it is toxic nature and so not one to try at home.

It still grows on the site at the corner of Wilton and Beech Roads and may be one of the last survivors of our cottage gardens. My botanist fried David Bishop spotted it some time ago and wrote about on his blog.


In the back garden there may have been an area reserved for keeping chickens. Eggs could be expensive and keeping chickens not only avoided having to buy them but could be a small extra form of revenue. So in

1851 the price of a dozen eggs ranged from 4d [2p] in the summer to 8d [4p] later in the year. The family pig was another means of supplementing the family diet and might provide meat for up to seven months. It would be bought in the spring from a local farmer who might wait to the animal was killed and the meat sold before receiving payment in the autumn. This was the only way that some families could afford the cost of a pig which might be between 20s and 25s [£1-£2.25p].

Site of Sutton's Cottage, 2010

But it is unlikely that all their needs could be met from what they grew. Much research has shown that at best the garden supplemented the food they bought. But some might be gathered for free.

There were many wild fruits and plants across the township for the collecting. Wine might be made from a variety of flowers as well as fruit and for those who knew where to look there were rich sources of plants which could enhance cooked dishes.

Pictures; Sutton’s Cottage circa 1892, photograph from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook of 1895  and interior of the cottage on Maitland Avenue in the collection of Philip Lloyd, the site today of the cottage on the corner of Beech Road and Wilton Road, from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*The Row is now Beech Road

Mrs Jane Redford, Manchester's second woman councillor

I have been staring at this picture for some time.

It was taken on October 7th 1911 at the opening of Chorltonville, and somewhere amongst the worthies is Mrs Jane Redford.

She had been born in 1849 so we are looking for a woman aged 62 which narrows the search a little.

She is there because she was one of our elected city councillors having been elected the year before and in the way that these things work she was about to contest the seat again in the November.

So perhaps this was not so much civic duty as another one of the many public engagements that fall to a politician about to fight an election.

But this is perhaps to do Mrs Jane Redford a disservice. She had been active for over 30 years serving on various public bodies including the Board of Henshaw’s Blind Asylum and as a Poor Law Guardian for the Chorlton Union where she had campaigned for the provision of trained nurses for workhouse hospitals. All too often the workhouse authorities had relied on old and illiterate inmates to tend the sick.

Important as these contributions were it is her role as a city councillor which is more significant because her election in 1910 made her just the second woman to be elected to the council.

What is in some ways more remarkable is that she was not a member of the main political parties and seems to have had little in the way of an organisation behind her.

She described herself as a Progressive Candidate which had less to do with radical politics and more to do with all fashioned rate payer concerns.

Her predecessor Harry Kemp had campaigned as a progressive on the platform of advancing “good government” which involved “exercising a rigorous protest against extravagance” and “preserving as far as possible the residential character” of Chorlton.

But, and here is the interesting thing it came with a progressive take on the need for “adequate Schools, Libraries, Open Spaces, Public Baths and everything which counts for the better health and morality of the people”

And Mrs Redford echoed this in her own election address of 1911 which highlighted her record on the Education, Libraries and Sanitary Committees along with a degree of success in checking “the building of houses on the Chorlton side [of Longford Park] in order that Chorlton people may have easy access to this new park.”

It is also there in her concerns over the Carnegie grant to build a new library which she felt should have been delivered “through the ordinary means of municipal enterprise.”

Now the normal rate payer position and certainly that of her fellow Chorlton councillors along with Alderman Fletcher Moss was “for acceptance of the gift,” which perhaps marks her out as more than just a guardian of careful council spending.

And in turn points back to her wider concerns for the welfare of people.


She argued strongly that the Education Committee should experiment with vocational training and in particular training girls for domestic service which “was of all the occupations for girls that which was not overcrowded and so [they would be able to] enter service at once and claim a proper wage, instead of commencing work and gaining a precarious livelihood by cleaning steps.”


Of course it is easy to be cynical about the role of vocational education and I for one spent years arguing the need for a well balanced curriculum for young people which didn’t just push them into manual work without offering them the opportunity of a broad and challenging set of subjects.

And this seems to have been what motivated her, because while advocating the pilot scheme to train young girls she was keen that the Education Committee work with the Post Office to widen the career prospects of telegraph boys, who “were only engaged for a certain number of years as messenger carriers and when they had to find work other than that of a purely causal character the task was not a very easy one” 

The plan was provide “two or three hours instruction each day, so that when their career as telegraph boys ceased they might be better equipped to secure other and perhaps more lucrative appointments.”


Now I think it might be fair to argue that she did not embrace a clear political position which might mark off from say the vision of the new Labour Party but likewise this was no conventional rate payer politician. She had expressed her growing concern at the lack of school provision both here in Chorlton and across the city and was very active in the movement for women’s health.

There is more to find out about Mrs Redford and also stories to tell of other women who campaigned in their trade unions and local Labour Party branches for the vote, improved social conditions and a better deal for ordinary people but they are for later.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchetser

Pictures; The opening ceremony of Chorltonville, from the Lloyd collection, picture of Mrs Jane Redford from her election address by kind permission of Lawrence Beadle


References; Manchester Guardian, Harry Kemp and Jane Redford's election addresses.

Poverty…. gas masks ….. going to the flicks …. and a night in Chorlton ….. stories from Madeline Alberta Linford

Madeline Alberta Linford was by any measure a remarkable woman.

Madeline Alberta Linford, 1921

At just 22 in 1917 she was writing for the Manchester Guardian, at 27 she had reported on the famine and typhus outbreak in Poland followed by on-the-spot reporting from Austria, and Germany.

In the same year she was chosen to create to create a page "aimed at the intelligent woman", defined by C. P. Scott  as discussing issues such as "domestic economy, labour-saving, dress, household prices, and the care of children".*

And she remained the only woman journalist on the Manchester Guardian till 1944.

During the war she was also night picture editor, combining it with voluntary war work.

She “wrote a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1924, and five novels: Broken Bridges (1923), The Roadside Fire (1924), A Home and Children (1926) Bread and Honey (1928) and Out of the Window (1930)”.* 

To all of this she also championed other women writers.

I first came across Ms Linford when Tony Goulding wrote about her life for the blog back in 2023.** 

It is a comprehensive account of her life and particularly her time in Chorlton on Claude Road and Wilbraham Road and is an excellent starting point.

My interest was reignited after a chance conversation with Cllr Mathew Bentham whose friend now lives in her old house in Chorltonville.

August 1917

As you do, I went looking for her articles in the Manchester Guardian. 

Alas her stories on Poland, Germany and Austria have yet to turn up, but there were plenty of articles spanning her years as a critic reviewing plays, and films as well as those reporting on contemporary issues.

Reading them for the first time over a century since they were produced, they offer up a fascinating insight into Britain during the early and middle decades of the last century.

And there were some surprises, not least that in 1917 both here and in Hollywood films were being made in colour.

Her review of Annabel’s Romance in the August of 1917 at the Deansgate Picture House begins with that simple observation that “A coloured film is still rare” **, while five years later she playfully remarked that the colour effects in A Study in Scarlet made “Faces as expressionless as though a sponge had wiped the life out of them”.****

Deansgate Picture House, 1928

But for me it is her articles on hospitals, shopping and the impact of the war which bring the 1920s and 30 bouncing into life.

December 1922

Like the piece on the Manchester Babies’ Hospital in Burnage Lane, written in 1922 which is both informative and written with style.

She visited in late December when “the hospital is in party dress [with] its Christmas decorations which are simple and consist of silvered twigs latticed across windows with robins perching on them, trails of pink almond blossom, and bright ballons tugging at their strings.”*****

But this is 1922, in that time before the NHS when poverty is the main reason why the fifty-bed hospital is full and why “the fifty cots could be filled over and over again”.

“All of them are suffering in some way or another from malnutrition.  They come from the most destitute homes in Manchester where their poor little bodies have been the victims of ignorance, poverty and in a few tragic cases, of actual neglect … where all the good things of life are short”.

Manchester Babies’ Hospital, 1962

“Children of six months weighing only six pounds; newborn babies whose weight barely reaches three pounds. 

The wards are full of them, lying with terrible apathy in their cots, their faces wizened and furrowed like those of the very aged, and their waxen fingers as helpless as broken ones. Anyone who since the war has visited the infant welfare centres of Berlin or Vienna will find the tragedies all over again in this Manchester hospital.”

And because rickets marches with poverty “the conservatory has been turned into a semi-open-air ward for rickets”.

Equally telling is the admission of just how much money is needed to maintain and advance the care. So, while “The Babies’ Hospital is full of plans for the future and a laundry is now being built and X-ray department is one of the great needs [with] it is hoped an extension to enable another twenty babies to have their shire of skill and kindness but for these schemes as well as the ordinary everyday running of the hospital money is badly needed”.

It is a powerful piece of reporting which comes with the style of an accomplished writer and so she begins by locating the hospital in a “big old house of the type of successful businessmen built for their families half a century ago. One can imagine it furnished in mahogany and rep with steel engravings of ‘Pilate’s Wife’s Dream hanging in the hall and camellias cherished in the conservatory”.

That same playful way of writing is evident in a series of articles she wrote in the run up to the first war time Christmas of 1939.

Set against the novelty and danger of going out in the blackout, and the surprise that the shops almost had a prewar feel about them the ever-present conflict is not far away and includes a delightful and humorous take on what the fashionable woman looks for in a bag to contain her gas mask.

July 1947

And along with all the serious and the not so serious comes a review of our own “Chorlton Repertory Theatre Group which has been an enlivening feature of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and the neighbouring suburbs”.

Written in in the summer of 1947 it reviews the group’s “choice of plays, performed in the Public Hall ranging from Shakespeare to Noel Coward and to farces which had caught the fancy of West End audiences” and focused on “The Letter” by W. Somerset Maugham.

It is a well balanced and I think affectionate report and offers up the names of some of the actors.  These include Harry Littlewood, Gloria Foster, Arthur Spreckley, the producer, and James Lovell who “designed and painted the excellent sets” which might be another story. 

One to read, 2024

But for now, I will just leave you with a suggestion to read a review by Quentin Outram of a selection of Ms Linford’s writing “M.A.L” The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford" edited by Michael Herbert and published in 2024

Pictures; Portrait of Madeline from the Guardian’s photograph of its 1921 editorial staff researched by Tony Goulding, Manchester Babies’ Hospital in Burnage Lane, m15731, 1962 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Deansgate Picture House, from Kinematograph Year Book, 1928

Further reading; Outram, Quentin, The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, Society for the Study of Labour History January 3rd 2023, https://sslh.org.uk/2025/01/03/the-journalism-and-writing-of-madeline-alberta-linford/

Herbert Michael,[ed] “M.A.L” The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, self-published through Lulu.com and available Society for the Study of Labour History, https://sslh.org.uk/

* Madeline Alberta Linford, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Linford

**Madeline Alberta Linford .... another story from Tony Goulding, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/12/madeline-alberta-linford-another-story.html

***A Coloured film at Deansgate Picture House, Manchester Guardian, August 21st, 1917

****A Study in Scarlet, Manchester Guardian, February 24th 1922

*****A Hospital of Cots, The Sick Babies of Manchester, Manchester Guardian, December 29th, 1922

******Chorlton Theatre Group, Manchester Guardian, July 30th, 1947

With Alice McIlwrick, fighting elections in the 1920s in Didsbury and Chorlton

Alice McIlwrick should be remembered.

She was the first Labour candidate to contest a local election here in Chorlton in the November of 1928 and she did very well gaining 14% of the vote.*

But beyond some brief details of her role in the election campaign there was little I could find out about her.

Not that I ever forgot Alice, and I always told myself that at some point something new would turn up and of course it did.  In this case from her grandson who posted a comment on my orginal story.

Tony McIlwrick lives in Scotland and he wrote

“Alice McIlwrick (1881-1964) was my grandmother. She married in 1919 and had two children. She was a graduate and a strong believer in the value of education - both her children went to Manchester University, her son becoming an electrical engineer and her daughter becoming a GP. 

As well as education she was also an ardent feminist and held strong left wing views. Her husband's parents had emigrated to Kansas from Manchester in the 1880's but following the premature death of his mother Frederick McIlwrick and his two young siblings were brought to Manchester and raised by a maternal aunt. Frederick, Alice and their two children lived in Parrs Wood Road in the early 1920's but in 1926 moved to Barlow Moor Road where they stayed until 1945 when they moved to Bowdon, Altrincham. 

In 1961 Frederick & Alice moved to Davenham, near Northwich to live with their daughter and it was there that she died.”

This was all I needed to reignite the search and sure enough in the course of the morning I came across a reference to their marriage and the celebration of their daughter’s coming of age in 1943 and some tantalizing hints of a concert career as a contralto in the early 1920s.

Along the way I uncovered Frederick’s 1911 census return.

And then I was drawn back to the politics.

She was the first and for many years the only Labour candidate to have fought the Didsbury ward in a municipal election which accordng to the Labour historian Rhys Davies was a real challenge “in that forsaken quarter, knowing what our fate must be.”  Neverthess “after much thought and doubt, Mrs McIlwrick, B.A., an ardent Labourite, a very forcible speaker, well versed in municipal affairs decided to don our colours, in a by-election there on May 17th 1927.”**

The result was not really in question, with the Conservative candidate gaining 55% of the vote, the Liberal 34% and Alice garnering 11%.

But this was a significant achievement for the Labour party given “that our cause was so weak that there was hardly any help forthcoming even on the day of the poll.”

And rereading the accounts of the two elections she fought here in Chorlton in the November and December of 1928 there is no doubting that she was a formidable politican.

The Manchester Guardian had reported that she was a serious candidate who would do well in the contest, a view endorsed by the Labour Party who sent its M.P., R J Davies and the Councillor Wright Robinson to speak on the same platform.

And the record shows that she gained 14% of the vote in the November election and despite a much lower turn out in the following month lost only 2% at the December by-election.

The years either side of that election saw the Labour Party strengthen it postion.  In 1923 it formed its first ever government and  became the largest party in the House of Commons six years later.

And these were the years when Alice was particularly active here in south Manchester.

The posters from the 1924 General Election at the beginning of the story would have been familiar enough to her and would have been the first Labour posters supporting a parliamentary candidate to be posted up in Chorlton.

The years after the Great War had seen unemployment increase particularly in the old traditional heavy industries and touched on that feeling that the country had not become a  place “fit for heroes.”

Nor had that basic problem of unemployment gone away.  Only once did the figure of those out of work drop below 8% during the decade and so Labour’s call for the country to turn out the Conservatives coupled with an appeal to woman to vote Labour “for the children’s sake did not go unheeded.

Nationally Labour gained 287 seats while in Withington which included Chorlton Labour took 16% of the vote which was an increase of 7% five years earlier.

I would love to know Alice’s part in all of this and I rather think it will not be long before it is revealed.

Pictures; Labour Party campaign posters from 1924 and 1929

*When all eyes were on Chorlton, the local elections of 1928, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Alice%20McIlwrick

** Socialism in Surburbia, Rhys Davies, 1930

See also Posters from the 20th century, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Posters%20from%20the%2020th%20century

Arguing for peace in 1937 with Alice McIlwrick in Platt Fields

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Alice McIlwrick was involved in the Manchester and Salford Peace Week of 1937.

She was “socialist by conviction and anti establishment by nature”* who had stood nine years earlier as the first Labour candidate in a municipal election in Chorlton having contested Didsbury the year before.

And according to the Manchester Guardian was a “strong candidate” confident enough to have invited one of her opponents to her public meeting to debate the issues of the election.

It was just that I had not been able to follow her political career after 1928.  But something of her later life has now been provided by Tony McIlwrick her grandson along with a photograph, and it was that photograph that set me on to the Peace Week.

Standing beside the Lord Mayor and Mayoress of Manchester is Alice as they arrived at the “Manchester Peace Week Meeting in Platt Fields.”

Now Tony was puzzled  “as to why my grandmother was wearing what appears to be academic dress” but I rather think it may well have been connected with the events of the day because the meeting had been preceded by The “Peace Procession from All Saints to Platt Fields"** in which “nearly a thousand women from scores of different organisations in Manchester & Salford took part.

They began to assemble early in the afternoon and soon filled the pavement on two sides of All Saints Church” moving off “shepherded by an imposing array of policeman, a string of cars bearing placards; then the Lord Mayor’s Unemployed Band; then about a hundred women carrying flags, posters, banners and slogans of every description.

Next came the decorated wagon of the combined Women’s Co-operative Guilds followed by delegations dressed in costumes symbolising many different nationalities.

The main body of representatives from various organisations brought up the rear; with more embroidered banners, painted slogans, slashes and pennants.  A group of university women were conspicuous in academic caps and gowns.”

I have yet to come across a photograph of the peace procession but the Yorkshire Film Archive has preserved a similar march through Sheffield from 1936. https://www.yfanefa.com/record/6249

Now anyone wanting a more detailed description of the Peace Week can read an account at http://radicalmanchester.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/peace-and-antiwar-activiti-in-1930s-manchester/ which also puts the event into the context of peace activities in the city during the inter war years.

Suffice to say it was an ambitious week of meetings, marches and exhibitions.

Along with the Platt Fields rally there were six other meetings across the twin cities on the same day and another dozen during the week.

Four peace exhibitions were opened in the city, along with an “a peace shop near the corner of Deansgate and Blackfriars Street, displaying posters and literature with a section arranged particularly to appeal to children."

Many of the exhibitions organised by religious groups and trade unions took as their theme “the arts of peace” while two of the three films being shown during the week promoted the work of the League of Nations.

Here in south Manchester there were open air meetings in Rippingham Road Recreation Ground, Cringle Fields in Burnage, and Fog Lane Park as well as an exhibition in Withington and another in Levenshulme.

So Alice was not spoilt for choice, but I guess the highlight of the week must have been the peace procession and the Platt Fields rally, which takes me back to the photograph of her with the Lord Mayor who spoke of his own commitment to peace remarking that “what he had been saying against war for the last eight months [as Lord Mayor] he had been saying for the last thirty years.  There was no greater cause in the world than the cause of universal peace.”  And he concluded by regretting that the Council had voted not to adopt “an annual peace day in the City’s schools.”****

All of which must have resonated with Alice who had maintained a life time interest in schools and education having held a lecturing post at St Mary’s College for four years before her marriage in 1919 and been regarded as  “a pioneer in Activity Methods in Infants and Junior Schools.”*****

I would love to know what Alice thought of the rally and in the fullness of time I reckon I will.  After all until today I didn’t know about the Peace Week and for that I have Alice and Tony to thank, so as someone else once said “something will turn up”.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Alice at Platt Fields courtesy of Tony McIlwrick, and headlines from the Manchester Guardian.

*Obituary Notice from Bangor University, 1964
**Manchester Guardian July 8th 1937
***Manchester Guardian, July 6th 1937
**** Manchester Guardian July 8th 1937
*****Obituary Notice from Bangor University, 1964

Herstory, more for International Women's Day

National Union of Teachers Badge mid 1980s

It’s that week again and I think it’s worth recalling that while the Suffragettes quite rightly have been acknowledged for their part in campaigning for political equality they were not alone.

And so to Ada Chew, who chose not to chain herself to street railings, break the windows of politicians or end up in prison being forced fed.  She was not a suffragette, choosing instead to campaign within the labour movement for the vote.

Born in 1870, while working in a clothes factory in her 20s she was sacked for writing articles to the local newspaper criticising working conditions. From there she became active in the Independent Labour Party and in 1896 toured the north east of England in the Clarion Van arguing the case for socialism.

And during the next two decades continued to be active in the labour movement as an organiser for the Women’s Trade Union League and then from 1911 to 1914 for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

This was the body which the WSPU had broken with over the issue of militant action and of course it is the WSPU which often features in the history books.  But the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was no mild debating group.

In 1912 it established the Elections Fighting Fund Committee (EFF) headed by Catherine Marshall which intervened in four by-elections campaigning for the Labour Party against Government candidates.  Labour had committed itself to opposing any franchaise bill which did not include votes for women and while the Party failed to win any of the four elections the Liberals lost two.

Alice McIlwrick in 1936

Here in Chorlton, there was Jane Redford, our first women councillor on Manchester City Council, and Alice McIlwrick, socialist, teacher and campaigner for peace who stood as the first Labour candidate in the municipal elections of 1928.

Equally active was at the turn of the 20th century Catherine Garrett who was one of the three socialist Guardians elected to the Board of the Chorlton Union who administered the Poor Law in south Manchester and in particular the Withington Workhouse.

Time and time gain she argued for better conditions for the inmates and challenged many of the demeaning regulations that made applicants for relief feel like second class citizens.

Chorlton peace women

And closer to home there was our own Women’s Peace group active in the 1980s whose story has yet to be written but like Jane Redford, Alice McIlwrick and Catherine Garrett are here recorded in the blog.

But I shall finish with the suffragettes and their campaigning song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCtGkCg7trY

Pictures; badges from the collection of Andrew Simpson, photograph of Alice McIlwrick , courtesy of Tony McIlwrick, and Chorlton peace women from the Lloyd collection

Rachel Scott (née Lovett) another story from Tony Goulding

This is another story that has been spawned during a conversation with a friend, in this case a colleague at Oxfam who also volunteers at the Pankhurst Centre on Nelson Street, Chorlton-on Medlock, Manchester. It is the story of another advocate of women’s suffrage, and rights generally, with a connection to Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Letter to the Editor of The Clarion Newspaper - 30th October 1903

 Rachel Lovett was born in Hulme, Manchester during the December quarter of 1863. She was raised in the Newton Heath area of Manchester. She married Harold Charles David Scott on 10th July 1890 at The Albert Memorial Church on Queens Road, Collyhurst, Manchester. Harold Charles David was the eldest of at least 6 children of Walter Scott and Sarah M. (née Gotobed) and started his working life at 16 as a schoolteacher; possibly a pupil-teacher in his father’s school. Where the young couple began their life together is not known, however from 11th October 1891 they were living at 47, Keppel Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, where they stayed until September 1897. 

47, Keppel Road - November 2024

As is indicated by the above letter sent to the editor of "The Clarion", Rachel was the first Honorary Secretary of The Women’s Social and Political Union after its formation in Manchester in February 1903.

  Rachel and her husband Harold Charles David Scott had five children.

  1) Walter Lovett – born in Salford during the June quarter of 1891, died 20th June 1958 Broughty Ferry, Dundee, Scotland, where he had been living since at least November 1940 as on Thursday 21st of that month he was fined 30 shillings for breaking the blackout regulations. Married to Majorie Dawson; had at least one child, Patricia. Occupation –Analytical Chemist. In 1911 he was recorded as a “student of chemistry” probably at Manchester University.

2) Harold David –born on 7th May 1892 in the Weaste area of Salford. Joined 8th battalion Royal Fusiliers on 4th September 1914. Address on demobilization from Road the army “The Knoll”, Church Road, Urmston his parents’ residence. He was an “engineer’s designer” Married to Anne with one daughter Cynthia M. living at 6, Mardale Avenue, Urmston and described as an “estimating and designing engineer” on the 1939 Register.

3) Francis Gordon born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy on 15th January 1894.  As a former pupil of Manchester Grammar School, he enlisted in one of the “Public Schools Battalions”, the 20th Royal Fusiliers, in August 1914. Prior to his military service he had worked as a clerk in a shipping office.

He was awarded Military Medal “for gallantry on the battlefield” M.E.N. August 16th, 1916.  

Gazetted Temp 2nd Lieutenant (from cadet) on 1st May 1918, he was killed in action in France on 20th October 1918 just 3 weeks from the end of the war. He is buried in The Belle Vue British Cemetery, Briastre, France.

4) Clarissa Marion, the only daughter, also born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in January 1897. During the First World War she served in the V.A.D. at a base in Piccadilly, Manchester.

      In the 1921 census she is recorded as unmarried and living with her parents in Urmston. Her occupation was given as Professional Pianist - “On her own account”. She appears to have followed in her mother’s footsteps as this cutting of 17th October 1919 seems to indicate.

The Vote –17th October 1919,The Organ of the Women’s Freedom League

During the December quarter of 1923 in Manchester Cathedral, Clarissa Marion married Leonard Lowe Boardman (his second wife – his first Mary (née Andrew) having died during the September quarter of 1921). The new couple moved to Mellor, Derbyshire and started to raise a family. Sadly, Clarissa Marion died, aged just 35, on Monday 23rd May 1932. Her obituary from The Stockport Advertiser and Guardian of Friday 27th May. Recorded that she had died in a Manchester Nursing Home following an operation and had lived in Mellor since her marriage, latterly at “Branford”, Longhurst Lane. It also stated that as well as her musical talents she was also a gifted tennis player.

 5) Oliver Royle was born on 7th December 1905 in Flixton, Lancashire. In 1921, aged 15 years and 6 months, he was still in full-time education and living with his parents and sister in Church Road, Urmston as recorded in the census. He later moved with his widowed father to 36, Queens Road Urmston as recorded in the Electoral Roll of 1930. Shortly after this date Oliver, who is described in various records as a “merchant” became something of a “globetrotter”. He is recorded as travelling on “The Empress of Asia” from Yokohama, Japan to St. Albans, Vermont, U.S.A. in March 1930 (1) and shown as a passenger on the “S.S. Gloucestershire”, sailing on 6th January 1933 from the U.K. (Liverpool) to Columbo in what was then known as Ceylon. On 21st December 1935 he married, Australian, Gertrude Mary (née Thorne) in St Peter’s Garrison Church, Port Columbo, Ceylon (2) and later moved to the State of Victoria, Australia. He died there on 28th October 1978 in Elwood, North Melbourne.

Rachel Scott died in Urmston during the June quarter of 1925.Harold Charles David Scott, Rachel’s husband died at “Spaldrick” 36, Queens Road, Urmston, Lancashire on 1st June 1937. His estate was valued for probate as £11, 496-18s-6d (Today that would be worth £658,000).

Pictures: - Letter to the editor of “The Clarion” 30th October 1903 provided by THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk). 

Extract from “The Vote” 17th October 1919 (with no known copyright holder) accessed from Find my Past - With Thanks to The British Newspaper Archive.

47, Keppel Road – November 2024 from the collection of Tony Goulding.

Notes: 

1) Oliver Royle’s permanent residence shown on this record is “Calcutta, India”.

2) Amy Gertrude Mary was the daughter of Doctor Herbert Roger Horne and the first of his three wives, Margaret Ross (née Thomson) of Traralgon, Victoria, Australia.

Acknowledgement.

Elizabeth Crawford’s “Lockdown Research Who Unfurled The Manchester “First in The Fight” WSPU Banner” on her blog

 “womanandhersphere” includes a lot of additional detail on Rachel’s early life and her role in the W.S.P.U.

https://womanandhersphere.com/2020/12/03lockdown-research-who-unfurled-the-manchester-first-in-the-fight-wspu-banner

The remarkable Madge Addy from Chorlton part 2 discovering more

Now yesterday I began the story of Madge Addy f from Chorlton who served in the Spanish Civil War, went on to be an undercover operator in wartime France and was awarded the OBE.*

British nurses on the front line in Spain, date unknown

It is a remarkable story of courage and indeed of modesty because despite facing some very dangerous situations in both Span and France she does not seem to have sought publicity.

To date I can find no obituary from a leading newspaper on her exploits and have uncovered just one photograph.

Aid for the Basque Heroes, circa 1936-39

There will be more.

In the space of a day I found where she was living in 1911 aged seven, a detailed description of role with Special Operations Executive from 1940 and a growing number of the letters she sent back from Spain to raise funds for the Republican cause.

But lots still remain very shadowy.

One newspaper reported that she had been working in Chorlton before she went to Spain and I am hoping that she will be on a trade directory for 1937 which may give us an address.

And that is important given that there are moves to commemorate her work with a plaque and while the library may be a fitting spot so might the building she lived or worked in.

Today I have been helped by the International Brigade Memorial Trust who have promised to put me in touch with the trustees of the Manchester branch and also Angela Jackson who has written about Ms Addy.

And I now know that she married a second time in 1955 and her husband was Thorkold Hansen who she worked with in France which is important because although she is widely known as Madge Addy, it is by Hansen that I have uncovered more about her.

Madge Addy, 1938

Equally it was as Marguerita Holst that I first uncovered a reference to the OBE she was awarded.

There will be more and that just leave me to make an appeal for anyone who can help.

Location; Chorlton, Spain, and beyond




Pictures; British nurses at work on the front line in Spain courtesy of International Brigade Memorial Trust, the poster Aid for the Basque Heroes, S H Prives, from The Palette and the Flame, 1980 

*The remarkable Madge Addy from Chorlton part 1 ....... the Spanish Civil War and secret operations in France,
**International Brigade Memorial Trust,  

The remarkable Madge Addy from Chorlton part 1 ....... the Spanish Civil War and secret operations in France

This is the story of Madge Addy who worked in Chorlton, was a nurse in the Spanish Civil War and was awarded an OBE for her wartime work as an undercover agent in occupied Europe during the last world war.

Ms Addy, 1938

It has been a bit of a challenge to uncover the story because while most of the references give her name as Madge she was actually Marguerite and was married twice, first to a Mr Holst and later a Mr Hansen.

All of which makes trawling the records that bit more difficult.

According to one source, she was “from the Chorlton-cum-Hardy area of Manchester. She arrived in Spain in 1937 and became Head Nurse at a hospital in an old monastery at Uclės in Castile. Like some of the other British nurses, she was also involved with the fund-raising campaigns back home. 

Madge would write detailed letters about the work being done in the 'Manchester Ward' at the hospital in Uclės to the Chairman of the North Manchester Spanish Medical Aid Committee to help with the campaigns for medical supplies. 

She was the last British nurse to leave Spain but what happened to her after that did not come to light until recently. 

Spain Fifgts for Independence, poster, 1936-39

She married the Norwegian she had met in Spain, Wilhelm Holst, and during the Second World War she went on to play a vital role in setting up the famous 'Garrow-Pat O’Leary' escape line, working with MI9. 

She was awarded the OBE for her work in France; her bravery included travelling as a Norwegian subject on German civil flights, carrying secret messages sewn into the lining of her fur coat. 

As an English woman operating in enemy-occupied territory, she would have known what the penalty would be if caught.  Madge Addy died in 1970.”*

But there is much more including some of the letters she sent home from Spain and an article from the Manchester Guardian which she gives a description of the revenge carried out by the victorious forces of Franco on the civil population and those who sided with the defeated democratic government of Spain.

Wilbraham Road,, Chorlton, circa 1930s

Like all good stories I came across it by chance after Cllr Shelia Newman had been asked to look into the possibility of erecting a plaque to the memory of Ms Addy.**

The cost will be met by voluntary subscriptions which just leaves a decision on its location.

Now there is a reference to Ms Addy having a hairdressing business in Chorlton just before she left for Spain, so a search of the trade directories may reveal an address.

Beech Road, Chorlton, circa 1930s

In the meantime I think I have found where was living in 1911 which was 58 Rusholme Grove with her widowed mother and five siblings.  Ms Addy was seven and her mother is described as a “dressmaker.”

The house was on the south side of Rusholme Grove was demolished sometime in the 1970s but that address is a start and over the next few weeks I want explore what I can of her story.

There may even be people who remember her and have more letters, pictures and stories of this remarkable woman.

Location; Chorlton, Spain, and France

Pictures; Ms Addy in 1938 courtesy of Shelia Newman, Chorlton in the 1930s from the Lloyd Collection  and Spain Fights for Independence, For Peace and Solidarity Among All Peoples, G. M. 1936-39, from The Palette and the Flame, 1980 

*From foodships to the front lines: a forgotten Manchester heroine of the Spanish Civil War
By Angela Jackson,

*From Foodships to the front lines: a forgotten Manchester heroine of the Spanish Civil War, Angela Jackson

**Cllr Shelia Newman, cllr.s.newman@manchester.gov.uk  0161 234 1841 (Town Hall)

Madge Addy ....... nurse, and war hero was remembered in Chorlton .... one year ago

Over 50 gathered

The sun shone and over 50 people gathered to watch the unveiling of a plaque to Madge Addy.*

I have written about Madge who was the last British nurse to leave Republican Spain as the legitimate and democratically elected Government was about to be defeated by the forces of a military insurrection led by Franco.

She went on to work as a secret agent in occupied France during the last war and despite being awarded the OBE has slipped into the shadows.

And there are only a few references to Madge Addy.

Cllr Eddy Newman

She appears in newspaper accounts in the Daily Worker and wrote of her own experiences in Spain to raise awareness of the Civil War and the brutal actions of the Franco forces and crops up in books on the International Brigade.

But given that she worked here in Chorlton as a hairdresser in the 1930s it seemed fitting that she should be remembered with a plaque on the place where she worked.

Chris Hall and others dedicated to maintaining the memory of those who went to Spain to fight for democracy have worked hard to raise the money and organise the placing of the plaque at 34 Manchester Road.

Chris had originally asked the late Shelia Newman to help and it was fitting that the plaque was unveiled by her three children, and that amongst the speakers was Cllr Eddy Newman who was Shelia’s husband and the present Lord Mayor.

Chris Hall and Jeff Smith MP

The unveiling was followed by a social event across the road in the Library where there was food, music, and information panels telling the story of the Spanish Civil War, the involvement of the International Brigade and the men and women who went from Greater Manchester.

Anyone wishing to know more about the plaque can contact Chris at, christoff_hall@yahoo.com or on 0161 861 7448





Location; Chorlton

The plaque

Pictures, the plaque unveiling on May12 2018, pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson
















*Madge Addy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Madge%20Addy

Coming soon ........ the new historic plaque for Chorlton

Now after some hard work we will soon have a plaque on a wall here in Chorlton to honour Madge Addy.

She was a remarkable woman who not only went out to Spain during the Spanish Civil War but went on to serve as an agent in occupied France.*

It is a story I have been uncovering for a while and was prompted by a request from Cll Shelia Newman to research the life of Madge Addy who lived in Chorlton.

Interest has grown in Ms Addy since Chris Hall suggested that there should be a memorial plaque to this brave woman and there may be some who also have knowledge of Madge please contact Chris by email at christoff_hall@yahoo.com or on 0161 861 7448.

And now the plaque is ready and will soon be installed.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; photograph of the Madge Addy plaque, 2017, courtesy of Chris Hall

*Madge Addy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Madge%20Addy

Another piece in the story of Madge Addy ...... secret agent, Civil War nurse and resident of Chorlton

Madge Addy was a remarkable woman who not only went out to Spain during the Spanish Civil War but went onto serve as an agent in occupied France.*

It is a story I have been uncovering for a while and was prompted by a request from Cll Shelia Newman to research the life of Madge Addy who lived in Chorlton.**

Interest has grown in Ms Addy since Chris Hall suggested that there should be a memorial plaque to this brave woman and there may be some who also have knowledge of Madge or would like to make a contribution to the cost of the plaque and if so please contact Chris by email at christoff_hall@yahoo.com or on 0161 861 7448.

The campaign for the blue plaque is fully supported by Chorlton's three councillors.

And as part of that campaign I wrote a short article in the Chorlton edition of Open Up and here the story takes a twist.***

My old friend Ida read the story and  was in the process of reading Silk and Cyanide by Leo Markes about  the operations of the British Special Operations Executive.

In a previous conversation Ida had suggested that this was the book which might offer up a clue about MS Addy

And sure enough in a one line sentence there is a reference to an unnamed agent who carried secret documents from Denmark to Sweden on a German civilian aircraft.  It might not be Madge but we know she did travel this route during 1940.

So perhaps a little bit more has come to light.

Location; Chorlton, Spain, France


Picture; Nurse Madge Addy giving a blood transfusion; Daily Worker, November 11, 1938 and Madge Addy, 1938

*Madge Addy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Madge%20Addy

**Cllr Shelia Newman, cllr.s.newman@manchester.gov.uk  0161 234 1841 (Town Hall)

***Open Up, http://openupmagazines.co.uk/chorlton/