What if Rin Tin Tin had been born a cat?

You will have to be of a certain age to remember Rin Tin Tin.

Where the North Begins, 1923

He was a star of films radio and TV and his media career stretched from 1923 into the 21st century.

But his first appearances date from the early years of cinema and later transferred to the wireless in the 1930s and on to television from 1954 to 59.

And it is those black and white televisions series that I and many of my contemporise will remember.

My Wikipedia tells me that "Rin Tin Tin (September 1918 – August 10, 1932) was a male German Shepherd born in Flirey, France, who became an international star in motion pictures. 

He was rescued from a World War I battlefield by an American soldier, Lee Duncan, who nicknamed him "Rinty". Duncan trained Rin Tin Tin and obtained silent film work for the dog. 

Rin Tin Tin was an immediate box-office success and went on to appear in 27 Hollywood films, gaining worldwide fame. Along with the earlier canine film star Strongheart, Rin Tin Tin was responsible for greatly increasing the popularity of German Shepherd dogs as family pets. 

The immense profitability of his films contributed to the success of Warner Bros. studios and helped advance the career of Darryl F. Zanuck from screenwriter to producer and studio executive".*

Of course given the longevity of his “run” there were three Rin Tin Tins and later still more stand ins who went under their own names.

Rin Tin Tin, in Frozen River, 1929

But what if Rin Tin Tin had been born a cat?  

I doubt that there would have been many adventure films set in the frozen tundra featuring a ginger cat fighting off bears, and gangs of hoodlums.

It is not so daft a question because it mirrors that equally daft excercise beloved of some historians and journalists ……. What if Hitler hadn’t been born, Maria Antonetta hadn’t liked cake, Genghis Khan had preferred fishing to a career of conquest or Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters had taken up making balaclavas?

I grant you it is entertaining and may throw light on how events can turn out but to reuse a favourite quote of mine it is as useful as “trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.”**

Not that it stops historians playing the game, and even for a while was part of one GCSE history course where students were asked to speculate on different outcomes to an event.

But for me the trouble with the task is that once you change one bit of the equation all the bits are open to being changed. 

So if Hitler hadn’t been born in the Austro Hungarian Empire in the 1880s but instead in Paris what would the impact of this antisemitic, duff artist with delusions of grandeur have been on European history? 

Or if he been born but the Great War hadn’t occurred how would his destructive passage through the 20th century panned out?

Sneaking up on Mr's Pankhurst, 2022

And how would we remember Emmeline Pankhurst’s contribution if Lloyd George hadn’t calculated that giving the vote to a section of women who were in their 30s and by and large comfortably well off might enhance his election chances in the General Election of 1918. 

Four women campaigning for change, 1905

That election was called in the December just 10 months after The Representation of the People Act 1918 which gave women over the age of 30, and all men over the age of 21, a vote in Parliamentary elections was passed.

Nor should we forget those working class women who in their workplaces and in the Labour Movement advanced the arguments for the Parliamentary enfranchisement of women, but who are in the main left in the shadows. Women like Arnott Robinson from Manchester, Ada Chew, and Annie Kenney.

As Brecht wrote ….. “So many particulars. So many questions”.***

Women demanding change Manchester, 2013

It isn’t that I don’t think the ifs of history shouldn’t be played but just that it ain’t history, and while it can be fun and entertaining as  historical fiction it doesn’t deliver the goods.

So I won’t be looking to wonder how Samantha the cat would have saved the heroine of the 1923 Rin Tin Tin  movie, Where the North Begins, seeing off the dastardly corrupt official and saving the trapper Gabrielle who she loved.

Location; any time

Pictures, Poster for the American film Where the North Begins,1923, and Warner Bros-Lithograph by Otis Lithograph, Cleveland Poster, 1923, Rin Tin Tin from the film Frozen River, 1929, Sneaking up on Mrs Pankhurst, St Peter’s Square, Manchester, 2022, and demanding change, 2013, Manchester from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Suffragettes, 1905, m48441, Annie Briggs, Lillian Forrester and Evelyn Manestra. who attacked pictures in Manchester City Art Gallery in April 1913. m08225, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*Rin Tin Tin, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rin_Tin_Tin

**“Worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.” Sunscreen, Baz Luhrmann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

***A Worker Reads History, Bertolt Brecht, 1947

The Valentine Card …… that just keeps giving …… votes for women ….. a postcard artist .... and a place in Indiana

Now here is a picture postcard which offers up so much history. 

On one level it mixes that annual event of Valentine’s Day with the campaign to win the franchise for women in the USA.  

My Wikipedia tells me that “Women's legal right to vote was established in the United States over the course of more than half a century, first in various states and localities, sometimes on a limited basis, and then nationally in 1920”.* 

Starting in the 1840s it rumbled through the rest of the 19th century picking up pace at the beginning of the next*.

And like the British counterparts, the American campaigners were inventive in getting the message over, so what better way than to use the medium of a picture postcard and Valentine’s Day.

I don’t have a date for the card, but I think we can narrow it down to sometime between 1898 and 1915.

And this is because the artist was an Ellen Clapsaddle who was an American commercial artist whose “illustrations were often used in advertising and on porcelain goods, calendars, paper fans, trade and greeting cards.

Her greatest success was in the development of her artwork into single-faced cards that could be kept as souvenirs or mailed as postcards, and she specialized in designing illustrations specifically for that purpose. 

Artistic designs had become highly prized particularly during the peak of production of the 'golden age of souvenir/postcards' (1898–1915) for their great marketing possibilities. Clapsaddle is credited with over 3000 designs in the souvenir/post card field”.**

What also fascinates me is the reverse of the card, with its message and address.  

At first glance there is nothing remarkable in the greeting written by Frances Ridout to her aunt Louise wishing “good health on this day”.

But I am intrigued by the destination which is lists her aunt’s name and just the town Greensburg, Indiana …… no house number, or street name.

Greensburg was laid out in 1822, and its post office opened the following year.  If I go looking, I am sure I will find its population during the 19th century, but I guess it must have been small given that today it only amounts to just over 11,000. 

So perhaps Frances’s aunt was well known to the postal authorities, or maybe mail deliveries were yet to be introduced, and in their absence the residents of Greensburg were expected to call in at the Post Ofice.

On this I am sure Mr. Posty Harrop will be able to offer up and explanation, leaving me to say for those who want to follow up on Women's suffrage in the United States and Ellen Clapsaddle it's all out there.

Location; USA

Picture; My Valentine, undated, from the collection of David Harrop

Location; the United States of America

*Women's suffrage in the United States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_United_States

**Ellen Clapsaddle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Clapsaddle

Doing time for your beliefs ……. a picture post card and a place in Yorkshire

Now, I can’t make my mind up about this picture postcard which was sent in the March of 1911.

The historian in me is drawn into what quite clearly was a political attack on the campaign for the extension of the vote to women.

But as someone who grew up with the  idea of political as well as economic and social equality I am appalled that some one would find it amusing or for that matter an artist and a postcard company could find merit in display a woman in prison who was there because of her beliefs.

And yes I know it “was a different time where they did things differently” but around the world people are still being thrown in prison for trying to exercise even the most basic rights, like that of voting, regardless of gender or nationality.

We will never know just what the person who sent it thought about the campaign for women’s suffrage, or whether they agreed with some of the more violent aspects of that campaign.  The message on the back just says “What do you think of this?”

What I find interesting is that it was sent from Brough in Yorkshire, and while the person who sent it may have obtained it in London, or received it as part of a “batch” of anti Suffragette material, it is equally likely it was on sale in the town.

From which we might assume it was in wide circulation, along with others in the series which have yet to turn up.  The company were B B London, but I doubt there will be much of a trail back to to them, although there are some of their cards for sale from dealers. 

I would be fascinated to know more, and I suspect someone will offer up an insight.

A quick trawl of the postcards of Tuck and Sons, who were an international company, responsible for marketing thousands of cards reveals a collection of postcards which feature the campaign, but none as tacky as this one.

So there you have it ……. answers on a postcard.

Location; Yorkshire, 1911

Picture; This is the House, 1911, from the collection of David Harrop

* Suffragettes, Tuck and Sons, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=suffragettes&commit=

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

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

In the summer of 1906

It is the July of 1906 and you are looking at the school athletic ground.  The picture I think perfectly conveys that image of mid Edwardian Britain.  On the surface the country seems at ease with itself, the weather that year was good and from August through to September we experienced a heat wave. 

Of course the realities were a little different.  There was a European arms race, a growing mistrust of the military and imperialist ambitions of Germany and at home the simmering class conflict which was about to break out into a period of industrial unrest. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Story%20of%20a%20strike%20and%20of%20strikes%20yet%20to%20come

1906 was also the year that the Woman’s Social and Political Union stepped up their campaign for an extension of the vote to women.  And with hindsight we know that this peaceful scene will itself be changed dramatically by the Great War.*

But I want to finish by returning to the suffragettes, and in particular 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.

It would be nice to think that in that summer of 1906 some of the people captured on our photograph were already moved by the issue of votes for women.  Of course we will never know.

Pictures; the Athletic ground from the Lloyd collection and British suffragette with a poster, giving out newspapers from the Pankhurst Society web site http://www.thepankhurstcentre.org.uk/museum/suffragette-history

*stories of Chorlton during the Great War can be read at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20and%20the%20Great%20War