Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE DEMONSTRATION. Outside the Coliseum patrols of police, mounted and on foot, kept the road clear. Contingents of the unemployed were early on the scene, but the proceedings were orderly until the arrival of the woman suffragists. After an unsuccessful endeavour to ambush Mr. Asquith at the station a great crowd soon gathered round the women in their carriage, and so interested were the onlookers that the arrival of the Prime Minister was scarcely observed. A smaller crowd had congregated round the stage door, and Mr. Asquith was heartily cheered as he alighted from his carriage, accompanied by Lord Airedale and Mr. Gladstone. When the meeting had started the suffragists began a demonstration of their own in the street near by, Miss Vera Lambert evoking rounds of laughter by her reference to the Premier as “Asquith, this autocrat, this Tsar of England.” Miss Lambert was succeeded by Mrs. Baines, who provoked interruptions from the crowd, which had grown to great dimensions by this time.

Mounted police were keeping a close watch on tho gathering, which became more lively every minute. A number of the unemployed demonstrators thon joined forces with the suffragists, and two of them were allowed to speak from the ladies’ carriage. When they had finished Mrs. Baines jumped up on to the seat, and in excited tones urged her audience to “break down the doors of the Coliseum.” The advice was greeted with great cheering, and a rush was made across the road to the main entrance of the hall. The police, however, were ready, and for a moment or two there was a scuffle, during which some children were knocked down. The mounted police officers rode up and down the side streets, and for a time cleared away the crowds. The suffragists, without Mrs. Baines, who had been arrested after her incitement to violence, drove away to a quieter spot, and there began to address the crowd again.

It became known afterwards that Mr. Kitson, the chairman of the Leeds Permanent Committee on Unemployment, had also been arrested. A number of persons were struck during the disorder which followed on the action of the mounted police in clearing the streets, but no serious injuries were recorded.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Via Leeds Riot Map:

A great number of the tickets were overstamped “Men only”, and the door stewards were commanded to not allow any woman not holding one thus stamped; this was because the organisers knew that the suffragettes could disguise themselves to make them appear fully respectable members of a Liberal audience. Meanwhile, in Victoria Square, a large meeting of unemployed took place by the Leeds Permanent Committee on Unemployment, chaired by a man, Mr. Kitson. As the PM Asquith approached the Coliseum, some 600 or so men moved up the hill to where Ms Baines was declaring that unemployment was “more a woman’s question than a man’s, for it was the wife that had to meet the landlord’s demand for rent”. Precisely what happened next, and what was intended, remains unclear. The press, in the form of the Evening News and the Leeds Mercury, agreed that Ms Baines was heard to say “Break down the barricades and compel a hearing”, but it is not clear if this was intended as an explicit incitement to the men to interpret her literally. Whatsoever, there was a rush of people which was subsequently interpreted as a riot, although the only recorded damage was a broken pane of glass. It seems one stone was thrown which a policeman claimed had hit him, but no injury was recorded, to him or anyone else. In Leeds, Kitson and five suffragettes were arrested. Trial proceedings dragged on into the next year and the excitement subsided, but Jennie Baines is recorded the honour of being the first suffragette to be imprisoned after conviction.

Who was Vera Lambert? Who was Mr Kitson? Presumably no relative of Lord Airedale. I hope I’ve tagged the right Gladstone.

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Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• 1906 United Kingdom general election (1) W/G ·
• Alcohol (drug) (62) W/G ·
• Asquith, Herbert Henry (1852-1928) (4), Morley-born Liberal MP (East Fife, 1886-1916), prime minister (1908-16), home secretary (1892-95) W/G ·
• Autocracy (2) W/G ·
• Beer (36) W/G ·
• Beerhouse Act 1830 (2) W/G ·
• Class conflict (11) W/G ·
• Feminism (6) W/G ·
• HM Prison Leeds (5) W/G ·
• Herbert Gladstone, 1st Viscount Gladstone (1) W/G ·
• Jury (7) W/G ·
• Kitson, James (1807-85) (2), early railway industrialist, founder of locomotive builders Kitson and Co., cricketer W/G ·
• Kitson, James (1835-1911) (3), 1st Baron Airedale, industrialist, locomotive builder, politician W/G ·
• 📌Leeds Coliseum, 55 Cookridge Street (1), 1885 Coliseum Theatre replacing old circus building, 1905 cinema, 1928 bought by Gaumont, 1938 interior rebuild, 1961 various uses, 1992 rebuild into music venue, now O2 Academy W/G ·
• 📌Leeds (249) W/G ·
• Liberal Party (UK) (11) W/G ·
• Licensing Act (2) W/G ·
• Nicholas II (1) W/G ·
• Radical politics (5) W/G ·
• Russian Empire (5) W/G ·
• Sarah Jane Baines (1) W/G ·
• Suffrage (4) W/G ·
• Temperance movement (10) W/G ·
• Trial by Jury (2) W/G ·
• Unemployment (4) W/G ·
• Universal manhood suffrage (4) W/G ·
• Universal suffrage (1) W/G ·
• Vera Lambert (1) W/G ·
• Women’s Social and Political Union (2) W/G ·
• Women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom (2) W/G ·
• Women’s suffrage (3) W/G ·

All tags.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Via Leeds Riot Map:

A great number of the tickets were overstamped “Men only”, and the door stewards were commanded to not allow any woman not holding one thus stamped; this was because the organisers knew that the suffragettes could disguise themselves to make them appear fully respectable members of a Liberal audience. Meanwhile, in Victoria Square, a large meeting of unemployed took place by the Leeds Permanent Committee on Unemployment, chaired by a man, Mr. Kitson. As the PM Asquith approached the Coliseum, some 600 or so men moved up the hill to where Ms Baines was declaring that unemployment was “more a woman’s question than a man’s, for it was the wife that had to meet the landlord’s demand for rent”. Precisely what happened next, and what was intended, remains unclear. The press, in the form of the Evening News and the Leeds Mercury, agreed that Ms Baines was heard to say “Break down the barricades and compel a hearing”, but it is not clear if this was intended as an explicit incitement to the men to interpret her literally. Whatsoever, there was a rush of people which was subsequently interpreted as a riot, although the only recorded damage was a broken pane of glass. It seems one stone was thrown which a policeman claimed had hit him, but no injury was recorded, to him or anyone else. In Leeds, Kitson and five suffragettes were arrested. Trial proceedings dragged on into the next year and the excitement subsided, but Jennie Baines is recorded the honour of being the first suffragette to be imprisoned after conviction.

Who was Vera Lambert? Who was Mr Kitson? Presumably no relative of Lord Airedale. I hope I’ve tagged the right Gladstone.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

This trial followed a long period of more or less successful implementations by other builders elsewhere: the article says that “For some time steam cars similar to this have been used on street tramway lines in Russia and in Germany” (really?), while Daniel Kinnear Clark cites schemes starting in 1859 in the United States, and says that Leonard J. Todd of Leith appears in 1871 to have been the first to build a relatively steam-, smoke-, and noise-free car, like the Kitsons’ (Clark 1894). DKC shows a late 1880s Kitson engine, but doesn’t mention this experiment or its somewhat mixed sequel:

Regular steam car services were not operated, however, until two years later, and then only on routes then being operated by horse cars. Steam trams were not very successful as the heavy engines caused much damage to the very light rails and so were replaced by horse trams again on several routes (Garside 1981).

Re “could travel at a much higher rate of speed than is possible with horses”: speeds were kept low by regulation and/or legislation (Leeds Mercury 1877/03/08).

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