4 May 1913: Leonora Cohen, Hunslet’s window-breaking suffragette, tells a May Day meeting on Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, that arson will gain women the vote
Times. 1913/05/15. Charge of Incitement at Leeds. London. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
At Leeds yesterday, before Mr. C. M. Atkinson, stipendiary magistrate, a charge of inciting to crime was preferred against Mrs. Leonora Cohen, of Warwick-place. Mr. Pearce appeared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Evidence was given that letters in pillar boxes had been damaged, and that the defendant, as hon. secretary of the Women’s Social and Political Union, had addressed meetings at the Miners’ Institute and on Woodhouse Moor. She said at the first place:-
“Threepennyworth of paraffin will do a great deal more than all the collections. One good building burned down does more good than all the meetings. I urge you women, every one of you who think we ought to have better conditions, to come and take part in this great fight.”
The defendant had at the second meeting said:-
“We are not going to get six weeks for asking questions. I would rather have five years for burning down a mansion. I say every woman in our union is ready for anything that may come along – arson, pillar-boxes, windows, or anything. We raised £15,000 at the great meeting at the Albert Hall. The police have not found that. Oh no. Our local branches are self-supporting, and it certainly does not cost much for threepennyworth of paraffin and threepennyworth of firelighters, and it does more good than all your constitutional methods.”
The defence was that the charge was trumped up, and that the context in the speech had been missed by the police reporters. Mrs. Cohen denied the meaning imputed to her, and called witnesses, who testified to a very different construction from that of the police. She was found Guilty, and at first declined to enter into a recognisance, “as that would be sacrificing her principles,” but eventually agreed to be bound over herself in £100 and two sureties of £50 to be of good behaviour and appear at the Court at the first available date after the decision of the Court of Appeal in regard to Mr. Lansbury’s case. The undertaking also laid down that Mrs. Cohen should take no part in the militant movement in the meantime.
Comment
Comment
What’s the source of Klara Mills and Nicola Pullen’s “The time has gone by for constitutional work. We women are outside the constitution. We are outlaws”?
Houses, not to be burnt down. In 1914, after leaving Leeds, she (and husband Henry Cohen?) were running a vegetarian boarding house at “Pomona”, Harlow Moor Drive, Harrogate: “Reform Food Establishment. Excellent catering by specialist in Reform diets. Late Dinners. Separate Tables.” A brief search hasn’t revealed which house that was, but they’re large down there, so I guess the Cohen jewellery business was doing well. However, 1923-36 they were back in Leeds and were living near us at 2 Claremont Villas, Clarendon Road – second house on the left as you head up from Woodhouse Square.
Their only child (1902-84) changed his name from Reginald Fox Cohen to Corwen in 1929 and registered it in 1955, presumably either fearing or having experienced anti-semitism.
The Cohen family owned the Crown Manufacturing Company, which imported watches in the 1930s but began making them during WWII. Leonora Cohen’s 1919 action against the Excelsior Engineering Co. related however to munitions manufacturing – did she actually work there, or was this trade union-related?
OBE June 1928 (Times Court Circular) for social work (Times obit 7/9/1978).
Leonora, her father Canova Throp/Thorpe and nominative determinism:
Very 1870s Leeds: Canova Throp/Thorpe (dad of suffragette Leonora Cohen) is looking for another Gothic sculptor to help him decorate the (new?) Green Dragon Hotel, Guildford St. Green Dragon Yard, off the Headrow, is all that remains pic.twitter.com/YGjQGcFte0
— SingingOrganGrinder (@elorganillero) December 11, 2022
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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.
- Antisemitism (7) W/G ·
- Arson (8) W/G ·
- Cohen, Leonora (1873-1978) (1), née Throp, suffragette and trade unionist, one of the first female magistrates W/G ·
- Director of Public Prosecutions (England and Wales) (1) W/G ·
- Feminism (6) W/G ·
- Hunslet (11) W/G ·
- International Workers’ Day (1) W/G ·
- Jews (12) W/G ·
- Lansbury, George (1859-1940) (1), campaigner (social justice, women's rights, world disarmament in the face of fascism) and Labour politician (party leader 1932-5) W/G ·
- 📌Leeds (249) W/G ·
- May Day (3) W/G ·
- Suffrage (4) W/G ·
- Vandalism (2) W/G ·
- Women’s Social and Political Union (2) W/G ·
- Women’s rights (4) W/G ·
- Women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom (2) W/G ·
- Women’s suffrage (3) W/G ·
- 📌Woodhouse Moor (13) W/G ·
Comment
Comment
What’s the source of Klara Mills and Nicola Pullen’s “The time has gone by for constitutional work. We women are outside the constitution. We are outlaws”?
Houses, not to be burnt down. In 1914, after leaving Leeds, she (and husband Henry Cohen?) were running a vegetarian boarding house at “Pomona”, Harlow Moor Drive, Harrogate: “Reform Food Establishment. Excellent catering by specialist in Reform diets. Late Dinners. Separate Tables.” A brief search hasn’t revealed which house that was, but they’re large down there, so I guess the Cohen jewellery business was doing well. However, 1923-36 they were back in Leeds and were living near us at 2 Claremont Villas, Clarendon Road – second house on the left as you head up from Woodhouse Square.
Their only child (1902-84) changed his name from Reginald Fox Cohen to Corwen in 1929 and registered it in 1955, presumably either fearing or having experienced anti-semitism.
The Cohen family owned the Crown Manufacturing Company, which imported watches in the 1930s but began making them during WWII. Leonora Cohen’s 1919 action against the Excelsior Engineering Co. related however to munitions manufacturing – did she actually work there, or was this trade union-related?
OBE June 1928 (Times Court Circular) for social work (Times obit 7/9/1978).
Leonora, her father Canova Throp/Thorpe and nominative determinism:
Very 1870s Leeds: Canova Throp/Thorpe (dad of suffragette Leonora Cohen) is looking for another Gothic sculptor to help him decorate the (new?) Green Dragon Hotel, Guildford St. Green Dragon Yard, off the Headrow, is all that remains pic.twitter.com/YGjQGcFte0
— SingingOrganGrinder (@elorganillero) December 11, 2022
Something to say? Get in touch
Similar
23 January 1643: Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, captures Leeds from the Beast with the help of Psalm 68
9 December 1932: The Jewish Chronicle mulls the Yorkshire Fascist Table Tennis Club’s decision to leave the Leeds league
15 October 1838: Apologies from “imprisoned” Huddersfield workers are read to the great Chartist rally on Peep Green (Hartshead Moor), accusing middle-class radicals of betrayal
Comment
Comment
Via Roy Wiles (Wiles 1965).
Events
“Sunday last” is 25 August, but Fawcett managed to get in by 11 September:
On Wednesday last Mr. Fawcett for the first time performed Divine Service in the chapel of Holbeck, but was escorted to and from the chapel by a party of Dragoons, who kept guard at the doors during the service. Notwithstanding this precaution, some evil-disposed people found means to break the windows and throw a brickbat at Mr. Fawcett while he was in the reading- desk. The Sunday following he went through the service unmolested. And on Sunday last he preached a most excellent sermon, 46th verse of 13th chapter of Acts… The same night some prophane sacrilegious villains broke into the chapel and besmeared the seats with human excrements.
On 22 September he was able to conduct a reduced Sunday service in peace:
On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Fawcett was received and behav’d to by his congregation at Holbeck with great decency… One of Mr. F.’s friends admitted their favourite preacher to his pulpit in the town-by this means the tumultuous part of the people were mostly drawn away from Holbeck, and the curate left at liberty to perform his duty amongst the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants of the chapelry.
However, on 22 October we read that
In the night between the 16th and 17th inst., the windows of the chapel of Holbeck were again broken. No wonder, when Holbeck contains such a nest of vermin whom neither the laws of God or man can confine within the bounds of decency, etc.
For which John Robinson, a “Houlbecker,” was in November sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine of £5 (Griffith Wright 1895).
In the summer of the following year he published his first Sunday’s sermon and and his resignation letter. I think that in the following Fawcett is quoting things actually said to him:
A man might oftentimes, by due Care and Watchfulness, perhaps very safely defeat the Schemes, and discourage the Practices of the private Pilferer; and yet, whenever this is done, it is commonly suspected to be done rather for the Preservation of his own Property, than out of a pure Regard to the Public-good: But when he is attack’d in his house, or upon the road by open Plunderers, and requir’d to deliver, or suffer himself to be rifl’d of what he is possess’d of, with some one of these dreadful Alternatives, of having his Brains immediately blown out,” or their hands “wash’d in his hearts Blood,” or “having bis “Entrails pull’d out at his Mouth,” or “being “buried alive,” it will Then surely be accounted highly Romantic in him to reject their demands, out of a Pretence to prevent the bad Influence of their Example; and he will be generally suspected of giving a Proof of his Fool-hardiness or his Avarice, rather than of his public Spirit, by such a Refusal.
In the resignation letter he says that he
perform’d the Duty of the Curacy for near Three Months after he gain’d Admission into the Chapel, and this too, rather to prepare a Say for the peaceable Reception of any other Person whom the Patron shou’d think proper to nominate, that out of any Prospect of reconciling the People to himself.
Fawcett declines to attribute responsibility (“Who the Incendiaries were, the Sufferer neither Pretends to Know, nor Desires to be Inform’d”). He also explicitly excuses the lord of the manor, who at this juncture I take to be Lord Irwin (aka Henry Ingram, 7th Viscount of Irvine) rather than the Whiggish Scholey family, as well as other leading citizens (Fawcett 1755).
Was Fawcett a lousy preacher, or was the mob’s alternative, whoever he was, utterly adorable? Was there a Whiggish or Radical element at work? Was there some element of revenge for Samuel Kirshaw’s victory over James Scott in the struggle from 1745-51 for the vicarage of Leeds (Taylor 1865)? Perhaps you know.
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