Short AGM followed by Votes for Women: campaigns across Calderdale and beyond: talk by Jill Liddington

Women won equal political rights with men in 1928. So, we shall be celebrating the centenary of this long campaign for the Vote in 2028. 

Across Calderdale, suffragettes were active: in Hebden Bridge, Lavena Saltonstall, fustian clothing tailoress; in Halifax, Mary Taylor, Poor Law Guardian; and in Todmorden, two suffragettes appeared before magistrates, and were sentenced to imprisonment in Armley gaol. 

Jill’s first book, One Hand Tied Behind Us (Virago 1978) soon became a suffrage classic and remains in print nearly 50 years later. Her next suffrage history, Rebel Girls: their fight for the vote (Virago 2006) told the tale of the campaigners across vast Yorkshire. 

Jill is Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies [CIGS] at the University of Leeds. She lives in Mytholmroyd.