Women teachers: the vote and equal pay
Women teachers campaigning for the vote, equal pay and equality
I first became interested in women teachers who were active both in the suffrage movement and the NUT while researching for a PhD on the history of education in the first years of the twentieth century. At the same time I was active in the NUT and found many resonances with the treatment these campaigners had faced trying to raise issues in the union with my own experience decades later. Certainly the way they were howled down at conferences bore many resemblances to the way that feminists and socialists were treated at similar events in the 1970s and 1980s. The article written with Alison Oram preceded my book Deeds not Words. I lobbied for several women I had discussed in the book to be included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I am pleased to say that the editors were responsive. By clicking on their names you can find here my potted accounts from the DNB of teachers Theodora Bonwick, Agnes Dawson, Ethel Froud, and Emily Phipps. You can also find material on Mary Richardson,the suffragette and socialist turned fascist, here. The Oxford DNB is often available for free online via a public library. (It is even available through Hackney library!) 
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