Studies of the suffrage movement in the UK—at least in school settings—are overwhelmingly focused on the middle- to upper-class, London-based women who were members of the WSPU or the NUWSS. There is, of course, a lot to be said about these women and we cannot deny their influence or contributions to the landmark Representation of the People Acts in 1918 and 1928. But, with this tight focus, it is at times easy to forget that the movement extended up and down the country, and that it involved people from all backgrounds.
One of the more famous (at the time) examples of this is Emma Sproson. She was born on 13th April 1867 into extreme poverty; she was one of seven children and their father, a canal boat builder, was a heavy drinker. According to Emma’s recollections of her childhood, ‘on the day I was born my mother only had a halfpenny and no food in the house’.
When Emma was eight, the family moved from West Bromwich to Wolverhampton where she, like many other working-class children, took on odd jobs to help support her family. A year later, aged nine, Emma got a job caring for an elderly woman, and she was able to attend school four days a week. After the woman’s death, Emma bounced between roles until she left school at thirteen to take on a full-time job completing housework for a young man and his mistress.
During this time, she was able to educate herself, but the mistress’s brother began to make advances on Emma, on one occasion locking her in her bedroom with him. Emma defended herself with a poker but the incident, and her subsequent reporting of it, lead to her being told to leave without a reference. As a result, she moved to Lancashire, finding work as a Sunday school teacher.
After the move, Emma had her first brush with politics when she attended a meeting held by Lord Curzon, Parliamentary candidate for Southport. During the meeting, Emma asked a question; Curzon refused to answer, on the grounds that she was a woman. Historian Jane Martin has described this moment as, ‘the defining moment in [Emma’s] conversion to women’s suffrage’.
She managed to save some money during her time in Lancashire and, upon her return to Wolverhampton in 1895, Emma started a small business so that she could provide a home for her mother. In the same year, she joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) where she met postman Frank Sproson, the secretary of the ILP’s Wolverhampton branch. The two married in 1896 and had four children, though only three survived.
Frank was progressive and did not believe that a woman’s place was solely in the home. He supported Emma’s belief and her activism, and he was the one who, in 1906, invited Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst to speak in Wolverhampton. The Pankhursts stayed overnight with the Sprosons and were impressed with Emma, who chaired the meeting they spoke at. Emma joined the WSPU shortly after that, starting a letter-writing campaign to local newspapers.
Thus, Emma’s political career began in earnest. In February 1907, she attended a suffragette demonstration in London—over 700 women attended what started as a peaceful demonstration, but eventually led to more than 60 arrests after they attempted to force entry into the Houses of Parliament.
Emma was among the arrested. She either had to pay ten shillings or serve a two-week sentence in Holloway Prison; despite the many people offering to pay her fine, Emma opted for prison. Her case attracted a high level of support and sympathy in the Black Country, with Frank receiving offers to babysit their young children. Frank himself wrote to Emma while she was incarcerated, telling her that he was proud of her and that he admired her courage.
Emma would serve another prison sentence in March 1907, this time spending thirty days in Holloway—one of which was her fortieth birthday.
On her release, she and fellow suffragette Jennie Baines embarked on a WSPU speaking tour of the Black Country. However, anti-suffragette sentiments were starting to spread and Emma frequently received abuse, sometimes physical as well as verbal. A common target was her lack of education due to her working-class background—she was subjected to a chant of ‘Emma, Emma, learn your grammar’.
Among all this, however, were Emma’s supporters. She became known as ‘our Emma’ by many fellow working-class men and women.
Emma quickly became disillusioned with the Pankhurts’ authoritarian leadership of the WSPU and left the movement for the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) in 1908. She became secretary of their Wolverhampton branch and was on the National Executive by February. The WFL were non-violent, but Emma still ran into trouble with the law; she was also a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League and, in May 1911, she refused to pay her dog license (‘no taxation without representation’). She served another 14-day prison sentence, this time in Stafford Gaol, and went on hunger strike due to being classified as an ordinary prisoner.
A few days later, her classification was changed to political prisoner. However, sadly, her dog was shot by police.
She left the WFL in 1912, after this refocusing her attentions on local politics rather than national movements. She was also active in anti-war work, alongside several other Black Country suffragettes.
In 1918, some women earned the right to vote and stand in elections. Emma stood in local elections for the Labour Party in 1919 and 1920 as the candidate for Park Ward in Wolverhampton. She was unsuccessful on both counts, but when she stood again for Dunstall Ward in 1921, she was elected, thus becoming Wolverhampton’s first female councillor. To celebrate, she waved a red flag from the balcony of Wolverhampton town hall, earning herself the nickname of ‘Red Emma’.
Her time in office was devoted to improving the lives of the working-class. She fought for improved pay and working conditions, and her most notable work was when she sat on health committees in which she particularly dealt with mental health. Emma also pushed for better care of the blind and mentally ill, she fought for child welfare and maternity rights, and promoted housing for single mothers.
Despite all this good work, she was thrown off the health committee in 1923 for publicly denouncing corruption in the Borough Fever Hospital in Heath Town. The inquiry came to the (false) conclusion that Emma’s accusations were baseless and unjustifiable, and she was labelled ‘a hindrance, a menace, a tittlee tat and irritating’ during the hearing. The incident, however, did not prevent her re-election as Labour Councillor for Dunstall in 1924.
The end of Emma’s political career came in 1927 after she split from the Labour Party. She was frustrated with the Council and their expenses, noting that ‘councillors were charging the taxpayer one pound and one shilling (both day and night) for travelling to London on Council business’. Emma found this extortionate and unnecessary, saying of herself that ‘I am not prepared to live up to a standard out of the pocket of the ratepayers other than that which I live up to out of my own’.
The election that year saw Emma standing as an independent candidate (an ‘independent woman’, in her words), but she was unsuccessful in obtaining re-election.
Emma suffered from increasing deafness in her later years, and she passed away on 22nd December 1936, aged 69. She was, to the end, a champion of the working-class.
‘Emma’s life was a living rebuke to all forms of cant, hypocrisy and oppression.’
E. Edwards, reporter
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