Watch: Notts TV’s Kate Chaplin sees evidence of the Suffragette Struggle at Nottinghamshire Archives.
Today marks 100 years since women were first allowed to vote – and a number of Nottinghamshire women were at the forefront of the movement which won them the right to do so.
The Representation of the People Act was seen as a huge step forward for women’s rights when it came about in 1918, however limited it may seem today.
It meant women over 30 and with a certain amount of property, either of their own or through marriage, were able to cast a vote in elections.
Decades of campaigning by the suffrage movement brought about the change, in which women held protests, often in public places, which led to many of them facing imprisonment.
Whilst most of the protesting took place in London, evidence at the Nottinghamshire Archives shows there were a number of local women at the forefront of the debate.
Ruth Imeson, from the Nottinghamshire Archives, came across copies of letters from these women, specifically Helen Watts.
Ruth said: “She moved to Nottingham in 1893, quite a conservative background, her father was the vicar at Holy Trinity Church in Lenton.
“So she went from being a vicar’s daughter to being a suffragette and arrested, thrown into Holloway Prison. She received the suffragette medal for going on hunger strike so it’s quite a journey she went on.”
