Part of the Main

Today we are delighted to have as our guest bloggers Marilyn Porter and Linda Cullum, editors of Creating This Place, writing about the early beginnings of the Suffrage movement in Newfoundland and the importance of staying connected on the island. 

Islands are special, and living on them presents special challenges. Newfoundland, lying in that part of the North Atlantic dominated by the cold Labrador current, has faced the internal challenges of wresting a resource based living in difficult circumstances and the external ones of communicating with the rest of the world. Nevertheless, Newfoundland (and after 1927 including the mainland portion of Labrador) has always been closely connected to the rest of the world. Prior to European settlement, many different indigenous groups settled on the island, exploited the natural resources, and likely crossed paths with each other. These aboriginal peoples had come to Newfoundland from further north. They were followed by Norse settlers who came from Greenland, although they did not stay long. European settlers came from France, England and Ireland, drawn by the rich fishing grounds. From their Newfoundland base, fishers travelled to distant waters, traders found and kept markets, and merchants bought and sold goods all across the Atlantic and Caribbean world.

Newfoundland women, descended from those early European settlers, travelled within the island for both work and pleasure. With the coming of steam ships and railways in the 19^th century, they could broaden their range to mainland North America. Many young working class women from the outport communities, who had always come into St. John’s in search of domestic work, now went down to the ‘Boston States’ (New England) in search of a better life. They stayed in touch both with each other and with their families back home, building a complex web of information exchanges. With the arrival of the telegraph, many women in rural outports became telegraphists and thus became the conduit for information in their communities. Upper class women also travelled – to shop, to visit friends and relatives who had emigrated to Canada or the US, to take in new ideas. We know this from their letters but also from the shipping registers. For example, in 1918, the SS Florizel, a passenger vessel en route from St. John’s to Halifax was wrecked with a loss of 94 lives. Of the 38 First Class passengers who died, 8 were women.

There was also a constant flow of women travelling into Newfoundland either to visit or to settle. In 1884 Armine Nutting arrived in St John’s from Waterloo, Quebec to become principal of the Anglican Girls School (later Bishop Spencer College) and shortly afterwards she met and married her husband, William Gilbert Gosling (from Bermuda), who became a successful businessman and Mayor of St. John’s. A succession of Governors’ wives also brought their ideas and activities with them. Eileen Walwyn was active in the Jubilee Guilds (later the Women’s Institutes) and the Red Cross, and was also instrumental in encouraging the Guides movement in Newfoundland. Women moved into St. John’s from the rural outports for work, especially as domestics. Upper class women came with their merchant husbands, such as the Earles (from Fogo), the Bowrings (from England), the Marchs (from Old Perlican) as St John’s became a hub of mercantile activity.

Thus innovations from elsewhere did not take long to reach Newfoundland. Organisations, religious and secular, proliferated. Upper and middle class women in St John’s took up a huge range of issues and concerns and energetically organised campaigns and petitions that reached women across the colony. Their interests ranged from animal welfare to orphanages; from putting on concerts and shows to organising branches of the Jubilee Guilds. The First World War provided Newfoundland women, especially upper class women, with new opportunities. Over sixty women went overseas as nurses, VAD orderlies or ambulance drivers. Those that remained behind organised the knitting of socks and other comforts. In the first two years of the war, the Women’s Patriotic Association, with 15,000 members drawn from all denominations, classes and parts of the island produced a phenomenal 62,685 pairs of socks in the much valued ‘grey wool’, 8,984 pairs of mittens and 22,422 mufflers.

Members of the Woman’s Franchise Movement, ca. 1921-25. Front row left to right: Agnes Ayre, Janet Miller Ayre Murray. Middle row, second from left: Fannie McNeil

In December 1909 about ten middle and upper class women, both Newfoundland born and recent arrivals, met to inaugurate  the Ladies Reading Room. The Suffrage movement in Newfoundland grew out of this group. Women  eventually obtained the vote (for those over the age of 25) in 1925, despite meeting even more opposition than elsewhere. While Protestant women formed the majority of suffrage activists, Catholic women were also involved, and those in St John’s successfully organised women of all backgrounds across the island, at one point gathering 20,000 signatures supporting women’s right to vote. Armine Gosling’s sister, Adelaide, included among her friends many of the key US feminists and activists and she shared their ideas with her sister on her frequent visits to St John’s. In 1921 Newfoundland became an affiliate of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, which provided Newfoundland women with information about suffrage activities and ideas from all over the world. In 1923, May Kennedy attended the Rome Congress at her own expense (the Squires government having refused to sponsor her) where she met delegates from India, Japan, Egypt, Palestine, Spain and Romania as well as from England, Canada and the United States. In short, Newfoundland’s island status did not stop the suffragists from becoming an integral part of the wider suffrage movement. This is just one example of the cross fertilization of ideas and the close connections between women in Newfoundland and events elsewhere.

Julia Salter Earle during the 1925 municipal election campaign.

As soon as legislative reform, agitated for by women, made it possible, Julia Salter Earle ran for municipal office in 1925, and she has been followed by a steady stream of women seeking, and gaining, electoral success. Salter Earle was also in the forefront of the struggle to organise working women into unions. In 1918, the Ladies Branch of the Newfoundland Industrial Workers Association was formed, beginning a strong tradition of women’s labour organising. These labour activists were also developing strong links with their counterparts on the mainland, and ideas and support were traded freely and still are today.

In politics, in the arts, in education, in every field, Newfoundland women were connected with their counterparts in the US, the UK, Europe and Canada. They were also connected to each other. Newfoundland society was divided by both class and denomination – to say nothing of geographic distance and difficult transport. Children throughout Newfoundland were educated in denominational schools until 1997. This divisive undercurrent is evidenced in denominational hiring practices, quotas for appointments on denominational grounds and similar practices that continued well into the twentieth century. It is, therefore, remarkable that women chose to overcome religious differences when their common interests as women were at stake. They worked across denominational lines in the suffrage movement, cooperated to provide girls from all denominations with high educational standards and sports events. Catholic and protestant women worked together to enrol rural women in Jubilee Guilds and similar ‘improving’ initiatives, and to encourage personal thrift, savings programs and good citizenship.

Newfoundland women developed national and international connections through family ties and social and political work. While they were not bounded by their geographic isolation, they did remain passionately committed to the society in which they lived. Through their daily actions and specific campaigns Newfoundland women actively participated in building the society, culture, economic and political life of their island country, while still remaining ‘Part of the Main’.

Photos from book launch

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