1. Alice Hawkins was a leading English suffragette among the boot and shoe machinists of Leicester.
25 Facts About Alice Hawkins
1. 2.
Alice Hawkins went to prison five times for acts committed as part of the Women's Social and Political Union militant campaign.
3.
In 2018 a statue of Alice was unveiled in Leicester Market Square.
4.
Alice Hawkins became a mother of six children and continued to work as a machinist at Equity Shoes.
5.
Alice Hawkins had joined the Independent Labour Party in 1894 and via that organisation met Sylvia Pankhurst.
6.
Alice Hawkins was first jailed in February 1907, after attending her first suffragette rally in Hyde Park, when 300 women then marched to Parliament, after hearing that votes for women was not on the King's Speech.
7.
Alice Hawkins was among 29 women sent to Holloway Prison after a brutal charge by 20 police on horses and a pitched battle.
8.
Alice Hawkins's lawyer wrote to the local MP that 'in no other civilised country would women be dealt with in this manner'.
9.
Alice Hawkins read out the MP's response which was that the behaviour of the women was 'not doing any good for the cause and that the WSPU had now lost the public interest'.
10.
Alice Hawkins returned to Leicester and set up a branch of the WSPU inviting Emmeline Pankhurst to speak, and she signed up the first 30 members.
11.
In June 1908, Flora Drummond invited Alice Hawkins to speak at the Hyde Park rally on 21 June 1908.
12.
Alice Hawkins was jailed a second time in 1909 as she tried to force entry into a public meeting where Winston Churchill was speaking in Leicester, at which suffragettes had been specifically barred.
13.
Alfred paid the fine, but Alice Hawkins again opted for prison.
14.
Alice Hawkins's case had been taken up by the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement after he was thrown down some stairs after protesting against Winston Churchill during a Liberal party meeting Bradford.
15.
Alice Hawkins was jailed twice more in 1913, first for throwing ink into a Leicester post box, and then a last time for digging a slogan into a golf course at night.
16.
Alice Hawkins received a Hunger Strike Medal from the WSPU.
17.
Alice Hawkins was one of the prisoners who built a relationship with the female prison warders working-class women who comforted the prisoners as well as having the job of holding them down to be force-fed.
18.
In 1913 Alice Hawkins was among the representatives chosen to speak with leading politicians David Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey.
19.
Alice Hawkins explained how her fellow male workers could choose a man to represent them whilst the women were left unrepresented.
20.
Alice Hawkins was suspected of being one of the four women who damaged a golf course writing 'no votes, no golf' in horse dung but this was not proven.
21.
Alice Hawkins's protests ceased when war was declared in 1914 and the WSPU agreed to cease protests in exchange for having all prisoners released.
22.
When some women were given the vote in the Representation of the People Act, Alice Hawkins was proud of the role that women had taken in the factories and land during the war, and said that suffragette action had led to this and the right to vote.
23.
Alfred died in 1928 and Alice Hawkins had to live with her children and families, due to her poverty.
24.
Alice Hawkins has a plaque at her workplace and another on the Leicester Walk of Fame.
25.
Alice Hawkins found the transcript in the National Archives of the delegation including Hawkins of Working Women to Lloyd George, the chancellor, from January 1913.