Many years ago, in an attempt to discover the antecedence of a genetic condition in my husband's family, I began to research the French family. While the investigation did not solve the initial puzzle, I tripped over a gaggle of six sisters and one brother, two of whom fought for the vote, two nursed, while one led the British army, during the First World War, two stood on different sides over the Irish question while differing stands were taken on Indian independence.
I knew little of the suffrage movement, other than being informed, when I could vote for the first time, do not waste your vote, women fought hard for your right, just remember, my mother concluded, vote Conservative! A predominately all girls education at a school, found by a woman influenced by Dorothea Beale, ignored suffrage history still viewing careers for women as limited to the few who easily won academic accolades. Many of us ignored what we saw as an outmoded outlook, going to university and forging careers. In my case, in tax. The advent of the internet allowed my first forays with the French family and now provides access to archives, biographies, memoirs, newspapers and photographs. Bringing all these resources together is at the heart of this project.
The feisty, committed French sisters, began a desire to understand what happened, when and why? The research, initially, through the lens of the indomitable Charlotte, the second of the six French sisters, started, stalled, stopped, occasionally stuttering back into life when time allowed or when curiosity sparked life back into the pursuit. A post graduate diploma from the University of Strathclyde gave me new skills but little time for research.
Starting an MA in biography, and the need, at a difficult time, to have a project to get out of bed for, led to the suffragette amnesty record. The MA dissertation swung away from Charlotte as I became sidetracked by a homosexual scandal which saw a Liberal peer banished abroad. A saga which had held a fascination for decades, since a job before university saw me watching the adaptation of Brideshead Revisited while living on the estate whose family had inspired Evelyn Waugh. However, the departure was not total as the peer's career spanned the same period of political turmoil.
As the dissertation progressed the number of names researched ebbed and flowed, each name a mini-research project, and each giving an insight into the why and the how. Now, dissertation complete, and over one hundred women and men later it has begun to have its own momentum with collaborations with museums and input from relatives; artefacts are now given a backstory or unseen photographs published on the internet.