First woman voter
Frances given 1911 polling card as she had ‘a man’s name’
IT WAS seven years before the suffragette movement would finally win women the right to vote.
But in 1911 one Frances Connelly quietly made history by becoming the first woman to have her ballot paper counted.
She was accidentally sent a polling card as it was assumed she was a man because of her first name.
A newly-discovered local newspaper report from the time described how she went to a polling station in Yeovil to vote in the 1911 South Somerset by-election.
officials were aghast and dithered over whether to allow her to vote before consulting presiding officer W.W. Henley. He eventually conceded they had no choice under
‘Dithering officials were aghast’
the rules because her name was on the electoral register, she was the person on the register card and had not already voted in the election.
And so Mrs Connelly cast her vote for Conservative Mr Aubrey Herbert – who narrowly beat liberal Sir Edward Strachey – at the same time as suffragist campaigners were marching through Yeovil.
The story has emerged more than 100 years on after historians spotted the newspaper report dated November 29, 1911. It reads: ‘The election will be remembered for the first time in the history of the constituency a woman claimed and was allowed to exercise the Parliamentary franchise.
‘At the very moment a Suffragist’s car was touring Yeovil displaying to an amused crowd the legend “Mothers want votes”, a lady was putting her cross against the name of Mr Aubrey Herbert – at least she is supposed to be on the unionist side – at the Town Hall. The point was carried, and Mrs Connelly voted. What is more her vote was recorded in the ordinary way – not upon a “tendered” paper – and was counted with the others.’
Mrs Connelly died aged 48 in 1917, one year before women were granted the right to vote after a long campaign fought by Emmeline Pankhurst’s suffrage movement.
Her Women’s Social and Political union was formed in 1903 and – operating under the motto ‘deeds, not words’ – became the militant wing of the movement to give women the vote.
In 1913, suffragette Emily davison died after stepping in front of King George V’s horse during the derby. In 1867, lily Maxwell had managed to vote in a by-election in Manchester where regulations granted the right to all ratepayers but failed to exclude women. A few more female property owners followed suit before their votes were declared illegal and the loophole closed.
In 1918 the right to vote was given to land- owning women over the age of 30. In 1928 it was extended to all women over 21.