Mrs Shepherd's Locket

Sometimes the most innocent of items can have a history that makes you feel in awe.  After my Ma-in-Law's sudden passing last year, the redoubtable Mr Walker found himself in touch with all the different parts of our family, including our family in New Zealand. One amazing outcome of those conversations was that the very lovely Lynda offered to send our daughter Lily-Rose a locket that had been passed through the women of the family.  However, it was no ordinary locket...

As you can see, it's in its original box from E Davis of Leicester Square, Walsall.  Lynda told us that it was given to her grandmother from an older lady who they looked after as she suffered from poor health.  It was this lady's wish that Lynda's mum would receive it in time and it was then passed to Lynda.  The locket is lovely, but it was the background that makes it extra special for Lily because the older lady was ill health because of what had happened to her when she was younger.  This locket belonged to Mary Louisa Shepherd...

Mary Louisa Shepherd, or Louisa as she seems to have liked to be called, was born Mary Miles in Minety, Wiltshire in March of 1875.  Like most families in Wiltshire (my own included) Louisa came from a long line of Agricultural Labourers.  By the time she was a teenager, she was the only servant to a farmer and his family just outside Chippenham, also north Wiltshire.  In the south of Gloucestershire (just above Wiltshire), was William Thomas Shepherd, son of a saddler, and the couple met and married in 1902. By 1911 the couple had moved to Walsall, north of Birmingham, taking William' widowed mother with them.  William had work as a porter for a furniture dealer and they lived at 72 Brace Street, a very pleasant road of small houses.  Looking at the census, there are lots of different occupations living there, from licenced victuallers, railway porters and a Prudential agent.  However, two years later, Louisa was sent to jail.

Along with the locket, Lynda passed us some postcards which were very old and very special. As a group they tell a fascinating story. I'll start with this family group...

This is David Lloyd George, his wife Margaret and daughter Megan.  On the back it reads 'WELSH TROOPS PICTURE POST CARD DAY In Aid of THE NATIONAL FUND FOR WELSH TROOPS' which dates the postcard to around 1914-1918 (someone has removed the stamp and postmark).  The card has a brief note on the back that reads 

'Dear Mrs Sheppard [sic] Wishing you a good Xmas and Bright New Year. 

Hear you are doing well so be careful. Good luck, Edgar Jones'

Edgar Jones was an MP for Merthyr Tydfil from 1910 to 1918 and his wife was a NUWSS secretary and very politically active. Whilst I would be tempted to just think the card was from a friend, the formal nature of the message and the warning to 'be careful' seemed odd, but when you take into account Louisa's actions in July of 1913, it begins to make sense.

Two other postcards from Mrs Shepherd's collection were of Mrs Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel.  By this point, you can probably guess why Louisa Shepherd was arrested. 

The last two postcards are of marches for women's suffrage - the first shows a 'Leicester' banner and the other shows a banner reading 'TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION IS TYRANNY,' both being carried in a long procession of women in Edwardian dress. The presence of the Pankhurst postcards hints at a more militant interest in equal rights for women and Mrs Shepherd does not let us down...

The Grand Hotel, Colmore Row, Birmingham

July 1913 was a hot year for Suffragette action.  Mrs Pankhurst continued to escape the police and when Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister, blocked any progress for women's votes, his visit to Birmingham was always going to be an explosive one.  Asquith was attending a dinner for the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce at the Grand Hotel on Colmore Row when a group of women decided to smash the place up and got arrested.  Louisa and a woman called Florence Ward were the ring leaders, and I have to say the reports of what they did are astonishing. Windows were smashed with large bolts wrapped in leaflets reading 'broken pledges reap broken windows.' Louisa smashed the windows of the smoking room and also had half a brick in her handbag.  Both women gave their address as 19 Leicester Street, Walsall, the offices of the WSPU. Florence Ward asked the judge 'I ask you which ought to go to prison...Mr Asquith who breaks promises or a woman who breaks a little bit of glass?' 

Louisa specified her grievance with the 'Cat and Mouse Act' which she declared 'very horrid and very cruel' which had become law in the Spring of 1913.  This allowed the imprisonment and force feeding of a suffragette on hunger strike until she became ill, then she was released to recover, then reimprisoned. The state-sanctioned torture of women was designed to break the suffragette's mission and just an escalation in the violence, rather than actually looking at the matter of giving women the vote. Louisa, and no doubt the other suffragettes who opted not to pay the 40 shilling fine and go to jail with a vow to go on hunger strike, was force fed, leading to health complications for the rest of her life.  She was released later in the summer, then rearrested (as part of the Cat and Mouse Bill) in the September.

I am indebted to this page for some context for Black Country Suffragettes and quite honestly it makes me feel grateful and alarmingly militant reading what these women did for us. I also found Louisa listed here, as 'Sheppard' as on the postcard from Edgar Jones, but it is definitely the same woman, possibly allowing the surname to be misspelt.

My husband's family lived a few doors down from the Shepherds on Brace Street and looked after Louisa in her old age.  By the 1939 register, William Shepherd is listed as incapacitated, and according to Lynda, Louisa's health was poor due to the force-feeding. William died in December of 1948 with Louisa following him in January 1957, leaving the locket to Lily's Great Great Grandma, and then to Great Great Auntie Barbara, Lynda's Mum. I've always told Lily about the importance of voting, she actually got to vote for the first time last year, but something like this brings it home to you that such a basic right as having a say in what happens to you as a woman is something so recently won.

Thank you again Lynda for such a treasure which we will keep very safe indeed.