Vanishing for the Vote: diverse suffragettes boycott the 1911 census

Vanishing for the Vote tells the story of what happened on census
night, 2 April 1911. Despite decades of campaigning, no woman had
won the right to vote. Suffragettes urged women to boycott the
census, proclaiming 'No vote, no census!'. This talk is based on
the family census schedules which illustrate the wide diversity
of suffrage campaigners - those who complied with the census and
those who daringly boycotted.


Jill Liddington is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University
of Leeds. Her first book, One Hand Tied Behind Us (Virago, 1978),
soon became a suffrage classic. Her most recent history,
Vanishing for the Vote (MUP, 2014), is based on the The National
Archives' census schedules released in 2009.


We apologise for the poor sound quality of this live recording.


This talk was part of The National Archives' Diversity Week, a
week designed to highlight the ongoing work across the
organisation surrounding the representation of diverse histories.