A unisex first name caused consternation in Yeovil on this date, when a woman – a woman! - was accidentally allowed to vote in a parliamentary election.
Mrs Frances Connelly of Reckleford was included on the electoral register for the South Somerset by-election, presumably by a clerk who couldn’t remember whether it was Frances for girls and Francis for boys or vice versa and just decided to guess.
We can only guess why Mrs Connelly turned up to cast her ballot, since very little is known about her. Was she a supporter of universal suffrage, or perhaps of votes for women? Was she a natural rebel, who fancied a bit of mischief? Or maybe she was just a law-abiding citizen who, having been invited to vote, turned out to do her duty.
The local press reported (or speculated) that Frances voted Conservative, but that doesn’t really clarify her motives, since at that time women’s suffrage campaigners saw the Liberals as their chief enemies.
When she arrived at the polling station the presiding officer made it clear to her that she was not, in his opinion, entitled to vote, on the grounds that she was demonstrably not a geezer, fella, bloke or chap. But the Conservative candidate insisted on consulting a local barrister. That learned man’s opinion was that if a person was registered to vote, even by mistake, then their voting could not legally be prevented and the vote itself must be counted. The presiding officer withdrew his objection and Mrs Frances Connelly made her little bit of history.
This particular by-election was already commanding national attention; it was being called the Gloving By-election, because the main policy difference between the two big parties was a proposed law regulating home-working. Glove-making, which would be greatly affected by the legislation, was a prime source of employment in Yeovil and environs. As a result, Frances became quite famous for a while, and that’s probably why she is sometimes wrongly described as the first British woman to vote in a parliamentary election.
A much earlier claimant to that proud title is Lily Maxwell, a servant who became a shopkeeper – and therefore, crucially, a ratepayer – in Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Manchester. In 1867 a by-election for the local seat in the Commons took place, and Lily appeared on the voter list. What seems to have happened is that no-one had thought to check that all the ratepayers (who automatically had the vote) were men.
Lily’s motives are clearer than those of Frances – she wanted to vote for the radical candidate, Jacob Bright, a campaigner for women’s suffrage and against war. And she did so, the local authorities being unable to find grounds to prevent her. This was a few years before secret ballots were introduced for UK elections, and you voted by attending the voting place and calling out the name of your chosen candidate. Surrounded by cheering supporters, Lily Maxwell did just that.
The state moved quickly to plug the loophole – in 1868 it became, for the first time, explicitly illegal for women to vote. Well-off ladies got the vote in 1918; women’s suffrage was equalised with that of men in 1928. Frances Connelly died of consumption (TB) in 1917, in her forties. Lily Maxwell died in a poorhouse in 1876, in her seventies.
(The victorious Conservative candidate in South Somerset, by the way, was Aubrey Herbert. Aubrey? I mean – is that a boy’s name or a girls’ name?)
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Sources:
Western Daily Press 30 January 2017
www.yeovilhistory.info/connelly-frances.htm
www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/lily-maxwell-the-first-woman-to-vote/
www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/frances-connelly-yeovil-woman-who-69590
https://sites.google.com/site/jbseatrobe/political-somerset/1911-south-somerset-gloving-by-election