An Elusive Suffragette

 

On the afternoon of 13 July 1913, the great and the good of Leeds society sat in the newly completed Great Hall at the City of Leeds Training College at Beckett Park. They listened to the address of The Right Hon. J. A. Pease, M. P. President of the Board of Education. During the college opening ceremony, detectives were on the lookout for any disruption from suffragettes. A derisive name fabricated by the Daily Mail but adopted as a badge of honour by women demanding the vote. The ceremony, with a government minister attending, was considered a potential target for suffragette activity.

As Mr Pease came to the end of his speech there was some commotion near the front, an undaunted lady rose to her feet to address the Minister. Newspapers of the day described her as “elderly”, “grey-haired” and “spectacled”. They gave differing reports of the encounter. The conservative Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, under the subheading ‘A Mild Interruption’, claimed that nothing of any importance was said, further declaring that whatever this lady had to say was a “foolish or irrelevant question.” No mention of the suffragettes was made. The more liberal Leeds Mercury described the harmless nature of the woman and that her intervention had something to do with votes for women. Meanwhile, The Suffragette, reported that the lady had asked the Minister, “Is there no work for women at the Board of Education? Does he not think that women…?”At this point, the woman’s words were drowned out by the clamour and derision of the surrounding crowd, and she was bundled out of the hall by detectives.

The mystery woman was likely admitted into the hall by art critic Frank Rutter. From 1912 until 1917 he was the curator of the City of Leeds Art Gallery, and as such was a Corporation official. The college opening was a tightly controlled civic event. Each ticket admitted two into the hall. Evidently, the venerable lady was granted entry, and as newspapers reported, this was facilitated by a high ranking Leeds Corporation official. Rutter was not mentioned by name but the finger of suspicion fell on him as he was known to be a supporter of the suffragette movement. A week later Rutter and his wife Thursa offered refuge in their home to Lillian Lenton. Lenton, a prominent militant suffragette, had been imprisoned in Armley Gaol and had endured a hunger strike and subsequent force-feeding. By the terms of the government’s ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, she was released on a licence to recover. Suspicion fell on the Rutters, fuelled by newspaper reports, that they were in some way involved in the subsequent escape of Lillian Lenton, despite surveillance of their home in Chapel Allerton by police. Frank Rutter was at odds with Leeds authority. His vision of curating a modern, twentieth-century art collection was dashed on the blinkered tastes of Leeds Aldermen and Councillors. He later wrote of them, “I was appalled by their grossness, their ignorance and general lack of manners.” The Councillors, for their part, viewed Rutter as a subversive and a man of questionable allegiances. No doubt mindful of his suffragette associations and the Leeds Training College Opening and the Lenton incidents.

The identity of the suffragette remains elusive. She obviously did not arouse suspicion at the high profile event and was freely admitted despite police presence. It is unlikely she was Rutter’s wife Thursa who was described as young at the time. In Leeds support for the idea of women’s suffrage dated back to the 1860s. There were activists throughout the period including Alice Cliff Scatcherd, Hannah Ford, Agnes Sunley and Isabella Ford among others. By 1913, the elderly and determined suffragette had four decades of ideas and opinions to draw on for her moment of confrontation with Mr Pease.

Becoming a Teacher

David Handley, centre wearing glasses, with Fairfax friends in 1961

Guest blogger, David Handley, shares his thoughts and provides a snapshot of life training to be a teacher at the City of Leeds Training College from 1959 to 1961 – Archivepost

In the year Castro seized Cuba, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, Thatcher became a new member of parliament and the first Mini went on sale, I walked up St Chad’s Drive with a suitcase in hand (no wheels and handles then) about to begin a new and exciting venture! Trams had only recently become obsolete on the City Square to Headingley route. Turning right onto The Acre was a memory never to be expunged. So began two years of training to be a teacher in an institution highly regarded, as was Goldsmiths, St John’s in York and St Lukes in Exeter……and two years was all it took. CLTC was organised a bit like the Oxbridge collegiate system. Fairfax became my home as far as sleeping, eating and socialising. It was presided over by Matron and Hall Tutor, first Fred Bassett and secondly by John Pooley who appeared as if by magic from my old grammar school in Newcastle-under Lyme. The students in Fairfax were quite a mix. There were the fresh-faced innocents from grammar schools, but in the year above were a significant number of ex-National Service chaps who had served in places such as Cyprus during the emergency and others in Germany when the Cold War was in full swing. They were anxious to let us know how green we were. I don’t recollect any students from public schools. Students were identified in those days by a sort of uniform. Many bought college blazers with an elaborate badge but the main thing was the college scarf! Just about everyone had one and wore it with pride….long and green with white stripes. You could tell which college or university a person was from by their scarf…..not any more…..an identifying feature long gone.

The Principal was Dr Rich and his deputy was the formidable Miss Parnaby. Students were trained either for secondary or primary schools. All of us had a main and subsidiary subject and all had to ‘pass’ in both the psychology of education (including Piaget) and the theory of education, led by an impressive lecturer by the name of Dr Westgarth. The sociology of education was yet to make it’s debut, though Richard Hoggart and his book The Uses of Literacy was on the scene nationally and by a Yorkshire man to boot. There was a legendary aged spinster who lectured in biology known affectionately as Minnie Dickinson. Everything that lived she knew the name of, be it common or Latin. Another extraordinary member of staff was also in post, Godfrey Wicksteed, lectured in mathematics, had only recently returned from being First Mate on Mayflower II which had recreated the voyage first made in 1620 to the New World. There was an academic air about the place, tempered only by being cast out to teaching practices, but usefully in some of the rougher bits of Leeds.

Socially it was a world of its own. There were frequent ‘hops’ (dances) in one or another of the halls and the college boasted its own band fronted up by Reuben Robson from Cavendish. There were regular pilgrimages to the Star and Garter at Kirkstall, where trad jazz was regularly played. And of course, boy met girl! Many met their spouses here. There were end of year going down balls and at one such Ray Ellington starred……remember him? A dramatic change in the second year was when men and women were allowed into one another’s rooms……..but only on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. It might have been a concession in that Lady Chatterley’s Lover had just won a court case allowing publication, the Penguin edition sold out on the first day. And then there was Carnegie, a specialist third-year college for male PE teachers, just next door and didn’t they think they were ‘it’. They appeared at the college social events sometimes with their blazers sporting a man throwing a plate……but that’s another story.

And so to becoming a qualified teacher. Year 1, Burnham pay scale, £520 per annum and a West Riding post where Alec Clegg was king. And where in a co-ed sec mod the girls and boys played in separate yards and the staff had separate staffrooms for men and women. No one took a gap year, everyone got a job easily and just where they wanted it and friendships were forged that lasted for decades……we are hoping to assemble soon to mark 60 years since we first clapped eyes on one another and The Acre…….it was all such a privilege. And one last point. We all got a local authority grant plus travelling expenses per term. And we learned what it was to be chided by Matron for not getting our sheets out on time on laundry day, but above all, we learned that schooling could be a joyous experience for both pupils and staff. This was my introduction to Yorkshire; freed from home, new friends, Tetleys and rugby league…..and I have stayed in the county ever since but now North Yorkshire rather than the revered West Riding.
And so the sclerotic 50s gave way to the swinging 60s and here we are!!

Moore…than meets the eye, revisited

Henry Moore’s exam results in Modelling, 1921

Exploring archive material found in our Archive and Special Collections at Leeds Beckett reveals more than meets the eye about Leeds Beckett’s association with the original Leeds College of Art and sculptor Henry Moore.

Moore himself did not disguise his dislike of some aspects of his time at Leeds School of Art. In particular, he found the academic drawing from antique casts dull and repetitive. These casts modelled from Greek and Roman statues had been used by students since the early days of the School, caked in layers of chalky whitewash they must have seemed to Moore the very epitome of what he regarded as stifled art education of the time. He longed for innovation, experimentation and self-expression. With newly appointed tutor Reginald T. Cotterill in 1920, Moore was handed a chance to progress. Cotterill set up a new sculpture department at the College and for a time Moore was the only sculpture student at Leeds. Later others joined the department including Barbara Hepworth. Moore’s aim throughout his two years at Leeds was to pass the Board of Education examinations and win a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London.

Moore and Hepworth are regarded as ‘superstars’ in the art world and any art college worth its salt will bask in reflected glory. Reference is often made to their association with Leeds School of Art and attention tends to focus on Leeds Arts University based at Blenheim Walk and Vernon Street. Vernon Street was indeed the building created for Leeds School of Art in 1903. However, it is little acknowledged that in 1969 the original, senior Leeds College of Art moved to purpose-built studios on Woodhouse Lane to be part of Leeds Central Colleges a precursor to Leeds Polytechnic. Meanwhile, the then junior or Branch College of Art, created in 1967, occupied the vacant Vernon Street building renaming itself Jacob Kramer College. Staff at Leeds prior to the split in 1969 disliked the idea of art education provision in Leeds being cleaved resulting in higher diploma courses and vocational and pre-diploma courses being cut off from each other, but the political and administrative decisions had been irreversibly made and the two colleges went separate ways. In the intervening years, Jacob Kramer College reinvented itself as Leeds College of Art and Design and later claimed the mantle of Leeds College of Art and now has become Leeds Arts University.

And what of the original Leeds College of Art? By 1970 it had been renamed the Faculty of Art and Design as part of Leeds Polytechnic but the ‘marriage’ of art, technology and commerce was uneasy and difficult, at least to begin with. Almost 50 years on, the college has evolved into the School of Art, Architecture and Design at Leeds Beckett. However, throughout its history, the Univerity has been somewhat circumspect in its legitimate claim to its past as successor to Leeds College of Art. This connexion has been little celebrated, understandably perhaps, by the fledgeling Polytechnic as it forged its own unique identity with little regard to its recent past. In time the Polytechnic and subsequently the University has largely forgotten its own hidden inheritance.

Vestiges of the old art college library and archive collection, preserved in the Archive and Special Collections, are essential threads of continuity back to the original Leeds College of Art. They uncover, just like the revelation of a sculpture, a true narrative of the original Leeds College of Art and a very real connection between Moore and Leeds Beckett University.

Leeds Arts in the 1970s

Guest blogger Professor Gavin Butt, Attenborough Chair in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Sussex, writes about his project dealing with the relationship of Leeds arts schools and bands – Archivepost.

Leeds, in comparison to other UK cities, has been typically overlooked by academic scholars focusing on subjects as diverse as avant-garde art, experimental performance and popular music. Manchester, London, Sheffield, Edinburgh, and Liverpool have all garnered more attention. The book I’m currently writing seeks to rectify this oversight by focusing upon the Leeds art school scene in the 1970s and early 1980s, and particularly upon the numerous bands that came out of Leeds Polytechnic and the University of Leeds. It explores the impact of pedagogies of performance art, and of radical theory, on the irreverent and activist arts that came out of these two institutions, and looks at why it was so important for creatives to band together to produce experimental arts at this time.

Speaking to people who were young artists then, it is clear, however, that the city itself was formative for the development of Leeds art and music, if not more than what they were taught in the academy. The architectural fabric of the city telegraphed meanings to young artists beyond its simple physical reality, thereby contributing a powerful psychological and ideological environment in which artists began to understand their place in history. Caught between the crumbling of both “old” and “new” alike – from Victorian slums to the already extant problems of Modernist social housing in the shape of Quarry Hill flats and Hunslet Grange – artists faced a problem with the very idea of progressiveness. If old and new were already somehow falling down, discredited, then where were artists to go to pick up a sense of creative direction?

This photograph from Leeds Beckett Archive and Special Collections shows the modernist Polytechnic building cheek-by-jowl with sooted and crumbling Victorian terraces in the city centre. It is a fascinating image that offers us a tantalising window on to this mindset, caught between such dramatically distinct edifices at a time of economic depression and uncertainty. Whilst the Polytechnic buildings were not falling down, the question was whether or not the new technical, advanced society envisaged by them in early 1970s was all it was cracked up to be.

The Mystery of William Waud

In the Summer of 1907 Ernest Beckett, Lord Grimthorpe, began negotiations with Leeds Corporation to sell Kirkstall Grange. This was the first move in establishing what we now know as our Headingley Campus. Just a few months earlier, a strange and unsettling event had shocked the neighbourhood. A 26-year-old under-gardener named William Henry Waud was found dead, with local newspapers reporting the unexplained death as an ‘A Kirkstall Mystery’. William Waud worked for the Beckett family at Kirkstall Grange, the nineteenth century name for the Grange. Waud lived with the head gardener William Frazer in the Gardener’s Cottage then known as the Lodge. Built in 1838, the Lodge still exists on Campus near the Churchwood Avenue entrance and is now used by the Campus Services team.

On Monday 25 March 1907, at about six in the evening, Waud left home to go into Headingley. He was later sighted visiting the fish shop on Cottage Road that evening. No one saw him again until the following Wednesday when George Harrison, the estate woodsman, found his body floating in the estate’s private reservoir. This reservoir once stood on or near the site of the Athletics Pavilion next to the university’s athletic tracks. The reservoir supplied the house and ancillary buildings with fresh water. In the eighteenth century John Smeaton, the celebrated engineer, designed a hand pump for then owner Walter Wade, possibly for use in the filter bed’s attached pumping house.

On discovering the body, Harrison contacted PC Atkinson. a local bobby, who raced to the scene. He and head gardener Frazer, extracted Waud from the water, noting that his watch had stopped at 10 past 10. Waud’s father, John, summoned from his home in Moortown, formally identified his son’s body. The Coroner’s inquest took place at the New Inn on Otley Road. Family and friends reported the young man to be in good health, all agreed he ‘never had the slightest trouble’ and that he always appeared cheerful. The perplexed Coroner had no evidence that Waud had taken his own life nor was there any sign of foul play. In the end, he entered a verdict of ‘Found Drowned’.

Within four years most of the gardens of Kirkstall Grange had been swept away. In the fields behind the house, the reservoir filled in and levelled. The estate transformed into the City of Leeds Training College and the tragic mystery of William Waud lost and forgotten.

A Walk in The Park

On our Headingley Campus, some of us take lunchtime walks in Churchwood and Queenswood, venturing that little bit further onto West Park Fields or into Beckett Park. Among the dog walkers and the echo of trains in the valley below, backgrounded by the rumble of perpetual traffic like a far-off sea.

Many may not know that until the beginning of the twentieth century this was all park and farmland associated with Kirkstall Grange, the mansion we know today as The Grange. Over the last century housing, light industry and educational institutions have laid down a kind of sediment, masking the old uses and aspect of the land. Reminiscent of the sedimentary deposits laid down by ancient oceans forming rich rock layers of Lower Pennine coal measures and Millstone Grit, the foundations of what we see today. Beneath this urban sediment lie traces of a long agricultural life, old roads cut into the soft landscape, abandoned stone gate posts, ghostly marks on the ground denoting former boundaries and crop markings. It is very easy to forget that for hundreds of years much of the land we now label by street name and postcode once bore older names. Agricultural labourers, Farmers and Landowners relied on field names, the most local of labels. Some were prosaic and informational others fanciful and mysterious, at least to our ears.

Much of the land now occupied by Headingley Campus was called The Park, at least from 1766 onwards. Carnegie playing fields were once known as High Cockshott Hill and High Field, cockshot is a clue to the practice of woodcock hunting that took place in former centuries. Beyond these fields lies Huckleback Hill, this name may allude to the profile of the hill as seen from the Spen Lane area. Of course, much of this landscape has been radically altered to accommodate the football pitches and athletics track. On the other side of Campus, the walk or drive down Churchwood Avenue crosses the fields of Ox Moor, High and Low Rushy Pasture. It is difficult to imagine now the fields of oats, barley and peas that once grew on this hillside as we make our way home.

Beckett Park and the German Prisoners of War

Guest blogger Alan Roberts writes about a little-known aspect of our Headingley Campus during WW1 – Archivepost.

The German bombers headed for home leaving a blazing city behind them. This was London on the night of 7th and 8th September 1940. Left in their wake were the charred remnants of documents held in the British War Office records depository in Arnside Street. It had been thought that all the lists of German prisoners of war held in British hands had been destroyed. Fortunately, copies of these very same documents had been routinely passed to the International Committee of the Red Cross based in Geneva. Amazingly these documents can now be accessed online.
Over ten years ago I had been studying for a part-time degree in Languages (German with Japanese) at Leeds Beckett University. I wanted to do something really original for an important piece of written work. I had quite a large young family to look after, and the idea of journeying across the channel to Germany seemed out of the question. The light-bulb moment came in Bradford – in Little Germany to be precise, but where did it get that name? Research into Little Germany prompted me to investigate the story of other Germans who had lived in the area. Eventually, I came across the anti-German riots in Keighley in 1914, and the funerals of German officers and men who had died in the influenza pandemic of 1919. A large number of prisoners had been sent from a camp in Skipton for treatment at Morton Bank Hospital near Keighley. Rather sheepishly I walked into the library in Skipton and asked if they had any information about the camp. ‘Yes, we have a book, but it’s in German,’ they replied. Sometimes you just cannot believe your luck!

Funerals of the 47 German officers and men, who died of influenza and related causes, took place in February and March 1919. Some of the German officers from Skipton Camp are standing in their greatcoats to the right of the picture. A firing party from the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment was also in attendance. Colonel Ronaldson, the British camp commandant, is standing to the left of the open grave. Photograph courtesy of ‘Ian Dewhirst Collection’

Skipton Camp
I began to translate the book Kriegsgefangen in Skipton in early summer 2014. I have since been joined by a group of lecturers and students from Leeds University. The book itself is really interesting. It is over 300 pages long and details the daily life in the camp with remarkably good humour. It contains sketches, poems and prose contributions from around 50 former inmates.
Interest in the project has snowballed. A team of staff and students from several local secondary schools are carrying out an archaeological dig on that part of the site which has not been built upon. We have received photographs of the camp taken by one of the British guards, we have translated our first letter sent home by a German officer, and within the past forty-eight hours an email has arrived from someone living in Argentina to say that his father had been imprisoned in Skipton. His father had been captured at the Battle of Vimy Ridge which took place exactly a hundred years ago. We have photographs of the funerals which took place at Morton Bank Cemetery, and then there is the story of the Hindenburg! Really there is so much to say, but I had better simply refer you to our two websites: https://arts.leeds.ac.uk/kriegsgefangen/ and http://www.raikeswoodcamp.co.uk/

2nd Northern General Hospital
So what is the connection with Leeds Beckett Park? Part of the translation process is to make the book accessible to the modern reader. I kept returning to the thought ‘Who were these people?’, be they British guards or German prisoners. Fortunately, the records available via the Red Cross in Geneva are allowing us to identify the vast majority of the prisoners held at Skipton. Intriguingly I happened to come across a small number of references to German prisoners of war who received treatment at 2nd Northern General Hospital (Leeds) which was better known as Beckett Park. All 4 officers were lieutenants and had been imprisoned at Wakefield Camp. They were suffering from influenza, pneumonia, rheumatism and bronchitis. Their names were August Dippold from Munich, Alfred Amreihn from Essen in the Ruhr…

British prisoner of war list containing the names of two German officers who received treatment at Beckett Park. It seems that very few German prisoners of war were admitted to the hospital. Certainly, the admissions numbers are low: 11 and 13, and this list was produced as late as January 1919.

This is all very much ‘work in progress’, and our knowledge of the prisoners of war held at Beckett Park is changing from week to week. There is, of course, an invitation. Should any readers have information which can help us to find out more about Beckett Park and the 2nd Northern General Hospital, then please do not hesitate to contact us through the university website, http://libguides.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/archives.

Alan Roberts, Barnoldswick, 12 April 2017

Carnegie..in the beginning

This June will see the inaugural Carnegie School of Sport Reunion held on our Headingley Campus. To help celebrate the occasion I’ve written a little piece about the early History of Carnegie College.

Carnegie Physical Training College was officially opened by Lord Irwin on 13th October 1933. The college was built in response to the perceived need for quality training for men teaching physical education. A requirement identified as early as 1923 by Captain Grenfell’s Survey of boys secondary schools in which he lamented the lack of men teachers and the ‘inefficiency’ of the training. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, this need was highlighted by headmasters and education authorities across the country. The authorities recognised that a tradition of excellent physical training for women had already been established. In 1929 the Government and Carnegie UK Trust had established a joint committee to look into the establishment of a college of physical education for male teachers. The Carnegie Trust supplied a grant for £30,000 toward the cost of building such a college. James Graham, Director of Education for Leeds was the driving force behind Leeds bid to be the venue although sadly he died before completion. He envisaged the new Carnegie Hall being sited next to the existing City of Leeds Training College. This location and proximity was to prove fruitful to both institutions over the coming years.

Carnegie Hall was built as a replica of the original 1912 halls of residence of the neighbouring training college and contained 60 study bedrooms, a common room, dining room, lounge and library. Many of the facilities of the training college were enjoyed by Carnegie students, including the swimming pool and social functions such as dances and concerts. Ernest Major was appointed first Warden of Carnegie, his leadership set the foundation of Carnegie’s reputation as a centre of quality in the teaching of physical education at both a national and international level.

Children of the World…in The Grange

The Grange has played host to many during its long history, one event that is little known comes from its relatively recent history. During the Summer of 1969, Leeds teacher Martyn Fisher was Director of the Children’s International Summer Village (CISV) held at Beckett Park. The ‘villages’ were originally founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1951. A non-profit and apolitical organisation with Associations in over fifty countries. Their aim was to hold villages throughout the summer months where 11-year-olds of different nationalities could come together, make friends, learn about each other’s culture and perpetuate and foster understanding and tolerance.
Martyn explains that “The village was officially opened in the Great Hall by the then Lord Mayor of Leeds, Alderman Rafferty who was accompanied by the Leeds CISV president, Stanley Burton of clothing family fame. Life in the village consisted of a huge variety of singing, games, sports, arts and crafts, swimming, folk dancing, drama and music making.” Another feature of the villages was that participants brought examples of their national costume. During the month each delegation presented a ‘national evening’ when the camp was entertained with songs, games and dances from one of the participating countries.

The main building used by the Camp was The Grange, where all members of the village slept and where most of the activities took place. The grand octagonal hall with sweeping staircase was bedecked with huge flags from all the nations represented. Martyn reminisces that “the Leeds CISV was held during July/August 1969. In addition to myself as Camp Director, there was a Deputy and two more staff. Each delegation consisted of two boys and two girls and an adult chaperon. There was also two or three teenage Junior Councillors who helped with the running of the Camp. There were eleven nations represented, the children coming from Mexico, United States, Holland, Japan, Liberia, Norway, Romania, Israel, Sweden, Belgium and Italy.”

During the course of the month, the Camp was entertained by a number of outside activities including a Civic Reception at Leeds Town Hall, a tea party at (the now long gone) Schofield’s Department Store on the Headrow and a visit to Rowntree’s (now Nestles) chocolate factory in York.

Martyn concludes, “The whole month proved to be both an exhausting and exhilarating time for all involved. As a consequence of the Camp, many friendships were made and have been happily maintained.”

Thanks to Martyn and James Fisher for providing material for this guest blog.