Professor Paul Salveson is a historian and writer and lives in Bolton. He is visiting professor in ‘Worktown Studies’ at the University of Bolton and author of several books on Lancashire history

International Women’s Day on Monday was a reminder of the many Bolton women who have played an important role in society – not just locally, but on the national stage. Four of them are Sarah Reddish, Alice Foley, Alice Collinge and Susan Isaacs

Sarah Reddish (centre) with the the Bolton Women’s Co-operative Guild around 1900

Sarah Reddish (centre) with the the Bolton Women’s Co-operative Guild around 1900

Sarah Reddish

Sarah Reddish was born in Westleigh (as it was then called - now ‘West Leigh’) in 1849 and left school at the age of 11 to work at home with her mother, a silk weaver. Her father, Thomas, was active in the Co-operative Movement and the family moved to Bolton where he became librarian and secretary to the Bolton Co-operative Education Committee. His co-operative principles rubbed off on his daughter.

Sarah went on to work as a winder and reeler in the local mills and eventually became a forewoman in a hosiery mill. Most of her busy life was devoted to the Co-operative movement, but she was also prominent in the women’s suffrage campaign and the Independent Labour Party (ILP).

She was a popular public speaker and she travelled around the country with the first women’s ‘Clarion Van’ tour of 1896, inspired by Robert Blatchford’s popular ‘Clarion’ newspaper.

From the back of the horse-drawn van, Sarah and her sisters propounded the new gospel of socialism, to audiences which varied from bemused and hostile to enthusiastic.

In 1899 she was appointed part-time organiser of the Women’s Trade Union League. She founded the Bolton branch of the Co-operative Women’s Guild and she was the national president for many years. The official history of the Guild noted that her “clear, logical and convincing speech came as a revelation of women’s power.”

She played a key role in the women’s suffrage movement in Lancashire. In 1903 she helped form the Lancashire and Cheshire Women Textile Workers Representation Committee. Two years later she was involved in a major demonstration of Lancashire women cotton workers in London.

Closer to home, she organised a demonstration on the steps of Bolton Town hall to protest against the money being spent on the coronation of Edward VII, suggesting the money would have been better spent on feeding the poor.

She was the first woman on the Bolton Education Board 1899 and later was elected to the Poor Law Guardians. She was the first woman to stand for Bolton Council, representing women’s organisations in the town, in 1907.

She polled a respectable 737 votes but was not elected. She organised the ‘school for mothers’ in Bolton, based on the successful example of a similar project in London, established by Dora Russell.

She was opposed to the First World War and played an active part in the anti-war movement in Lancashire. She died, at the age of 78, on February 19, 1928, and is buried at Heaton Cemetery.

Bolton Suffragist Alice Collinge

Bolton Suffragist Alice Collinge

Alice Collinge

Alice Collinge was a poet and teacher, of Scottish parents. She lived at Riding Gate, Harwood, for most of her life and was a talented poet and inspirational teacher.

She was active in the women’s suffrage movement and, like Sarah Reddish, the Independent Labour Party. She was the resident organist at Bolton Labour Church in the early 1900s when Clarke was involved, and met ‘the rebel countess’ Constance Markievicz, the first woman elected as an MP to the UK parliament. As a Sinn Fein member she did not take her seat.

Alice also met leading national figures such as Edward Carpenter, Eva Gore-Booth and Adela Pankhurst through her political activities. She became one of the first women members of the Bolton ‘Walt Whitman fellowship’ which venerated the great American poet and mystic.

In her autobiographical notes, she tells this charming story of the Bolton Whitman group and its leader, J W. Wallace, in particular.

She wrote: “As a counter-attraction to those hectic days, there was the restful contemplative influence of the Whitman Fellowship behind it all, and in that influence alone, I owe an eternal debt to Bolton. To hear the late J W. Wallace read a paper on Whitman, in a Whitman atmosphere, either at Rivington, Walker Fold or The Haulgh, was a perfect inspiration, and one of those special privileges that one cannot account for.”

Alice won several poetry prizes and lectured for the Workers’ Educational Association on English Literature. She was an active member of the Lancashire Authors’ Association, and was elected deputy chair of the association.

In her later years she was appointed a governor of Bolton School. She made a great contribution to Bolton’s political, social and cultural life, dying in 1957.

Alice Foley – from a working class Bolton Irish family. Alice went on to become Lancashire’s first female full-time official in the weavers’ union

Alice Foley – from a working class Bolton Irish family. Alice went on to become Lancashire’s first female full-time official in the weavers’ union

Alice Foley

Alice was born in 1891 in Bolton. Her family, of Irish working class origins, were poor but were keen readers. She learned to read at an early age and retained a great interest in learning and adult education throughout her life.

Her father’s belief in education meant that she did not become a half-timer but remained in school until 13 when she left for a full-time job. After trying shop work she went into the mill as a tenter (a weaver’s assistant).

Like Alice Collinge and Sarah Reddish, she was involved in the socialist movement of the town, including the Labour Church and the Socialist Sunday School.

In the years before the First World War she joined the Clarion Cycling Club.

As she recalled “I joined the Clarion Cycling Club and a new era of fun and comradeship opened out. In merry company we slogged up hills and free-wheeled joyously down them thrilling to the beauty and excitement of a countryside as yet unspoiled by the advent of motor transport.”

In 1912 Alice got a job with the Amalgamated Weavers Union as a ‘sick visitor’ for union members. Five years later, the Assistant General Secretary of the union resigned.

The Executive decided not to replace him but made Alice a temporary clerk doing the job normally done by the assistant secretary. This involved helping members to understand their wages, based on highly complex calculations as well as negotiating with employers.

When the war ended in 1918, the Executive decided that they needed to appoint a permanent Assistant General Secretary. The recruitment procedure was based on a demanding written examination; out of six candidates, one got 72%, the nearest rival managed 38%. The executive never revealed who got the highest score but decided not to appoint - the suspicion being that Alice got the top score but wasn’t appointed because she was female.

The following year the executive again raised the issue of an AGS. This time they announced that no applications would be accepted from women members!

Alice, in her own words, “plodded on”. She was elected to Bolton Trades Council, became a magistrate and was active within the Co-op and the Workers Educational Association.

In 1942 the assistant position became vacant again. This time, rather than appoint her, the committee made her ‘Chief Women’s Officer’. Finally, in 1948, the retirement of the then General Secretary resulted in the appointment of Alice to the top job. Her persistence finally paid off, but what a wait!

In 1950 she was awarded an MBE and 10 years later Manchester University honoured her with an MA for her contribution to adult education. Alice died in 1974.

Susan Isaacs

Susan Isaacs

Susan Isaacs

Susan Isaacs was an important figure in the field of Child Development and Educational Psychology. She was born on March 24, 1885 at 32 Bradshaw Brow. Her father, William Fairhurst, was a saddler and Methodist lay preacher. Her mother, Miriam, died when she was six years old.

As a girl she became alienated from her father after he married the nurse who had attended her mother during her illness. At the age of 15, she was removed from Bolton Secondary School by her father because she had converted to ‘atheistic socialism’; her father refused to speak to her for two years. She stayed at home with her stepmother until she was 22 in what one can only imagine would be a strained domestic environment.

In 1907 she enrolled to train as a teacher of young children at the University of Manchester. Her academic career took off - she transferred to a degree course and graduated in 1912 with a first in Philosophy. She was awarded a scholarship at the Psychological Laboratory in Newnham College, Cambridge and gained a master’s degree in 1913.

Susan trained and practised as a psychoanalyst and became involved in the newly formed British Psychoanalytical Society in 1921. She helped popularise the works of Melanie Klein, as well as the theories of Jean Piaget and Sigmund Freud.

Between 1924 and 1927, she was the head of Malting House School in Cambridge, an experimental school which fostered the individual development of children. Her work had a great influence on early education and made ‘play’ a central part of a child’s education.

Between 1929 and 1940, she was an ‘agony aunt’ under the pseudonym of ‘Ursula Wise’, replying to readers’ problems in several child care journals, including The Nursery World and Home and School.

In 1933, she became the first Head of the Child Development Department at the Institute of Education, University of London.

She developed cancer in 1935 and struggled with ill health for the rest of her life. She was still able to go on a lecturing tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1937 and after moving to Cambridge in 1939 she conducted a survey on the effect of evacuation on children.

She was awarded a CBE in 1948 and died later that year aged 63. She is commemorated by a plaque on her first home, in Bradshaw.

Details of Paul’s new book Moorlands, Memories and Reflections, featuring aspects of Lancashire’s history, can be found at www.lancashireloominary.co.uk