Overview of Winifred Fairfield

The middle daughter Winifred (aka Winnie) Fairchild was a teacher.

She was a member of the WSPU and was joint Honorary Secretary of the Hampstead Garden Suburb branch at the time of June 1911 Women’s Suffrage March in London.

She campaigned in Scotland with their neighbour Mrs Kathleen Roy Rothwell in the constituency of Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister in 1909.

Mrs Rothwell was the main speaker, but Winifred also spoke. The newspaper reports: “Miss Fairfield, who was somewhat halting to begin with, soon warmed up and told the audience that the suffragettes meant to fight until they won. She was critical of Asquith who had refused them an audience. She predicted that he ‘like the man who stood in front of an express train was sure to get crushed’. She compared his standing with the cabinet as like a Czar and criticized the lack of courage of those cabinet members who were pro-suffrage. She said that there ‘was more courage in a suffragette’s little finger than in a cabinet minister’.

Like her sister, she also spoke for CLWS

Return to Suffragists and Suffragettes here