Ethel Snowden

Lived just off the edge of the Suburb, in Woodstock Road. She is registered there in the 1911 Census and was on the National Executive of National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies so undoubtedly would have been closely connected to activists in HGS.

She was also on the executive of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance, and lectured internationally on women’s suffrage.

Ethel wrote to Edge Hill students and alumni in 1907 that of all issues, ‘not one is more important, or is exciting more interest than the question of the political enfranchisement of women.’

As a confirmed suffragist, Ethel disapproved of violence: her views were summarised as: ‘A cause good enough for martyrs is much too good for victims’.

By 1914, she was delivering more than 200 speeches annually and it was said she ‘probably addressed bigger audiences all over the world on the suffrage question than any other living woman’.

She was married to Philip Snowden, elected as one of the first Labour MPs in 1906 (and who was to become the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer). Philip Snowden too, was a frequent speaker in favour of women’s suffrage. He was a member and Vice-President of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.

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