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Bessie Drysdale

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Bessie Drysdale
Bornc. 1871
Hereford, England
Died1950
Occupation(s)teacher, activist, writer
Years active1907-1950
Organization(s)Malthusian League, Women's Social and Political Union, Women's Freedom League
Known forbirth control campaigning, suffrage activism
SpouseCharles Vickery Drysdale

Bessie Drysdale (née Ingram Edwards, 1871–1950) was a British teacher, suffragette activist, birth control campaigner, eugenicist and writer. She was a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union’s (WSPU) National Executive Committee and secretary of the Malthusian League.

Early life

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Drysdale was born in 1871 in Hereford.[1] She worked as a teacher at Stockwell College in South London.[2]

Marriage

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She married Charles Vickery Drysdale, whose parents were Charles Robert Drysdale and Alice Vickery.[3] He was an electrical engineer, eugenicist, and social reformer, and was a founder member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage (MLWS).[2] The couple had one daughter called Eva Drysdale who died in 1914, aged 13, and an adopted son.[2]

Suffrage activism

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Drysdale was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).[4] She was one of the 52 women arrested during a suffragette march to the House of Commons on 14 February 1907 and spent 21 days in Holloway Prison.[5] Later in 1907, Drysdale left the WSPU to join the breakaway group the Women's Freedom League (WFL).[4] In 1908 she attended the congress of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance in Stockholm, Sweden, as the WFL delegate. Her husband also attended to represent the MLWS.[6]

When the 1911 census was taken, Drysdale participated in the suffragette boycott and wrote on her form: “as the Government refuses me a vote and as I am not therefore recognised as a citizen, I refuse to perform the duties of one in giving the information required by the Government”.[6] She signed as a member of the WFL.[1]

Drysdale left the WFL in April 1912 to campaign for women's enfranchisement independently.[6] During this time she also wrote for the short lived radical feminist magazine The Freewoman (1911-1913), which covered topics including sexuality, women's rights, motherhood and marriage.[7][8]

Birth control activism

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Drysdale believed that the limitation of family size was the "lever for individual and social betterment," "a cure for social ills" and key to achieving women's emancipation.[9] From 1911 to 1923 Drysdale was secretary of the British eugenics and family planning organisation, the Malthusian League.[7] She was also a member of the Eugenics Society.[10] Drysdale was one of the most prominent female members of these organisations and often highlighted the erasure of women's bodies and opinions in discourse about reproduction, through her writing and talks.[10]

During the First World War, Drysdale published leaflets concerning the need to reduce the birth-rate during war shortages.[6] She continued writing after the war,[10] and attacked collectivism and socialism in her 1920 pamphlet "Labour Troubles and Birth Control".[11] In 1923 she ended an article with the line "working men and women look to yourselves, and get rid of poverty by refusing to breed it."[12] She has been described as "virulently anti-socialist".[13]

When the post-war Ministry of Health committed £1,100,000 to maternity care and child welfare programmes, Drysdale opposed the measure. She argued that the middle class was already overburdened with taxation to support the lower classes who created their own conditions by having too many children instead of adopting family planning methods. She wondered how long parents of small families would be expected to allow the poor to "solve their endless crises at the public expense".[14] She also wrote negatively about that areas of poor housing, stating that "slums are to a great extent made and constantly inhabited by natural slum types."[15]

Also after the war, Drysdale personally campaigned about family planning on a motor car tour,[16] and arranged meetings across Britain held by the American birth control campaigner Margaret Sanger.[6][17] Bessie gave Margaret advice about how to dress, telling her that the more radical a persons ideas the more conservatively they should dress.[18] They attended an internal conference of the Malthusian League together in Holland in 1921.[19]

In 1922, Drysdale and her husband founded the Walworth Women's Welfare Centre.[1] This was one of the first birth control clinics in the country.[20]

Death

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Drysdale continued campaigning until she died in 1950.[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Individual : Bessie Drysdale [SUF10]". Hampstead Garden Suburb Virtual Museum. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d Mitchell, A. B. (8 October 2009) [23 September 2004]. "Drysdale, Charles Vickery (1874–1961), electrical engineer and social philosopher". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-32908. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
  3. ^ Hall, Lesley A. (27 May 2010) [23 September 2004]. "Vickery [Drysdale], Alice (1844–1929), physician and campaigner for women's rights". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-39448. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
  4. ^ a b Bland, Lucy (1995). Banishing the Beast: English Feminism and Sexual Morality, 1885-1914. Penguin. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-14-017449-6.
  5. ^ Shew, Tania (March 2023). "Women's Suffrage, Political Economy, and the Transatlantic Birth Strike Movement, 1911–1920". The Historical Journal. 66 (2): 370–391. doi:10.1017/S0018246X22000334. ISSN 0018-246X.
  6. ^ a b c d e Stenlake, Frances. "Bessie Drysdale". Mapping Women's Suffrage. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
  7. ^ a b Schwarz, Laura (3 October 2017). Infidel feminism: Secularism, religion and women's emancipation, England 1830–1914. Manchester University Press. pp. 63–64. ISBN 978-1-5261-3066-2.
  8. ^ Richardson, A.; Willis, C. (12 June 2019). The New Woman in Fiction and Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms. Springer. p. 231. ISBN 978-1-349-65603-5.
  9. ^ Drysdale, Bessie Ingham Edwards (2013) [1908]. "Specially for Women". In Neslon, Claudia; Strange, Julie-Marie; Egenolf, Susan (eds.). British Family Life, 1780–1914. Vol. 3 (1st ed.). Routledge.
  10. ^ a b c Binckes, Faith (10 April 2019). Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1890s-1920s: The Modernist Period. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 399–400. ISBN 978-1-4744-5065-2.
  11. ^ Petersen, William (16 January 2018). Malthus: Founder of Modern Demography. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-30946-2.
  12. ^ Hoggart, Lesley (2003). Feminist Campaigns for Birth Control and Abortion Rights in Britain. Edwin Mellen Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-7734-6868-9.
  13. ^ Debenham, Clare (18 December 2013). Birth Control and the Rights of Women: Post-suffrage Feminism in the Early Twentieth Century. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 110–111. ISBN 978-1-78076-435-1.
  14. ^ Soloway, Richard A. (10 October 2017). Birth Control and the Population Question in England, 1877-1930. UNC Press Books. pp. 115–116. ISBN 978-1-4696-4000-6.
  15. ^ Olechnowicz, Andrzej (1997). Working-class Housing in England Between the Wars: The Becontree Estate. Clarendon Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-19-820650-7.
  16. ^ Glass, David Victor (1967). Population Policies and Movements in Europe. A. M. Kelley. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-678-05049-1.
  17. ^ Sanger, Margaret (13 March 2012). The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. Courier Corporation. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-486-12083-6.
  18. ^ Francome, Colin (1 May 2024). Abortion Freedom: A Worldwide Movement. Taylor & Francis. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-040-02640-3.
  19. ^ The Eugenics Review. Eugenics Education Society. 1931. p. 190.
  20. ^ Holton, Sandra; Purvis, June (2002). Votes For Women. Routledge. p. 197. ISBN 978-1-134-61065-5.
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