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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rachel Barrett | 2/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Barrett | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T10:43:58.069695+00:00 | kb-cron |
Over the next two years, Barrett was a key figure in keeping the newspaper in print despite the Home Secretary's efforts to suppress it. In April 1913, the offices of The Suffragette were raided by the police and Barrett, Beatrice Sanders, Agnes Lake, Harriet Kerr and Flora Drummond were arrested on charges of conspiring to damage property. Barrett was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment at Holloway. She immediately went on hunger strike, was transferred to Canterbury Prison, and after five days she was released under the "Cat and Mouse Act". She moved into "Mouse Castle", 2 Campden Hill Square, home of the Brackenbury family who were sympathetic suffragists. After three weeks at the house, Barrett emerged and was rearrested. She went back on hunger strike and after four days was again released to "Mouse Castle". This time, she was smuggled out of the house in disguise to allow her to speak at meetings, before being rearrested for a second time and was looked after by her friend I. A. R. Wylie at St John's Wood, known as the "Mouse Hole" and for the third time, Barrett was released after a hunger strike, but this time, she successfully eluded the authorities and fled to a nursing home in Edinburgh where she remained until December 1913. On leaving Scotland, she returned in secret to London; she hid at Lincoln's Inn House where she lived in a bed-sitting room there, only getting air on the roof. Barrett continued to edit The Suffragette, but she travelled to Paris to discuss the future of the newspaper with Christabel Pankhurst after its offices were raided in May 1914. The result of their meeting was the relocation of The Suffragette to Edinburgh where the printers were at less risk of arrest. Barrett moved to Edinburgh with Ida Wylie and assumed the pseudonym "Miss Ashworth". Barrett continued to publish the paper until its final edition on the week after the First World War was declared. During the war, Barrett was a vocal supporter of British military action, as were the majority of the suffragette movement. She was a contributor to the WSPU 'Victory Fund' which was launched in 1916 to sponsor campaigns against "a compromise peace" and industrial strikes. After the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918, in which some women within the United Kingdom were first given the right to vote, Barrett busied herself in continuing the fight for full emancipation. When full voting rights were won in 1928, she helped raise funds for commemorations and was an important figure in raising the money needed to erect a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens, near the Palace of Westminster in London. Barrett understood the international connections of suffrage and contacted important Canadian and American campaigners for financial support. In Barrett's obituary in the Women's Bulletin, it read that the raising of the statue "...stands as a permanent memorial to Rachel's organising ability." In 1929, Barrett was appointed secretary of the Equal Political Rights Campaign Committee, an organisation that sought equality between men and women in all political spheres.
== Later life == In her later life, Barrett joined the Suffragette Fellowship with Edith How-Martyn and was particularly close to Kitty Marshall who lived near by. She attempted to publish a memoir of Marshall in the late 1940s, but it was turned down for publication. Barrett moved to Sible Hedingham in Essex in the early 1930s and joined the Sible Hedingham Women's Institute in 1934, remaining a member until 1948. There she lived at Lamb Cottage.
== Relationship with I. A. R. Wylie ==
During her time editing The Suffragette, Barrett struck up a lesbian relationship with the female Australian author I. A. R. Wylie, who contributed to the paper in 1913. In 1919, Barrett and Wylie travelled to the United States, where they bought a car and spent over a year travelling round the country. They stayed in New York and San Francisco and were recorded in the 1920 census as living in Carmel-By-The-Sea in California, where Wylie was classed as the head of the household and Barrett as her friend. The two women remained close for some time and, in 1928, were supporters of their close friends Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall during the trial of The Well of Loneliness. When Barrett died, she left the residue of her estate to Wylie.
== Death == Barrett died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 26 August 1953 at the Carylls Nursing Home in Faygate, Sussex. She was 78 years old. She left Lamb Cottage to her niece Gwyneth Anderson, who lived there with her husband, the British poet, J. Redwood Anderson.
== References ==
== Primary sources == Cook, Kay; Evans, Neil (1991). "'The Petty Antics of the Bell-Ringing Boisterous Band'? The Women's Suffrage Movement in Wales, 1890–1918". In John, Angela V. (ed.). Our Mothers' Land, Chapters in Welsh Women's History 1830–1939. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1129-6. Crawford, Elizabeth (2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928. Routledge. ISBN 9781135434021. John, Angela V. (1991). "Beyond Paternalism: The Ironmaster's Wife in the Industrial Community". In John, Angela V. (ed.). Our Mothers' Land, Chapters in Welsh Women's History 1830–1939. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1129-6. Wallace, Ryland (2009). The Women's Suffrage Movement in Wales, 1866–1928. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-0-708-32173-7.
== Further reading == Cline, Sally (1999). Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. The Overlook Press. ISBN 978-0879517083. Wylie, I. A. R. (2010). My Life with George: An Unconventional Autobiography. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-1163188477.