Welcome to Marple Local History Society website
Quick links: Online Archives & many of the Society's images
Two ages of Mellor Church (in the first image the gallery windows are visible)
Programme for our 2024 - 2025 Season.
Browse a record of the 2023 - 2024 Season to get a feel for what to expect.
Details of Membership & Meetings
Next Meeting: 14 October 2024:
‘Lydia Becker - Suffragist and Trailblazer’ - Joanna Williams
We heard in September, from Mark Llewellin, how the creator of Coronation Street, Tony Warren, grew up under the influence of his family’s strong women. These gave him the inspiration for his formdable fictional matriarchal characters — including Ena Sharples, Elsie Tanner and Hilda Ogden, characters that lived in 'Weatherfield' aka Salford.
At the October meeting Joanna Williams will recount the history of a real formidable woman, Lydia Becker, a Manchester woman - Suffragist and Trailblazer.
Lydia Becker, born in Manchester the eldest of fifteen children, fought convention by entering the then-man’s world of politics. She emerged as a pivotal figure in the national movement for women’s right to vote during the latter part of the 1800s.
However, her contributions are largely overlooked in mainstream historical narratives, despite her significant achievements. A fierce political lobbyist, she influenced MPs and addressed countless crowds to raise awareness and change public perception of these issues. She capitalised on a legal loophole to secure the right for up to 1000 women to cast their ballots in the 1868 general election. Furthermore, her efforts to convince the Manx legislature to grant women the right to vote in national elections by 1881 placed the island at the forefront of the UK by more than 40 years. In the 1860s the idea of women’s suffrage was compared in the Commons to persuading dogs to dance; it was dismissed as ridiculous and unnatural. Lydia’s role in shifting societal and political perspectives was crucial in paving the way for future suffragettes.
