Mapping Women\u27s Suffrage, 1911: A snapshot in time.

Mapping Women’s Suffrage is a digital project that plots the geographical location of as many Votes for Women campaigners as possible across England in 1911. A pilot mapping area is currently being developed alongside a dedicated website for the project, moving toward completion in 2018, ready for the suffrage centenary celebrations. Presenting at the conference will enable the pilot to be previewed on screen, and for the audience to interact with the project map as outlined below. This will provide the project team with invaluable feedback during the early stages of both the map and website development. Mapping Women’s Suffrage pinpoints the location of suffrage campaigners primarily through information drawn from the 1911 census. Each campaigner is represented as a coloured icon on the map. The chosen colour represents the suffrage society each campaigner was affiliated to. Campaigners from all major suffrage organisations are represented, notably the law-abiding National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and Women’s Freedom League (WFL). Thus, Mapping Women’s Suffrage recognises the contribution of multiple organisations –both suffragists and suffragettes-in winning Votes for Women. The coloured icons build a picture of the geographical shape and dynamics of participation at the height of the Votes for Women campaign. The icons also indicate whether campaigners took part in the suffrage census protest of 1911, which represented a remarkable act of civil disobedience. The map similarly allows the geographical characteristics of the census protest to take shape visually. Mapping data will be layered allowing the icons to be switched on and off per preferred data sets, depending on users interests. For example, the icons can be viewed holistically, or just by WSPU activists, or only by suffrage campaigners who participated in the census protest. Biographical information and photographs of campaigners and their houses where possible also feature. This rich cache of information is accessible through the map itself. Once clicked, the coloured icons display a summary of campaigners data in the form of a pop up box. Where further information is available, such as a more detailed biography, photographs, and images of census schedules and other archival documents, the user can click a ‘read more’ link within the box, taking them through to a dedicated page. Thus, Mapping Women’s Suffrage, allows glimpses into the lives of suffrage campaigners -a snapshot in time -from this momentous period in women’s history. Users search the map by entering campaigners names, or simply by entering their own location (their home address, town, or city) to reveal suffrage campaigners that may have lived in their local area -a ‘suffragette down your street’. The map will be housed in its own dynamic website, containing specialist articles, resources, features on other suffrage activities taking place in 1911, and social media initiatives. The website, map and documents therein, will be free to access. Thus, the project is accessible to everyone benefitting historians, teachers and students, local and family historians, museums and libraries alike