We are accustomed to the story of the ass teaching the ancients wisdom; the modern version seems to be that the cow is on the side of the tax-resisters.
The story of what happened while Miss [Edith Kate] Lelacheur was attending a sale of a dog cart at Reading for the non-payment of the agricultural land tax on one of her farms might be deemed a practical joke on the part of the revenue authorities, but for the fact that the cow took the matter entirely into her own hands and flouted the bailiffs.
In the absence of Miss Lelacheur, a cow was seized for non-payment of other taxes; inquiry elicited the fact that “twice the bailiffs took the cow away and got it three miles or so along the road, but that then it bolted back.”
Finally they gave it up, and left Miss Lelacheur the distraining order — and the cow.
We wonder whether in due time Suffragists will have reason to worship the cow — taking a different point of view from the Hindus.
Meanwhile, we congratulate Miss Lelacheur on her tax resistance and on the noble support of her cow.
Later: We hear that force majeure has prevailed; the cow is to be sold — to a tax-resister, we hope!
Also from the same issue:
Tax Resistance.
Under the auspices of the Tax Resistance League and the Women’s Freedom League a protest meeting was held at Great Marlow on , on the occasion of the sale of plate and jewellery belonging to Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, the well-known artist, and to Miss Hayes, daughter of Admiral Hayes.
Their property had been seized for the non-payment of Imperial taxes, and through the courtesy of the tax-collector every facility was afforded to the protesters to explain their action.
A quiet little group — a large crowd for Marlow — listened attentively to Mrs. Florence, Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr, Miss [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, and Miss [Alison] Neilans.
Mrs. Sargent Florence had been distrained upon more than once, and intends to continue her passive protest until women have the vote.
At the County Court, Woodbridge, Dr. Elizabeth Knight was charged with keeping a dog without a license and refusing to take out a license for her dog cart; Mrs. H[ortense].
Lane was charged also with refusing to pay the license for her trap.
Dr. Knight said she believed taxation and representation should go together; and Mrs. Lane, who was unable to attend, wrote to the Bench saying she refused to pay taxes as a protest against women’s political disability.
Mr. Eton White, the presiding magistrate, said his duty was to administer the law as it stood; therefore Dr. Knight was fined £2 10s. and costs, and Mrs. Lane £1 10s. and costs.
A protest meeting was afterwards held on Market Hill.
Mrs. [Lila] Pratt, hon. secretary of the Women’s Freedom League, Ipswich branch, presided, and an interesting crowd listened appreciatively to the speech of Mrs. [Emma] Sproson who explained the reason why women should adopt the policy of tax resistance and urged upon all women to make the position of the Government intolerable and untenable unless it conceded to women their common human right.
Silver belonging to Miss [Dorinda] Neligan, of Croydon, and Mrs. [Florence Gardiner] Hamilton, of Wendover, was sold for non-payment of taxes on , and vigorous protests made.
At Wendover, in the John Hampden County, an Anti-suffragist from London made a speech.
On there was a most interesting open air meeting in Upper-street, Islington, when Dr. Jessie Murray, of Endsleigh-street, Tavistock-square, protested against the seizure and public sale of her carriage clock, owing to her refusal to pay Imperial taxes.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes and Mrs. Tyson also spoke, and gained the attention of a large crowd by whom the usual resolution was unanimously passed.
Tax Resistance in John Burns’ Borough.
On , Mrs. Beaumont Thomas and Mrs. Sutcliffe had goods sold by public auction, because of their refusal to pay King’s taxes.
The sale took place at Warren’s Auction Room, Battersea Rise, and afterwards a procession with banners flying wended its way to Mosbury-road, where a protest meeting was held and a big crowd assembled.
Miss Beaumont took the chair, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. Kineton Parkes, of the Tax Resistance League, explained the reasons of tax resistance and answered the questions asked.
At the conclusion of the speeches cheers were given for the speakers, and a resolution was carried:
“That this meeting is of opinion that women taxpayers are justified in refusing to pay all Imperial taxes till they have the same control over the national expenditure as male taxpayers possess.”
In the Country.
On , goods belonging to Miss Rose were sold at Frinton-on-Sea, owing to her refusal to pay Imperial taxes.
. —
At Hammersmith, furniture was sold, the property of Miss Carson.
Open-air meeting. Speakers: Mrs. Armstrong, Mrs. Merrivale Mayer,
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes.
. —
At Kilburn, a bookcase was sold, the property of Miss Green,
Hon.
Treas.
W.T.R.L.
Procession and open-air meeting. Speakers:
Dr. [Helen] Hanson, Mrs.
[Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr, Mrs. Kineton Parkes.
. —
At Mile End, a gold watch was sold, the property of
Dr. Elizabeth Wilks.
Procession from Aldgate Station to open-air meeting. Speakers: Mrs.
[Charlotte] Despard, Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Kineton Parkes.
. —Brighton. Goods belonging to Mrs. Gerlach and Miss [Mary] Hare were
sold. Open-air meeting and public meeting in Lecture Hall at night.
Speakers: Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan, Miss Gertrude Eaton, Miss Hare,
Miss Nina Boyle, and the Rev.
J. Kirtlan.
Bournemouth. — Old silver was sold, the property of Miss Symons.
Open-air meeting. Speakers: Miss Howes, Miss Pridden, Mrs. Kineton
Parkes.
Henley-on-Thames. — A cow was sold, the property of Miss
Lelacheur. Open-air meeting. Speakers: Mr. and Mrs. Cobden Sanderson,
Mrs. Juson Kerr and Mr. Carlin.
. —Putney. The goods of Mrs. and Miss Richards were sold. Protest
meeting. Speakers: Miss Richards, Mrs. Juson Kerr, Miss Phyllis
Ayrtin, Miss Gilliat and Mrs. Cobden Sanderson.
Battersea. — Goods belonging to Mrs. [Helen Alexander] Archdale were
sold. Open-air meeting. Speakers: Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Miss Clemence
Housman, Miss Thomas.
Highbury. — At the sale of a silver salver belonging to
Dr. Winifred Patch, of
Highbury, Steen’s Auction Rooms, Drayton Park, were crowded on
by members of the Women’s Freedom
League, the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and other Suffrage societies. The
auctioneer refused to allow the usual five minutes for explanation before the
sale, but Miss Alison Neilans, of the Women’s Freedom League, was well
supported and cheered when she insisted on making clear the reasons why
Dr. Patch for several years
has refused to pay taxes while deprived of a vote. A procession was then
formed, and marched to Highbury Corner, where a large open-air meeting was
presided over by Mrs. [Marianne] Clarendon Hyde, of the Women’s Freedom
League, and addressed by Mrs. Merrivale Mayer.
Bromley. — Mrs. [Kate] Harvey,
Hon. Head of the
W.F.L.
Press Department, is again resisting payment of taxes, and has, in addition,
barricaded her house at Bromley. She hopes members of the Women’s Freedom
League will support her when the sale takes place, and if any members will
send their names to her, Mrs. Harvey will communicate with them direct as
soon as she knows the date and time of the sale. If possible, full
particulars will be published in next week’s Vote,
and information may be had from Headquarters.
Secretary, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, 98,
St. Martin’s-lane,
W.C. A silver
cake basket belonging to Miss [L.E.] Turquand, Press Secretary to the Free
Church League for Woman Suffrage, was sold at Sydenham. After a procession
with banners, a successful protest meeting was held. Mrs. Harvey’s house at
Bromley is still barricaded; nothing has happened.
For non-payment of Inhabited House Duty — the amount of which was seven
shillings — Miss Kate Raleigh’s goods were distrained on last week at
Uxbridge. Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda
purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of
Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he
accepted. Before taking his leave he expressed himself as, on the whole, in
favour of women’s claims to enfranchisement.
Miss Evelyn Sharp.
Following on the bankruptcy proceedings against
Dr. Winifred S. Patch, the
next victim is Miss Evelyn Sharp, the brilliant writer and speaker, whose
long service to the Woman Suffrage cause is widely known and honoured. At
the first meeting of “creditors” — again the only creditor is the Government,
but dignified by a plural — Miss Sharp entirely disputed the claim of £56
19s.
10d. in respect of unpaid
income-tax, in view of her political status as an unenfranchised woman, and
the unconstitutional procedure of levying taxes without representation. For
three weeks a bailiff has been in possession of Miss Sharpe’s bed-sitting
room; early this week, however, all her furniture, books, and other
possessions, except her bed and bath, were removed, including even her
typewriter, which is certainly a tool of her craft. An added indignity and,
we say, illegality, is that her letters have not only been opened but
detained for a week. It is expected that the public examination will take
place early in .
The Women’s Freedom League expresses its warm appreciation of the action of
these Suffragists in defending the principle of “No Taxation Without
Representation.”
On , Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes addressed a meeting of the members of the Fleet National Union on the principles of tax resistance, and a ballot was taken in order to instruct delegate how to vote at July Conference.
On , a drawing room meeting was given by Mrs. [Louisa] Jopling Rowe in her large studio, and she herself presided.
Speeches were made by Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan, Mrs. Kineton Parkes and Mr. Laurence Housman, the latter dealing in a most interesting and exhaustive way with the tax resistance movement from an historical point of view.
A very successful protest was made at Finchley on in connection with the seizure of property belonging to Miss [Sarah] Benett, late hon. treasurer of the W.F.L.
By courtesy of the auctioneer, Miss Bennet, was allowed to explain her reason for resisting payment of taxes.
A very successful open-air meeting was held afterwards.
Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn announced that Mrs. [Emma] Sproson, a member of the National Executive of the Women’s Freedom League, was serving a term of seven days’ imprisonment in the third division for refusing to pay her dog license.
This was the third time Mrs. Sproson had suffered imprisonment in connection with the militant suffrage agitation.
The Women’s Freedom League had taken up tax-resistance as a part of their propaganda three years ago.
Mr. Keir Hardie had stated in the House of Commons that twenty-five million pounds flowed yearly into the coffers of the national exchequer as a result of the indirect taxation of women.
If that money could be withheld, or if all women who were directly taxed would refuse to pay until they were enfranchised, they would not long have to wait for their political emancipation.
The speaker then dealt with the political situation as regards the Women’s Bill.
On , Miss Constance Andrews — our honorary organizer for the East Anglian district — was arrested and taken to Ipswich gaol, there to spend a week because she refused to pay her dog tax.
Here was a chance for the local branch, and they seized it.
I went down on , and we soon got all the preliminary arrangements made for a welcome to Miss Andrews.
The little town has been buzzing with suffragettes and their doings.
Everyone has been talking of Miss Andrews and our preparations to receive her.
Open-air meetings, bill-distributing, the carrying of trimmed posters, pushing the decorated coster’s barrow (covered with The Vote and posters) through the town, — all have served to draw the attention of the townsfolk to the fact that something unusual was astir.
Our two meetings on Cornhill were well attended, and the behaviour of the crowds was remarkably good.
On morning a very large crowd — described in the local press as “an immense gathering” — collected outside the prison to cheer Miss Andrews on her release.
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard — “the grand old lady of the Women’s movement,” to quote again from the East Anglian Daily Times — drove up in an open cab, with Mrs. [Isabel] Tippett and Mrs. Bastian.
Shortly after her arrival Miss Andrews was released, a photographer standing on a wall opposite the prison gate being the first to give the news.
The outer gate opened, and as our ex-prisoner came out a lusty chorus of “hurrahs!” showed the sympathy of the crowd.
Mrs. Despard said a few words of welcome, and then we formed up in a little procession behind the Ipswich “Dare to be Free” banner, and walked to our rooms in Arcade-street, the cab with Miss Andrews in Mrs. Tippett’s place bringing up the rear.
The large crowd followed us all the way, and enquiring heads were thrust through open windows all along the route.
On our arrival at the rooms, we found a dainty breakfast set out for us at long tables, placed at right-angles to each other.
Japanese table napkins, floral decorations, placards on the walls, all were in the green, white and gold.
After breakfast Mrs. Hossack, from the chair, paid a warm tribute to Miss Andrew’s work.
Mrs. Despard, in her own inspiring way addressed the gathering after the enthusiastic singing of “For she’s a jolly good fellow,” and Miss Andrews gave us a vivid account of her life in prison.
Among other things, she said there were only four other women besides herself in prison.…
…Altogether we feel that Miss Andrews has done a great service to the local work by her protest and imprisonment, and made possible a splendid week’s work, which we hope will leave a lasting impression.
Tax Resistance protests are multiplying throughout the land, and signs are not wanting that the seedling planted by the Women’s Freedom League is developing into a stalwart tree.
This form of militancy appeals even to constitutionally-minded women; and the ramifications of tax resistance now reach far beyond the parent society and the other militant organisations, necessitating the expenditure of great energy on the part of the officials who work under the banner of John Hampden — the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard is no longer even asked to pay her taxes; the Edinburgh Branch of the W.F.L. is in almost the same happy position; Mrs. [Kate] Harvey has once more heroically barricaded Brackenhill against the King’s officers, and Miss [Mary] Anderson has again raised the flag of revolt in Woldingham.
Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight, with praiseworthy regularity, refuses to pay her dog license and other taxes in respect of a country residence; and these protests never fail to carry to some mind, hitherto heedless, a new sense of the unconstitutional position women are forced to occupy in a country that prides itself on being the home of constitutional Government.
Activities of the Tax Resistance League.
Last week we had five sales in different parts of the country.
On three Tax Resisters at West Drayton and two at Rotherfield, made their protest.
Miss [Kate] Raleigh, Miss Weir, and Miss [Margory?] Lees had a gold watch and jewellery sold on the village green, West Drayton; speakers at the protest meeting were Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Mrs. Hicks, and Miss Raleigh.
Miss Koll and Miss Hon[n]or Morten, of Rotherfield, had a silver salver and gold ring sold from a wagonette in the village street; speakers at the protest meeting were Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mr. Reginald Pott.
Miss Maud Roll presided.
On Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd Brown gave an at home at her house when short speeches were made by the Hampstead Tax Resisters who were to have their goods sold on , and by Mrs. [Louisa] Thompson Price, whose case is being further looked into by Somerset House.
There was a very good attendance and many new members were gained for the League.
On , sales took place at Hampstead and at Croydon.
Misses Collier, Mrs. Hartley, Mrs. Hicks, and Dr. Adeline Roberts had their goods sold at the Hampstead Drill Hall and at the protest meeting the speakers were Miss Hicks and Mrs. [Margarete Wynne] Nevinson.
The goods of Miss [Dorinda] Neligan and Miss James were sold at Messrs. King and Everall’s Auction Rooms, Croydon; the protest meeting was addressed by Mrs. Kineton Parkes.
On the sale took place of a ring, the property of Mrs. [Adeline] Cecil Chapman, President of the New Constitutional Society, and wife of Mr. Cecil Chapman, the well-known magistrate, at Messrs. Roche and Roche’s Auction Rooms, 68A, Battersea-rise.
Mrs. Chapman made an excellent protest in the auction room, and afterwards presided at the protest meeting, when the speakers were Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, and Mrs. Teresa Gough.
Sequel to Hastings Riot.
As a result of the disgraceful scenes at Hastings on , Mrs. Darent Harrison appealed to the magistrate on Tuesday.
A large number of sympathisers were present and Mrs. [Jane?] Strickland, president of the local National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, spoke, and Mrs. Darent Harrison.
The magistrate said the matter was not within his province and the Watch Committee must be referred to.
We hope that the result may be adequate police protection when the resisters hold the postponed protest meeting.
When the battle for women’s suffrage in Great Britain was more-or-less won, one of the movement’s veterans, Margaret Kineton Parkes, wrote a history of the tax resistance campaign that was a central part of the victory.
This book, The Tax Resistance Movement in Great Britain was published around 1919 or 1920 by The Woman Citizen Publishing Company (or the Women’s Freedom League, sources differ).
It would be of enormous interest and help to my research in this area, but it’s proving to be very hard to get ahold of.
Google Books doesn’t have it.
My library doesn’t have it, nor does its Link+ network.
I put in an interlibrary loan request, but it was denied in record time “because we were unable to locate any libraries in North America that owns this title.”
WorldCat knows the book exists, but doesn’t know of any libraries that carry it.
The Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University has a copy, along with some other interesting-looking pamphlets from the Women’s Tax Resistance League, but I was unable to find their policy on photocopying for far-off researchers, if they have one, and I don’t think I’ll be in London any time soon.
In this day and age when so much has come on-line, it’s especially frustrating to find some piece of data like this tantalizingly out-of-reach.
Anyone live near The Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University?
On , Mrs. [Margaret]
Kineton Parkes addressed the members of the National Union, at Cardiff, on
“The Principles of Tax Resistance,” with
Dr. Mary Evans in the chair.
On , Mrs. [Anne] Cobden
Sanderson visited Birmingham, and gave a lecture on “Tax Resistance” at the
Annual Meeting of the Women’s Suffrage Society, presided over by Mrs.
[Catherine?] Osler. Mrs. Cobden Sanderson has since left England to attend
the Stockholm Conference, representing the above Society.
During this week goods will be sold which have been seized from Mrs. Lilian
Hicks, Dr. Katherine Heanley
and Miss [Kate] Raleigh.
Also in the same issue was a letter from Kate Harvey:
To the Editor of The Vote
Madam,— Will you allow me a short space in your columns to protest against
the sale of my goods, which took place at Brackenhill, Bromley, on
?
Being by training, as well as by temperament, a law-abiding woman, I strongly
object to the necessity for such a course of action; but there is — there
should be — a limit to a woman’s patience. The limit is reached when they
talk of compelling us to contribute towards the salaries of the men who slam
the door in our faces! Resistance is our most effective weapon, for even the
stone wall of stupidity will yield to sufficient pressure.
I am not forgetting our mercies, labeled facilities, or Sir Edward Grey’s
speech; but I have heard of a trick played by ill-mannered boys. A
tempting-looking parcel is thrown right in front of you. When you stoop to
pick it up they pull a string which is invisible to you, and all you get for
your pains is a crick in the back. We must cut that string! — Yours
faithfully,
We learn from Miss Mary Anderson that her house has been “entered” by the authorities, and that some of her goods, among them a copy of the famous picture, “Hope,” by G.F. Watts, have been seized to pay the taxes claimed by a Government which denies representation to women.
The sale will take place at Woldingham on , and will be followed by a meeting in the Public Hall.
All friends are cordially invited to be present, especially those living in Croydon, Thornton Heath and South London district.
On Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight was summoned to appear at the Woodbridge Police-court for non-payment of her dog-tax.
As it was not convenient for her to attend, Miss [Constance] Andrews went in her place again to protest against taxation without representation.
She was supported by Miss Bobby and Miss Pratt.
The Woodbridge Police-court compares very favourably with the London ones, and patience is not lacking in the way it was at Marlborough-street.
When our case came on Miss Andrews asked to be allowed to make a statement; this was refused, but she made it all the same, and it took the form of a Suffrage tax-resistance speech.
In reply to a question why Dr. Knight did not appear, it was pointed out she had professional duties to attend to, and they might take the form of certifying a man to be insane thereby depriving him of his vote, while she herself was not counted capable of exercising one.
After some consultation a fine of 30s. and 14s. cost was levied; failing this, distraint and in default 7 days’ imprisonment.
Whereupon the Suffragists made a further protest in court, and then held a meeting outside.
Miss Andrews addressed an orderly crowd for forty minutes, one man who tried to create a disturbance being promptly ejected.
The next act of this annual drama will be the sale of the wagon which has become historic in the history of tax-resistance.
At Balham.
On , Miss Helen Smith’s goods were sold for tax-resistance at Philip’s Auction Rooms, Balham.
Mrs. Tanner spoke on behalf of the Freedom League, of which Miss Smith is a member.
Mrs. [Leonora?]
Tyson took the chair.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes and Mrs. Teresa Gough also spoke.
The crowd was very large and quite orderly.
The speakers had an excellent hearing.
The resolution of protest was passed with only a few dissentients.
Women’s Tax Resistance League
Our members are still protesting against the sale of their goods to pay King’s taxes.
On , goods belonging to Miss [Ina] Moncrieff were sold at Harding’s Auction Rooms, near Victoria Station.
Miss Hicks and Mrs. Kineton Parkes spoke at the meeting, and a neighbourhood that was once distinctly hostile has become thoroughly sympathetic.
On , Mrs. Portrey’s goods were sold at the Harrow.
A garden-party was given by Mrs. Huntsman, of the Women’s Freedom League, and the procession to the auction-room started from her house, it being a joint demonstration of the Tax Resistance and Freedom Leagues.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes presided, and Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard and Mr. Laurence Housman spoke at the open-air meeting to a large crowd, which was gradually won over to sympathy with the arguments of the resisters, and finally passed a resolution approving tax-resistance.
The Branch wishes to express its very hearty thanks to our President and Mr. Laurence Housman for the splendid speeches they made at our garden meeting on .
Six new members were enrolled, and £4 8s. taken in collection.
A large crowd assembled and the meeting was in every way a great success.
After tea a procession was formed up to go to the protest meeting which was to be held after the sale of Mrs. Portrey’s goods for tax-resistance.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes made a splendid protest in the auction-room, and an open-air meeting followed, at which Mrs. Despard, Mrs. Parkes and Mr. Housman all spoke again.
The tax-resistance banners and the W.F.L. pennons marching down in procession created a great effect in Wealdstone.
Scotland — Edinburgh.
Suffrage Shop, 90, Lothian-road.
We have not yet quite arrived at the happy state of “not even being asked to pay our taxes.”
About ten days ago we received once more the Sheriff Officer’s intimation that if the tax be not paid within three days our goods would be seized and sold, and now await developments, as needless to say the tax remains unpaid.…
(from W.F.L. Literature Department, 1s.; post free, 1s. 1d.)
Not long ago, at the final meeting of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, it was decided to present the famous John Hampden Banner (which did such magnificent service at so many women’s protest meetings against the Government’s unconstitutional practice of taxation without representation), to the Women’s Freedom League.
We treasure this standard of former days, and now we are the grateful recipients of an edition of “The Tax Resistance Movement in Great Britain,” written by our old friend, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, with an introduction by another of our friends, Mr. Laurence Housman.
This little book is charmingly produced, and on its outside cover appear a figure of Britannia and the colours of the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Every reader of The Vote knows that it was the Women’s Freedom League which first organised tax resistance in as a protest against women’s political disenfranchisement, and all our readers should be in possession of a copy of this book, which gives a history of the movement, tracing it back to , when two sisters, the Misses [Anna Maria & Mary] Priestman, had their dining-room chairs taken to the sale-room, because, being voteless, they objected to taxes being levied upon them.
Dr. Octavia Lewin is mentioned as the first woman to resist the payment of licenses.
It is refreshing to renew our recollections of the tax resistance protests made by Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, Mr. [Mark] Wilks (who was imprisoned in Brixton Gaol for a fortnight), Miss [Clemence] Housman (who was kept in Holloway Prison for a week), Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison, Mrs. [Kate] Harvey (who had a term of imprisonment), Miss [Kate] Raliegh, Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson, Dr. [Winifred] Patch, Miss [Bertha] Brewster, Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight (who was also imprisoned), Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, Miss Gertrude Eaton, and a host of others too numerous to mention, and last, but not least, Miss Evelyn Sharp, who, as Mrs. Parkes says, “has the distinction of being the last tax resister to suffer persecution at the hands of unrepresentative government in the women’s long struggle for citizenship.”
The full list of tax-resisters appearing at the end of this pamphlet will be found to be of special interest to all suffragists.
I haven’t yet found a copy of this book on-line or available via interlibrary loan.
I might be able to order photocopies of a microfilm version held by a library in Australia, but I’m too cheap and so I’m holding out for a better option.
Any ideas?
Another source I’ve had trouble tracking down is Laurence Housman’s The Duty of Tax Resistance, which comes from the same campaign.
The Vote printed excerpts from it in their issue:
The Duty of Tax Resistance
By Laurence Housman.
Two years ago Members of Parliament determined to place the payment of themselves in front of the enfranchisement of women; and now women of enfranchised spirit are more determined than ever to place their refusal to pay taxes before Members of Parliament.
To withdraw so moral an object-lesson in the face of so shabby an act of political opportunism would be not merely a sign of weakness, but a dereliction of duty.
Nothing can be worse for the moral well-being of the State than for unjust conditions to secure to themselves an appearance of agreement and submission which are only due to a Government which makes justice its first duty.
It is bad for the State that the Government should be able to collect with ease taxes unconstitutionally levied; it is bad for the men of this country who hold political power, and in whose hands it lies to advance or delay measures of reform, that they should see women yielding an easy consent to taxation so unjustly conditioned.
If women do so, they give a certain colour to the contention that they have not yet reached that stage of political education which made our forefathers resist, even to the point of revolt, any system of taxation which was accompanied by a denial of representation.
It was inflexible determination on this point which secured for the people of this country their constitutional liberties; and in the furtherance of great causes, history has a way of repeating itself.
Our surest stand-by to-day is still that which made the advance of liberty sure in the past.
In this country representative government has superseded all earlier forms of feudal service, or Divine right, or the claim of the few to govern the many; and its great strength lies in the fact that by granting to so large a part of the community a voice in the affairs of government, it secures from people of all sorts and conditions the maximum of consent to the laws and to administration; and, as a consequence, it is enabled to carry on its work of administration in all departments more economically and efficiently than would be possible under a more arbitrary form of Government.
But though it has thus acquired strength, it has, by so basing itself, entirely changed the ground upon which a Government makes its moral claim to obedience.
Representative government is a contract which requires for its fulfilment the grant of representation in return for the right to tax.
No principle for the claim to obedience can be laid down where a Government, claiming to be representative, is denying a persistent and active demand for representation.
People of a certain temperament may regard submission to unjust Government as preferable to revolt, and “peaceful penetration” as the more comfortable policy; but they cannot state it as a principle which will bear examination; they can give it no higher standing than mere opportunism.
It may be said that the general welfare of the State over-rides all private claims. That is true.
But under representative government it is impossible to secure the general welfare or a clean bill of health where, to any large body of the community which asks for it, full citizenship is being denied.
You cannot produce the instinct for self-government among a community and then deny it expression, without causing blood-poisoning to the body politic.
It is against nature for those who are fit for self-government to offer a submission which comes suitably only from the unfit; nor must you expect those who are pressing for freedom to put on the livery of slaves, and accept that ill-fitting and ready-made costume as though it were a thing of their own choice and made to their own order and taste.
Representative Government man, without much hurt to itself, acquiesce in the exclusion from full citizenship of a sleeping, but not of an awakened section of the community.
And if it so acts toward the latter, it is the bounden duty of those who are awake to the State’s interests to prevent an unrepresentative Government from treating them, even for one single day, as though they were asleep.
They must, in some form or another, force the Government to see that by its denial of this fundamental claim to representation its own moral claim to obedience has disappeared.
That is where the great distinction lies between the unenfranchised condition of certain men in the community who have still not got the vote and the disenfranchised position of women.
It is all the vast difference between the conditional and the absolute.
To no man is the vote denied; it is open to him under certain conditions which, with a modicum of industry and sobriety, practically every man in this country can fulfil.
To woman the vote is denied under all conditions whatsoever.
The bar has been raised against her by statute, and by statute and legal decision is still maintained.
There is the woman’s direct and logical answer to those who say that, after all, she is only upon the same footing as the man who, without a vote, has still to pay the tax upon his beer and his tobacco.
The man is always a potential voter; and it is mainly through his own indifference that he does not qualify; but the woman is by definite laws placed outside the Constitution of those three estates of the realm from which the sanction of Government is derived.
If it asks no sanction of her, why should she give it?
From what principle in its Constitution does it deduce this right at once to exclude and to compel?
We see clearly enough that it derives its right of rule over men from the consent they give it as citizens — a consent on which its legislative existence is made to depend.
But just as expressly as the man’s consent is included in our Constitution, the woman’s is excluded.
From that exclusion the State suffers injury every day; and submission to that exclusion perpetuates injury, not to the State alone, but to the minds of the men and of the women who together should form its consenting voice as one whole.
This submission is, therefore, an evil; and we need in every town and village of this country some conspicuous sign that among women submission has ceased.
What more definite, what more logical sign can be given than for unrepresented women to refuse to pay taxes?
If Women Suffragists are fully awake to their responsibilities for the enforcement of right citizenship, they will not hesitate to bring into disrepute an evil and usurping form of Government which does not make the recognition of woman’s claim its first duty.
The Cæsar to whom in this country we owe tribute is representative government.
Unrepresentative government is but a forgery on Cæsar’s name.
For Suffragists to honour such a Government, so lacking to them in moral sanction, is to do dishonour to themselves; and to offer it any appearance of willing service is to do that which in their hearts they know to be false.
From pamphlet published by The Women’s Tax Resistance League.
1d.
A Clapton member of the W.F.L. and Women’s Tax Resistance Society, who has several times refused payment of Imperial taxes, again expects to have her goods seized and sold by public auction.
A procession and protest meeting (open air) are being arranged by the latter society to take place at the time of the sale.
All sympathizers are urged to take part in this demonstration, and to send their names and addresses at once to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, 72, Hillfield Road, Hampstead, N.W., and she will, immediately on the announcement of the sale, give them full details as to time and place.
The statue of John Hampden, presented to the county of Buckinghamshire by Mr. James Griffiths, of Long Marston, in commemoration of the Coronation, was unveiled at Aylesbury on by Lord Rothschild.
There was a large gathering, representative of Buckinghamshire generally.
After some difficulty the Women’s Tax Resistance League received the assurance that they would be able to pay their last tribute to the great Tax Resister.
At the close of the unveiling ceremony a procession of members of the League crossed the market square to the statue, the crowd readily making way, while police lined the short route.
On behalf of the League, two delegates, Miss Gertrude Eaton and Miss Clemence Housman, laid a beautiful wreath at the foot of the statue.
It was made of white flowers, on which, in black letters, were the words, “From Women Tax Resisters.”
Within the circle of flowers was a ship in full sail with the name of John Hampden in gold letters on the streamers.
The ship was made of brown beech leaves (the beech is the tree most famous in Buckinghamshire) and white flowers.
Emblems were also laid at the base of the statue from the Irishwomen’s Franchise League [this was corrected in a later issue; it was actually from the Irish League for Women’s Suffrage] (a harp in Maréchal Niel roses), the Gymnastic Teachers’ S.S. (blue immortelles and silver leaves), and the London Graduates Union (a laurel wreath).
Among those present were Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd Brown, Mrs. [Mary] Sergeant Florence, Dr. Kate Haslam, Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Miss [Minnie?] Turner, M.A., Miss [Maud?] Roll, Mr. Lee and Mr. Sergeant.
Tax Resistance: The Situation at Bromley.
“My goods are not yet seized for non-payment of taxes. I am still barricaded.
“Outside the gate!
“A most uncomfortable position for the tax collector!
But, while offering sympathy, I feel the experience will be beneficial.
There is nothing so enlightening as a little ‘fellow-feeling.’
Nothing like going ‘there’ to learn the discomforts of being where the woman is, and should be, according to the gospel of the man at Westminster.
Bolts and bars are never pleasant things to deal with — from outside!
They are terribly, cruelly hard to remove when fixed by men driven by fear to protect an unjust wall of separation.
But walls must yield to pressure, and the women gather, intent on ‘breaking down’; content, if need be, to ‘be broken.’
While men, relying on their fastenings, ignore the trembling of foundations, women know the wall is doomed, and when it falls they will flock in to do the bidding of the “Anti” — to scrub and clean, to mind the babies, to stay in the home — the National Home.”
K[ate]. Harvey.
Meetings in the Market-square, Bromley.
Meetings are now being held every evening in the Market-square, Bromley, and are exciting wide interest.
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard was the speaker at the first, and told the crowd why Mrs. Harvey was making this emphatic protest against taxation without representation.
Mrs. Despard’s own experiences aroused much interest.
The following evening Mrs. [Isabel] Tippett spoke, and still larger crowds gathered to hear her.
By news of these regular meetings had spread, and the audience was ready to receive the speakers.
The “Antis” are showing themselves — a sure sign of our success — but the chief argument they bring forward, in the form of questions, is that of physical force: because women do not fight they should not vote.
Mrs. Merivale Mayer, the speaker on , was able to show how beneficial the women’s vote had proved in Australia, and told of the surprise of Australian politicians that the Mother Country still refuses to give the women the chance to stand side by side with men in the fight against evil.
The police are exceedingly kind — and evidently interested.
More Tax Resisters.
On , at Redding, goods belonging to Professor Edith Morley were sold.
Speakers: Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Miss Gertrude Eaton.
Also goods belonging to Miss Manuelle, at Harding’s Auction Rooms, Victoria Station, W.
Speakers: Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan, Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Dr. [C.V.] Drysdale; and at Working, silver, the property of Mrs. Skipwith, was sold.
Speakers: Mrs. [Barbara] Ayrton Gould, Mrs. Kineton Parkes.
On , at Southend, silver belonging to Mrs. Douglas Hameton and Mrs. [Rosina] Sky was sold.
There was a procession with brass band prior to sale, and also a very successful protest meeting.
Speakers: Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Mr. Warren.
The need for women to be on the watch is strikingly shown in the news of her experiences which has been sent us by Miss Clara Lee, of Thistledown, Letchworth, who points out how she forced an admission of error from the Inland Revenue Authorities.
She writes thus:—
As a tax resister, the following experiences prove the carelessness of Government officials.
Having refused to pay Inhabited House Duty (8s. 9d.) to the local collector, I was reported by him to the surveyor for this district, who sent a demand containing two inaccuracies.
I wrote to point that one ought not to have occurred, seeing that we had had compulsory education since ; the other, he would see did not agree with the original:—
Local Demand.
s.
d.
Schedule A
5
0
House Duty
8
9
Surveyor’s Demand.
£
s.
d.
Schedule A
0
5
0
Schedule B
1
1
5
House Duty
0
8
9
Schedule B, I found, applied to nurseries and market gardens.
So I wrote pointing out that the nearest connection I had to either, was that under the Lloyd George Insurance Act I was classed with agricultural labourers.
To this I received the following letter:—
4, Cardiff-road, Luton, .
Inland Revenue — Surveyor of Taxes.
Madam, — Referring to your letter of , I much regret that £1 1s. 5d. was included upon your demand note in error — the entry relating to the next person upon the collector’s return. — Yours faithfully,
(Signed) G.R. Simpson.
Is this the exactness of the work for which women, as well as men, pay so heavily?
How long would a commercial firm exist, if it allowed such errors?
How long would the public tolerate such mistakes by women workers in our hospitals and elsewhere?
The title of idiot, lunatic and criminal must revert to the people responsible for such a condition of things.
The 8s. 9d. Inhabited House Duty has now been deducted from my claim of return Income-tax; this seems an unusual proceeding.
The position in Wolverhampton in regard to tax resistance is certainly of
interest to the supporters of militancy.
We do meet occasionally in the Suffrage movement, the woman with the pitiful
tale: I should like to help you, but I dare not; my husband is against me.
But it is, indeed, a revelation to meet an enthusiastic supporter with an
equally sympathetic husband, who finds herself hampered, through the
decisions of magistrates who hold the husband liable for the deeds of his
wife.
Ever since I began to take a serious interest in politics I have believed in
sex equality, and have never denied my wife the freedom that I myself claim,
and, as I shall endeavour to show, it [is] because of this that I was
convicted.
The humiliating position of the married woman, especially the working woman,
is admitted by all Suffragists; but I never realised that she was such an
abject slave so clearly as when I stood in the Wolverhampton Police Court,
side by side with my wife, charged with aiding and abetting her to keep a dog
without a license. The only evidence submitted by the prosecution (the
police) that I actually did anything was that I presided at two meetings in
support of the “No Vote, No Tax” policy of the Women’s Freedom League. That I
said anything that was not fair comment on the general policy of militancy
there was no evidence to show; if, then, on this point I was liable, then all
supporters of militancy are equally so. But I do not believe it was on this
evidence that I was convicted. No. The dog was at my house, and cared
for by my children during my wife’s absence. In the eyes of
the law, I was lord and master, so that my offence, therefore, was
not that I did anything, but rather that I did not do anything.
I did not assert my authority, I did not force my wife into subjection, and
however legal the magistrate’s decision may have been, it certainly was not
just.
Emma Sproson
It was the spirit of rebellion against injustice displayed by Mrs. [Emma]
Sproson that first won for her my admiration. This admiration is far too deep
rooted to be suppressed by the decision of magistrates.
I admire the rebel against injustice, man or woman, because I know that it
is to them that all real progress is due. A friend once said to me, when
criticising my wife, “But what would happen if all other women did as she is
doing?” I replied: “They would get the vote to-morrow”; and he saw it. The
pity is that others do not.
As no answer was received to our letter addressed to Mr. Churchill, steps
were taken to get the matter raised in the House of Commons, and Mr. H[enry].
G[eorge]. Chancellor very kindly undertook to draft and put the questions. As
originally drafted they were as follows:—
.
Mr. Chancellor: To ask the Home Secretary whether he is aware that after
serving in Stafford Gaol a sentence of one week’s imprisonment in the third
division passed upon her on last
for refusing to pay a dog license, as a protest against her political
disenfranchisement, Mrs. Sproson was on tried a second time for the same offence and sentenced to one
month’s imprisonment in the first division; whether two trials and two
sentences for one offence are lawful, and what steps he proposes to take in
the matter.
.
Mr. Chancellor: To ask the Home Secretary whether he is aware that in
addition to a sentence of one month’s imprisonment passed upon Mrs. Sproson
for passive resistance to taxation her husband was sentenced to one week’s
imprisonment for aiding and abetting her, and leave to appeal refused to
him, and whether, as his wife was held by the court to be sufficiently
responsible to suffer the punishment named, he can see his way to prevent
such manufacture of criminals and multiplication of punishments for single
offences of a political character.
All questions have to be passed by the Speaker, and the first one was
modified to read: “And whether he can see his way to take steps to avoid, in
future, the infliction of two sentences for one offence.” The second one was
censored. In doing this the Clerk at the Table was merely upholding the
traditions followed in all Government Departments in their treatment of
married women. Married women are treated as individuals so long as there are
penalties to be inflicted, but to curtail their liberty or hamper their
activities the Law of Coverture is brought into force.
Mrs. Sproson may be treated as the owner of a dog, be liable for the fine,
and for non-payment of it serve first a week and then a month’s imprisonment.
But Mrs. Sproson is a married woman under coverture, so the law secures a
second victim in proceeding against her husband. If Mrs. Sproson happened to
possess an income of her own she would not be treated as the owner of that,
the amount must be added to her husband’s and he is held liable for
income-tax.
This provides only another illustration that the whole Law of Coverture must
be abolished in order to make it possible to improve the legal position of
married women.
To the first question Mr. Churchill replied:—
The offence of which Mrs. Sproson was convicted on
was not the same as that of which
she was convicted on . It is an
offence against the law to keep a dog without a license, and after her
conviction of Mrs. Sproson
continued deliberately to break the law. The punishment was a fine which she
was well able to pay if she had wished.
I may add that the dog she kept was a dangerous one and had bitten three
children, and that in spite of a friendly warning from a neighbor, whose
little girl had been bitten by it, she allowed him to run at large. As the
law stands no person can be punished twice for the same offence, but where
an offence is repeated the penalty is usually increased, and in this
particular case the law imposes an increased penalty for the second offence.
As usual, the Home Secretary entirely overlooks the political motive for Mrs.
Sproson’s action. He repeats the charge brought at the trial which was by no
means proved, and omits altogether to say that the dog was dead before the
trial came on. As the dog for which the tax was refused was the same dog, it
is difficult to see where the one offence ended and the other began. In reply
to our letter the following has at last been received:—
Whitehall, .
Madam,— The Secretary of State, having carefully considered your application
on behalf of Emma Sproson, who is now undergoing a sentence of imprisonment,
I am directed to express to you his regret that he can find no sufficient
ground to justify him, consistently with his public duty, in advising His
Majesty to interfere in this case.
I am, madam, your obedient servant,
E. Blackwell.
We are now making efforts to get the sentences made to run concurrently. All
friends who approach Members of Parliament should urge them to put this
request before Mr. Churchill, as in this way Mrs. Sproson would have one
week’s remission of her excessive sentence of five weeks.
Edith How Martyn.
N.B.—
Mr. Sproson writes on Monday, :— “I
have just left Mrs. Sproson. I am glad to say she seems well, and is
determined to do the full time which expires on
. I was only allowed to see her
through a grating for fifteen minutes.” — E.H.M.
On Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton
Parkes addressed the members of the Brighton and Hove Suffrage Society, and
also delegates from Worthing and Shoreham, on the subject of “Tax Resistance”
in the Hove Town Hall. Miss [Maria?] Merrifield presided, and there was a
long and animated debate at the conclusion of the lecture, led by Colonel
Kensington, as to whether the National Union should or should not adopt the
policy of tax resistance. A meeting was held on
evening in the drawing-room at
Warren House, Guildford, by the kind invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Baker, and
Mrs. Kineton Parkes
spoke at a garden party at Farnham.
The last of these meetings was held on
at Tunbridge Wells at the rooms
of the Suffrage Society and presided over by Mrs. [Edith Kate] Lelacheur.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes’ address was followed by a most animated and instructive
discussion led by Madame Sarah Grand.
The council meetings to decide this question will be held at Edinburgh next
week.
On , also, a most
successful protest against taxation without representation was made by Mrs.
Muir, of Broadstairs, whose goods were sold at the Auction Rooms, 120,
High-street, Margate. The protest was conducted by Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr;
and Miss Ethel Fennings, of the
W.F.L.,
went down to speak. The auctioneer, Mr. Holness, was most courteous, and not
only allowed Mrs. Muir to explain in a few words why she resisted taxation,
but also gave permission to hold meeting in his rooms after the sale was
over. Prior to the sale a well-attended meeting was held in the Cecil-square,
and Miss Fennings sold some copies of The Vote.
…On we had the pleasure of a visit
from Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn, who spoke upon Tax Resistance, and explained
Mrs. Sproson’s refusal to pay her dog tax, and the undue and seemingly
vindictive sentence of five weeks’ imprisonment that she is now undergoing.…
Mrs. [Kate] Harvey’s barricade is still unbroken.
Again congratulations.
Among the events of last week were:—
Drawing-room Meeting, , at Hans-crescent Hotel.
Hostess: Mrs. Alfred Nutt.
Chair: Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan.
Speakers: Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, and Rev. Hugh Chapman.
Drawing-room Meeting, , at 17, Kensington-square, W. Hostess: Lady Maud Parry.
Chair: Lady Maud Parry.
Speakers: Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Mr. Laurence Housman.
Sale of goods, the property of Miss Maud F. Roll, on , at Rotherfield.
Speakers: Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Miss Honnor Morten, and Dr. C.V. Drysdale.
Miss [Janet Legate] Bunten, the
hon. treasurer of the
Glasgow Branch of the Women’s Freedom League, has had some pictures seized by
the authorities in consequence of her refusal to pay taxes levied without her
consent. The date of the sale is not yet fixed. A protest meeting will be
held, at which Miss [Anna] Munro will speak.
St. Leonards.
One of the most successful and effective Suffrage demonstrations ever held
in St. Leonards was that
arranged jointly by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and the Hastings and
St. Leonards Women’s Suffrage
Propaganda League, on , on
the occasion of the sale of some family silver which had been seized at the
residence of Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison for non-payment of Inhabited
House Duty. Certainly the most striking feature of this protest was the fact
that members of all societies in Hastings,
St. Leonards, Bexhill and
Winchelsea united in their effort to render the protest representative of all
shades of Suffrage opinion. Flags, banners, pennons and regalia of many
societies were seen in the procession. Not the least satisfactory feature
was the courtesy and respect shown by the authorities, the general public,
and the Press towards the demonstrators. The hearty response from the men to
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes’s call for “three cheers for Mrs. Darent
Harrison” at the close of the proceedings in the auction room, came as
a surprise to the Suffragists themselves.
The principle of the enfranchisement of women having been established by the
passing of the Representation of the People Act of
, the Committee of the Women’s Tax
Resistance League have decided to dissolve.
At the outbreak of war, it was felt by a majority of the members of the
League that, at the moment of national crisis, they could not continue their
tax resistance, and it was therefore decided to suspend all active propaganda
till the end of the war. The Committee, however, to the last moment held a
watching brief, and representatives of the League have attended conferences
and meetings of the Consultative Committee, before and during the passage of
the Bill, and they were prepared to call members together should the need
have arisen. Happily all danger is now over, and we may rejoice on the
partial victory obtained.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes has written a little book, to which Mr.
Laurence Housman has contributed an introduction, giving an account of the
work done and the part played by the Women’s Tax Resistance League in the
achievement of victory, and it is hoped that this will be published at the
end of the war. It is also hoped that a meeting of old members of the League
may be arranged when that happier time arrives.
A great gathering assembled at Brackenhill to support Mrs. Kate Harvey in her spirited protest against the
Insurance Act. A decorated brake, adorned with Women’s Freedom League and
Women’s Tax-Resistance League banners, started from Headquarters’ Office at
, conveying some twenty-seven
persons, among whom were Mesdames Huntsman, [Anne] Cobden Saunderson, Tanner,
Mustard, Catmur, Pierotti, Green, Ball, Kux, Presbury, Johnson, Sanders,
Pyart, Watson, Spiller, Sutcliffe, Moser, Miss [Florence] Underwood, Misses
[Nina] Boyle, Sanders, St
Clair, and Lawrence. Miss F.A. Underwood and
Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight, who
went down by train, were accompanied by other members, and at the Bromley
Police-court were joined by Mrs. Snow, Mrs. Terry, Mrs. and Miss [Emma] Fox
Bourne, Mrs. Fisher, and other well-known members of the League.
Mrs. Harvey, charged on ten counts with neglecting to insure William David
Asquith under the provisions of the National Insurance Act, pleaded guilty
and said she did not mean to pay. Asquith was put in the box to prove that
his employer had refused to stamp his card; and the solicitor for the
Insurance Commissioners pressed for “special costs” on the strange ground
that there was no defence and that therefore the “public” should not be at
the cost of such a prosecution. Allusion was also made to Mrs. Harvey’s
well-known “objection” to paying taxes of any kind.
Mrs. Harvey then spoke. She said: “I am not resisting the Act as an Act. If
it had come straight down from heaven I should resist it just the same. I am
doing what every business man throughout the country does as a matter of
course — I refuse to pay for goods which I cannot choose.”
Continuing, Mrs. Harvey insisted on her right to choose the men who went to
Westminster to make the laws. “I am here because of my right to choose
clean-living men to make those laws, to save women from prostitution, to make
life more safe and our streets more safe for women and girls — aye, for our
children even. I stand here because I refuse to break the law — the
law has declared that there can be no taxation without the right of
representation.”
After consultation the magistrates imposed the vindictive sentence of £1
for each offence, £10; arrears of insurance due to Asquith,
5s.
10d.; court fees, £4
10s.; and “special” costs
(which we presume to be the solicitor’s own fees), £2
2s.; total, £16
17s.
10d.
Before leaving the dock Mrs. Harvey reiterated her intention not to pay. “I
would rather die first,” she exclaimed in a burst of fierce indignation as
she addressed the Bench. “I stand for justice, and this is injustice, an
injustice which will hang round your necks like a millstone and drown you in
your own incapacity and folly.” Loud cries of “Shame!” from the Suffragists
in court greeted the sentence, and Mrs. Harvey’s concluding remarks were
applauded.
The entire party was entertained to lunch and tea at Brackenhill, and in
the afternoon a poster parade, with alternate
W.F.L. and
W.T.R.
posters, was organised by Mrs. Huntsman. The placards were inscribed, “We
Refuse to Break the Law,” “Taxation of the Unrepresented is not Government,
it is Tyranny,” “We Refuse to Pay for Goods We Cannot Choose.”
In the market-place a mass meeting was held at
, with Miss Anna Munro in the chair.
A large, expectant crowd gathered long before the hour, and it is a
significant fact that the extreme hostility so characteristic of other
meetings at Bromley was conspicuously absent. A sea of upturned, attentive
faces listened without interruption to Miss Munro, who went over the grounds
on which women demand the Vote; and Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, who as
representing the Women’s Tax-Resistance League, pointed out that women
resisted the Act as women, as voteless women, and as tax-paying women; and to
Miss Nina Boyle, who summed up the position and set forth the policy of the
Women’s Freedom League.
That Waggon!
On ,
Dr. Knight’s famous hay waggon
was sold again at Woodbridge — this time to recover the amount of her dog
license and of the costs connected with the case. Mrs. [Isabel] Tippett, Mrs.
Lane, and Miss [Marguerite A.] Sidley represented the Women’s Freedom League.
Before the sale Miss Sidley addressed the market, explaining the
circumstances of the sale and the reasons for tax resistance. Afterwards Mrs.
Tippett gave a most excellent and telling speech which was listened to with
the greatest attention. While waiting by the waterside for their train our
members listened with much interest to an animated discussion on the merits
and demerits of tax resistance, and the speeches of the afternoon and of the
preceding evening when the Suffrage Pilgrims were at Woodbridge. The waggon
has done duty so often that it has now become historic in the Suffrage Cause;
future generations will, no doubt, rank it with John Hampden’s ship.
Dr. Knight is also resisting
the Insurance Act, and has received several calls from harassed officials.
She has arranged to meet them at some future date to discuss the whole
question.
Land Tax Resisted.
Miss Boyle has forwarded to the District Valuer of Worcester the following
communication in relation to the Inland Revenue “Forms” sent to her in
valuation of property in that neighbourhood:—
Sir,— I am exceedingly obliged to you for the interesting collection of
Forms 7, 17, 35 and 36 which you have been good enough to send me from time
to time. I trust you will continue and send me many more.
As for the provisional valuation being correct, I should think that in the
last degree unlikely. But as I have not the slightest intention of paying
anything whatever to the Government so long as women remain unenfranchised,
that is a question we need not go into for the present. — Faithfully
yours,
Once more has Mrs. Harvey made her defiant protest in the police-courts, and received a sentence of £5 and 14s. costs, with distraint on her goods, or in default one month’s imprisonment in the second division.
The action was in relation to the license of a man-servant, to wit, the man-servant [William David] Asquith; and this is the second conviction on the same offence.
Brackenhill is still barricaded against the tax-collector, and there is still another tax unpaid.
Another special warrant will be necessary to break in for distraint; and the sentence imposed last week has not yet been carried out.
It will relieve the anxiety felt by many of Mrs. Harvey’s friends to know that, if imprisoned, she will probably be committed to Holloway Gaol, where she will be among comrades, and not to Maidstone as was at first anticipated.
Miss [C. Nina] Boyle and Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes were at Bromley Police Court to support Mrs. Harvey on , and by the courtesy of the Bench Miss Boyle was allowed to speak for her.
She maintained that the prosecution was a vindictive one, because of Mrs. Harvey’s well-known views, and pointed out that her defence was not based on any legal quibble or evasion, but on a fundamental principle of the Constitution; and that principle she could not depart from.
She stood for constitutional rights against statutory wrongs; all the grosser abuses of legislation had been purged from the statute-book by similar action in the past, and even by more violent and disorderly action.
The only people now subject to such gross injustice were those who for physical reasons were unable to resort to armed rebellion.
Such rebellion as she was capable of against these constant encroachments by statute on the Constitution and on the rights of the people, Mrs. Harvey held to be a sacred duty.
The County Council Collector, like the Insurance Commissioner’s agent, asked for special costs against Mrs. Harvey, whereupon Miss Boyle protested vigorously.
“But she is contumacious,” asserted the scandalised Bench.
Miss Boyle maintained that it was at any rate a high-minded contumacy, and that it would be disgraceful to impose special penalties on persons who were beyond question inspired by righteous and not by vicious motives.
Eventually a fine of £5 was imposed — the minimum penalty allowable for a second offence; and only 14s. costs.
Distraint was ordered after the simple-minded officials of the Court had asked for the money and found themselves refused.
They further asked whether there were any goods on which to distrain, but were told that they must find that out for themselves.
Mrs. Harvey reiterated her determination not to pay, and thus remains with two sentences hanging over her.
The sentence for resisting the Insurance Act has not yet been carried out; the house is still barricaded and can only be entered on a warrant.
…There is another form of persecution of a petty nature, but none the less ignoble, that is being tried on one of the members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, Miss Alice M. Walters, of Bristol.
The lady owns a dog on which she refuses to pay a license, as she is determined to pay no taxes till women are represented in Parliament.
In she was summoned for having no license, and as she had no goods on which to distrain, was imprisoned for seven days for non-payment of fine.
In she was again summoned for being without a dog license.
She refused to appear in Court this time, but the constable swore that “he saw a terrier sitting on the window-sill,” and on this grave evidence the owner of the guilty-innocent was again fined, and on non-payment, cast into prison for another seven days.
Not satisfied, the attack has been renewed a third time, and quite recently Miss Walters was imprisoned a third time for the same offence, i.e., keeping a dog without license.
This time she appeared in Court, and on being asked if she had goods on which to distrain, made an answer that was caught up by the Press: “No, but I have a castle in Spain.”
“Beyond the jurisdiction of the English Courts?” asked the clerk.
So the game goes on.
Meanwhile, pending the fourth summons, mistress and dog are enjoying a good holiday.
“His name is Daniel,” said Miss Walters, “but I think I shall re-christen him ‘Peg,’ because I use him to hang my protest on.”
On , the last item on the catalogue of Messrs.
Whiteley’s weekly sale in Westbourne-grove was household silver seized in distraint for King’s taxes from Miss Gertrude Eaton, of Kensington.
Miss Eaton is a lady very well known in the musical world and interested in social reforms, and hon. secretary of the Prison Reform Committee.
Miss Eaton said a few dignified words of protest in the auction room, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson explained to the large crowd of bidders the reason why tax-paying women, believing as they do that taxation without representation is tyranny, feel that they cannot, by remaining inactive, any longer subscribe to it.
A procession then formed up and a protest meeting was held at Bradley’s-corner, where speeches were made from a carriage by Mrs. Cobden Saunderson, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Mrs. Florence Hamilton, Mrs. Clarkson Swann, and Miss Gertrude Eaton.
The resolution was carried unanimously.
At the offices of the collector of Government taxes, Westborough, on a silver cream jug and sugar basin were sold.
These were the property of Dr. Marion McKenzie, who had refused payment of taxes to support her claim on behalf of women’s suffrage.
A party of suffragettes marched to the collector’s office, which proved far too small to accommodate them all.
Mr. Parnell said he regretted personally having the duty to perform.
He believed that ultimately the women would get the vote.
They had the municipal vote and he maintained that women who paid rates and taxes should be allowed to vote.
(Applause.)
But that was his own personal view.
He would have been delighted not to have had that process, but he had endeavoured to keep the costs down.
Dr. Marion McKenzie thanked Mr. Parnell for the courtesy shown them.
A protest meeting was afterwards held on St. Nicholas Cliff.
A very successful tour has been made by our Caravan in Bucks., under the charge of Miss Muriel Matters and Miss Violet Tillard.
Meetings were held in Great Missenden, Wendover, Aylesbury, Chesham, and Stoke Mandeville.
During the office will be open to receive letters and telephone messages for a couple of hours each morning.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League has decided to hold a protest meeting in
Hyde-park at , to express indignation at the imprisonment of Mrs. Kate
Harvey, who has for conscientious reasons refused to subscribe to the tyranny
of unrepresentative government. The speakers will be Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton
Parkes, Mr. H.W. Nevinson, and others.
we are holding an Indignation
meeting at Caxton Hall, the indignation expressed to be generally against the
Government, non-representation, mis-representation and imprisonment of
voteless women, and particularly against the sentence of two months’
imprisonment in the second division, which Mrs. Harvey is now serving in
Holloway because of her refusal to comply with the regulations of the
Insurance Act passed over the heads of women without consulting women. The
speakers will be Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, Mrs. Kineton Parkes (of the
Women’s Tax Resistance League), Mrs. Mustard, and Mr. John Scurr. The chair
will be taken by Miss Nina Boyle at . Admission is free, and there will be no reserved seats. This
is the first of a series of political meetings to be held by the Women’s
Freedom League during the Parliamentary recess.…
At a public meeting held in Market-place, Bromley, Kent, on
, the following resolution was put
and carried with one dissentient:— “This meeting expresses deep indignation
at the imprisonment of Mrs. Harvey for non-payment of Imperial taxes, demands
her immediate release, and further demands that the Government act in
accordance with its own principles, and introduce a measure for Votes for
Women without delay.”
Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, reminds
us that Miss [Ethel] Sargant, the first woman to be appointed president of a
section of the British Association, is a keen Suffragist, and has worked for
the National Union for many years, being president of their Tunbridge Wells
Branch. She is also a tax-resister, and had goods seized and sold by public
auction in Cambridge this spring, and is sister to Mrs. [Mary] Sargant
Florence, the well-known decorative artist, one of the founders of the
Women’s Tax Resistance League.
A splendid open-air meeting, to protest against Mrs. Harvey’s imprisonment,
was held on at the Mound. We were
fortunate in having in the chair
Dr. Grace Cadell, who is
herself at this moment a “concrete example” of the form of militancy for
which Mrs. Harvey is suffering.
Dr. Cadell’s inability to
“appear personally” in court, as she is not a person, has been greatly
appreciated locally, but fortunately it does not extend to Suffrage
platforms!…
The morals of Somerset House [the offices of Inland Revenue] are like those of the much abused “heathen Chinee.”
The Department has a very simple and convenient maxim by which it regulates its conduct, and that is, Never be aware of anything unless it pays.
So long as money could be easily obtained by annexing Mrs. Wilks’ furniture and effects, the Inland Revenue authorities shut their eyes to the fact that she was Mrs. Wilks, living with Mr. Wilks, and therefore might be assumed by any intelligent person to be married.
Their excuse is that she never “told” them she was married until recently, and so they assumed she was not!
Presumably they thought Mr. Wilks was her father-in-law or her grandfather-in-law, or that she called herself Mrs. Wilks by way of a joke.
So soon as they found no more money would be obtainable from her, they conveniently realised that she had a husband, from whom they demand the tax.
“But a great many excuses must be made for a Department which has only become officially alive to woman’s existence during the current year,” writes Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie to us.
“Hitherto all official letters began with ‘Sir,’ regardless of the fact that women pay taxes, and pay for the official stationery and clerical work.
As I objected to having ‘Sir’ hurled at me every time I opened an official letter, I drew up a form letter, in which I observed that ‘business men’ were in the habit of addressing women clients or customers as ‘Madam,’ and I should be much obliged if they would remember this fact, and refrain from the solecism of addressing me as ‘Sir.’
Every public official from the humble clerk up to Departmental secretaries and arrogant Treasury clerks received one of these letters as regularly as clockwork every time they called me ‘Sir.’
At last they have learnt to address women as ‘Madam,’ and this year even the printed forms begin ‘Sir or Madam,’ for all the world like a respectable business firm.
That “the Law is a Hass” no one has ever seriously attempted to deny; but what one wants to know is what to say of the people who make it?
This is an aspect of the case that has been much neglected; but with a little goodwill and concentration, we hope to make up for lost time and direct attention to the real offenders.
It is a poor kind of wit or wisdom that breaks its shaft over the suffering head of the Law, and keeps silence on the subject of the Law-maker.
The gentlemen who draw salaries large and small, ranging from £10,000 to £400 a year for performing what one might describe as the most highly skilled work required by the country, and who perform that work in such a way as to create such situations as that leading to the arrest of Mr. Mark Wilks for non-payment of taxes not his own and due on an income over which he has no control and whose amount he can only guess at, are surely playing the biggest “bluff” ever put up, on their long-suffering fellow-men.
One’s mind wanders between the alternative possibilities, that those in office are knaves while the others are fools, or that they are all knaves together; or that they are “mostly fools,” both in office and out.
…
…Acts in conflict with each other, such as the Income Tax and Married Women’s Property Acts, the National Insurance and the Truck Acts, should be brought into harmony on some definite ruling; and some attempt should be made by future legislators so to simplify their language as to make their meaning plain without the superfluity of litigation which their unhappy ambiguity at present inflicts on the nation.
While waiting for this legislative millennium, we fill in the time by demonstrating on every possible occasion how poor is the workmanship for which we are called upon to pay such preposterous prices, and how entirely logical and correct a fashion of protesting our displeasure and disability is the Tax Resistance policy, of which Mr. Mark Wilks and Dr. Wilks are the latest exponents.
All Suffragists will thank them for their spirited action, which from the nature of the case must have been painful and unpleasant for them both.
We shall not readily forget such support as that given by Mr. Wilks; and the demonstration on by the W.F.L., the W.T.R.L., the Men’s League and the Men’s Federation, showed how forcible is such action.
The position was entirely appreciated by the large crowds which gathered round the Lions in Trafalgar Square; and in spite of a good deal of laughter and “chaff” which was never ill-natured, a large section of the “long-suffering” British public testified to its dissatisfaction with the present state of the law and its approval of the tactics of the Women Tax Resisters.
True “Queen’s weather” favoured the opening of our autumn campaign on , when the Freedom League, in conjunction with the Tax Resistance League, the Men’s League, the Free Church League, and the Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage met in the Trafalgar-square to demand the enfranchisement of women and to protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for the non-payment of his wife’s taxes.
Mme. Mirovitch and Mr. Herbert Jacobs were among those who supported the speakers.
The large crowd, which gathered half an hour before the meeting began and remained throughout the two hours of its duration, showed the widespread interest in votes for women.
Both before and during the speeches members of the Tax Resistance League paraded the Square, carrying sandwich-boards bearing the words in bold letters, “We demand the immediate release of Mark Wilks.”
There were two platforms on the plinth, one presided over by Miss Anna Munro and the other by Mrs. [Isabel] Tippett.
At both of these the following resolution was put and carried by a large majority:— “That this meeting demands from the Government the political enfranchisement of women this Session, and the immediate release of Mr. Mark Wilks.”
Ridiculous Position of the Government.
Mrs. Tippett, in opening the meeting, pointed out the extraordinary and ridiculous position in which the Government has placed itself by the arrest of Mr. Wilks.
The crowd was intensely interested while she read a statement of Mr. Wilks with regard to his position.
Mr. Futvoye, of the Men’s Federation, in moving the resolution, said how glad he was to be on a common platform with so many suffrage societies.
The women’s movement had drawn together people of different parties, religions and sexes.
He emphasised the fact that women will be unable to get fair conditions of life and labour until they get the vote.
As long as they are unrepresented the Government will take no notice of their demand for a living wage.
Mrs. Merivale Mayer, seconding the resolution, said there was much talk about progress in these days, but when women talked of it it seemed to be thought that she required man’s permission to rise.
This was not progress.
Miss Boyle, in supporting the resolution, showed the ridiculous situation brought about by the incompatibility of the laws with regard to Income-tax and the Married Women’s Property Act.
Members of Parliament are the servants of the people, paid, whether they be ministers or ordinary members, out of the pockets of both men and women.
Though paid to make laws, they did their job so badly that other people then had to be paid to find out what the law meant.
Women wanted better value for their money, especially when it was taken from them under compulsion.
Suffragists had found that Tax Resistance was very effective; but though Government was spending public money in trying to put down the Suffrage movement, they would not succeed.
In being so blind as to the strength and significance of the movement, and in their treatment of the women of this country, they were obliged to look either fools or brutes, and as they were not afraid to look either they succeeded in looking both.
An Appeal to Business Men.
Mr. Simpson supported the resolution.
He appealed to the practical business men in the crowd, who had the vote because others had fought for it for them.
After long years of legislation of the people for the people by the people they wanted less of Party politics and more improvement in social conditions.
In the Labour market, what had been done to raise wages was neutralised by the cheap labour of women.
Votes for women was the only remedy for this.
Miss [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, of the Tax Resistance League, explained that Mrs. Wilks refused to pay her taxes because she realised that such a refusal was the most logical protest a woman could make against a Liberal Government whose cry had been that with taxation must go representation.
The Government was bound either to remove the burden of taxation, or give women the vote.
She thought men ought to make the protest, for the Government had imprisoned a man, while Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, Mrs. Pankhurst, and many other women who had not paid taxes for years, were still at large.
Worse than Ancient Rome.
At the other platform, presided over by Miss Munro, the mover of the resolution was Mrs. [Margaret] Nevinson, who kept her audience in a ripple of laughter.
She thought it was high time to alter the laws of this country, which in some respects were worse than those of ancient Rome, when in the twentieth century a man could be put in prison for doing nothing.
She told several very amusing and yet pathetic stories of cases she had known before the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act, but said that the passing of that Act had brought about such anomalies as the present one, when a man could be arrested for not paying his wife’s taxes when he didn’t even know her income.
Mr. Lawrence Housman, in seconding the resolution, said that as a member of the Tax Resistance League he would like first to thank the Women’s Freedom League for allowing them to share in this meeting and to state a man’s grievance.
He found women always ready to help men, and felt that if men had been as ready to help women they would not be in the position they are to-day.
According to the Anti-Suffragists, the sending of a man to prison for his wife’s default is an example of the wife’s privileges under the law.
All honest women want to get rid of this privilege.
At the mention of Mrs. [Mary] Leigh’s release there was loud applause.
Mr. Housman said the Government dare not kill her because, whatever she had done, they knew she was fighting for a just cause.
Here was a case where physical force, so beloved by the Anti-Suffragists was defeated.
Man and Woman Standing Together.
Mrs. Despard, who was received with loud applause, said it gave her peculiar satisfaction to support the resolution, particularly the last part of it, for in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Wilks she saw coming true an old dream of hers, the dream of men and women standing together, not only in the family, but in that larger family — the State.
She was proud that these were her personal friends.
It was difficult to understand the actions of the Government with regard to tax resistance, for she had not paid taxes for two years, and the Government had done nothing but tell her that she should know their intentions.
In Ireland one weak woman had defied them; they had found it useless to coerce; the only possible course was to yield to the just demands of womanhood.
Poetic Justice.
Mrs. Tanner said that although everyone was indignant at the arrest of Mr. Wilks, there was some sort of poetic justice in a man having to suffer through the muddle made by men.
It showed how incapable men were of legislating by themselves.
Women asked for a share in the Government in order to try and prevent such muddles occurring in the future.
Mr. Kennedy supported the resolution as a member of the Men’s League.
He reminded his audience that the poet Whittier, in writing of Women’s Suffrage, had said that it was right because it was just, and although the consequences were not known, it was the safest thing, the truest expediency, to do right.…
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, of the Tax-Resistance League, also very briefly supported the resolution.
She begged for sympathy and support of Mr. Wilks and announced how this could be publicly shown.
…
Enthusiasm for Dr. Wilks.
At the end of the meeting Dr. Wilks spoke a few words from each platform.
She was received with great applause, which was redoubled when she announced that neither she nor her husband intended to pay the tax.
Mr. Mark Wilks, of 47, Upper Clapton-road, N.E., was arrested on while on his way to the school of which he is headmaster, and removed to Brixton Prison, for the non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax.
He is the husband of Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, suffragist and upholder of the principle “No vote, no tax.”
Her goods have been distrained upon on two occasions for non-payment of taxes.
In a “manifesto” he has issued Mr. Wilks says:—
In my wife claimed that such distraint was illegal, asserting that under the Income-tax Act she, as a married woman, was exempt from taxation.
The authorities then wavered in their claim, making it sometimes on her, sometimes on me, sometimes on us both conjointly, finally on me alone.
On my pointing out that her liability had already been established by forcible distraint upon her property, I was informed that for the future I should be held liable, as that by the Income-tax Act the “wife’s property for purposes of taxation is the husband’s,” although by the Married Women’s Property Act it is entirely out of his control.
Thus I am to be held liable for a tax on property which does not belong to me.
I am now told I am to be committed to prison until such time as I shall pay the “duty and costs” — over £37.
Dr. Wilks’s Statement.
Writing to the Standard (“Woman’s Platform”) Dr. Elizabeth Wilks states the case forcibly and clearly thus:—
Will you allow me a space in your columns to explain as clearly as I can the position my husband and I respectively take in regard to the non-payment of tax on my earned income?
The Press misrepresents the case when it speaks of Mr. Wilks’s refusal to pay the tax.
I refuse to pay any Imperial tax until the Parliamentary vote is granted to women on the same terms as to men.
He does not refuse to pay, but as an assistant-teacher under the London County Council he has not sufficient money to do more than pay the tax on his own income, which he has done.
While, however, married women are not recognised as taxable units the claim does not fall on the right person.
At present the Income-tax Act still holds a man liable for the tax on his wife’s income, in spite of the fact that a more recent Act, the Married Women’s Property Act, has taken from him all control over that income.
Yet we neither of us dreamed that this anachronism would be thus glaringly exposed by the imprisonment sine die of a husband earning a smaller income than his wife.
I am taunted with the fact that while asking for my rights I am unwilling to accept my liabilities.
This is untrue.
I am asking to be recognised as a person both as regards rights and liabilities.
If the State comes to recognise me as a person liable to taxation, but still denies me representation, I, as a voteless tax-resister, shall be in Holloway Prison instead of my husband, a voter and taxpayer, being in Brixton — perhaps a somewhat less absurd position than the present one.
In the meantime the law does indeed press hardly on my husband, and a very striking example is given of the tendency of present-day legislation to penalise those who desire to comply with the marriage laws of the country.
Had the tie between us been irregular my husband would have been practically exempt from Income-tax, and for years I could have claimed abatement.
Because we are legally married he has had to pay the tax on the whole of his salary.
There is one other point I should like to mention.
From the outset of my professional career the authorities have sent the claim on my earned income to me and not to my husband.
In , instead of paying, as I had previously done, I wrote across the form, “No vote, no tax.”
They then distrained on me for the amount.
In I questioned the legality of the threatened distraint, and the authorities then wavered in their claim, making it sometimes on me, sometimes on my husband, sometimes on us both conjointly, finally on him alone.
Now after two years’ intermittent correspondence he is in prison for inability to meet it.
Manifestly if he is liable I am not, and the distraints executed on my goods were illegal.
If I am liable his arrest was illegal and the distraints on me should have been continued.
Certainly it is open to suppose that my husband’s imprisonment is not only unjust but unlawful.
A remark made by Mr. Hobhouse in a debate on the Finance Act on , makes this supposition the more probable.
On this occasion (Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 20, No. 92) he said, speaking on Mr. Walter Guinness’s amendment: “It may be said by hon. gentlemen opposite, ‘Why don’t you send one of the demand forms to the wife?’
I am not at all sure if that course were taken that the Inland Revenue would not put themselves out of court subsequently in their demand from the husband.”
Have they not in this case so put themselves out of court?
Mr. Hobhouse was not sure at that time.
Have the officials become sure since?
Teachers Sign a Petition
A petition against the arrest of Mr. Mark Wilks, the Clapton headmaster, for the non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax, has been circulated among London County Council teachers.
On the first day a thousand signatures were received, and many others are rapidly being obtained.
Protest Meeting.
A public indignation meeting, to protest against the imprisonment of Mark Wilks, will be held on , at the Caxton Hall, Westminster.
The chair will be taken by the Hon. Sir John Cockburn, K.C.M.G., and the speakers will be Mr. H[enry].G[eorge].
Chancellor, M.P., Mr. Laurence Housman, Mr. Herbert Jacobs, Rev. Fleming Williams, and Mr. G[eorge].
Bernard Shaw.
Tickets: Reserved, 2s. 6d.; unreserved, 1s. To be had from The International Suffrage Shop, Adam-street, Strand; and from The Women’s Tax Resistance League, 10, Talbot House, St. Martin’s-lane, W.C.
…Mrs. [Marianne] Hyde and Miss Bennett addressed a meeting in Regent’s Park on , and a resolution was passed calling on the Inland Revenue authorities to release Mr. Mark Wilks, who is imprisoned in Brixton Gaol for the non-payment of his wife’s income-tax.
Mrs. Harvey was released from Holloway on morning in a very bad condition of health, her imprisonment having had a serious effect on her constitution.
She was met at the prison gates by Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, Miss Harvey, and Miss Watson, and taken to Brackenhill, where she will be nursed back to health.
The refusal of the Home Secretary to allow the attendance of a homœpathic doctor aroused great indignation at Bromley, and some women residents, deeply interested in her person as well as in her protest, paid the smaller fine to secure her release before actual injury should have occurred.
Mrs. Harvey has served her sentence for the Insurance Act resistance, and the remaining term of imprisonment would have been in respect of the gardener’s license.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes next addressed the meeting.
In the first place she compared the sentences passed on persons who resisted taxation from conscientious convictions with those who resisted from selfish or dishonest motives, showing very forcibly that in the eyes of the Government the former were more worthy of contempt than the latter.
Secondly, she condemned the incompetence of the officials who administered the law showing the ridiculous and dilatory methods in which the proceedings against tax-resisters were carried through, often being allowed to extend over months, and in many instances eventually dropped.
Finally Mrs. Parkes drew attention to the policy followed previously in the cases of Miss [Clemence] Housman and Mr. [Mark] Wilks, as well as that of Mrs. Harvey, of waiting until Parliament was prorogued before making any attempt to bring such cases to an end, and carry out the sentences imposed.
Of course, it was quite easy to see the reason for this policy.
Had Mrs. Harvey’s imprisonment been effected while the House was sitting, numerous friends drawn from all parties would have been asking awkward and unpleasant questions.
…
More Indignation Meetings.
The usual meeting was held last week by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, in Bromley Market-square, to protest against the imprisonment of Mrs. Harvey.
The chair was taken by Mrs. Beaumont Thomas, and the speakers were Mrs. Despard and Mrs. Kineton Parkes.
Mrs. Despard emphasized Mrs. Harvey’s care for neglected children, even to taking them to her home for weeks together.
This, she said, was the kind of woman on whom the Government passed vindictively heavy sentences.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes also pointed out the peculiar hardships of the case.
At the close of the meeting the following resolutions was unanimously carried:—
“That this meeting protests against the sentences passed on Mrs. Harvey, and demands equal treatment under the law for men and women.”
A large and enthusiastic mass meeting was held by the League in Hyde Park on afternoon to protest against the injustice of Mrs. Harvey’s imprisonment.
The speakers were Mrs. Despard and Mr. H.W. Nevinson, and the chair was taken by Mrs. Kineton Parkes.
At the close of the meeting the resolution was passed unanimously followed by prolonged cheering and applause, and the crowd manifested a great interest in this case and remained for more than half an hour to have their questions answered.
…
Pertinent Questions to Mr. McKenna.
The following letter has been sent by Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Organising Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League:—
To the Right Honourable R. McKenna, M.P., Home Office, S.W. .
Sir,— I am writing again on behalf of the Committee of this League with regard to the imprisonment of Mrs. Harvey.
I find that an urgent letter was sent to you about this matter on , setting forth the facts of the case in detail, and that though acknowledged by your secretary, no reply of any kind had been received.
Would you kindly see that a definite answer is at once sent to the following questions, either by yourself or whoever is acting at the Home Office during your absence?:—
Are you aware that one of the two months’ imprisonment to which Mrs. Harvey was sentenced is for non-payment of the license for her manservant?
If so, can you explain why Mrs. Harvey has been treated differently from other members of this League who for the same conscientious reasons have refused to pay licenses?
Can you explain why Mrs. Harvey is sentenced to a term of imprisonment in the second division instead of being placed in the first division, as Miss Housman was, who also refused to pay taxes?
Will you explain why the Insurance Commissioners were allowed to make a claim for special costs of two guineas in Mrs. Harvey’s case?
Such costs have never been claimed before from man or woman, and Mrs. Harvey’s court fees were already far in excess of the usual costs, viz. £4 10s.
Will you explain why the Bench was allowed to grant this unusual claim?
Can you explain why, if Mrs. Harvey’s imprisonment is a just one, she was not arrested immediately she refused to pay her fine instead of waiting until Parliament was prorogued, when no questions could be asked in the House of Commons by Members of Parliament about the injustice of the case?
At our last meeting Miss [Mary?] Trott addressed the members of the Branch, appealing to all to help in every possible way to secure the release of Mrs. K. Harvey and to work harder for the suffrage cause…
Manchester.
An interesting Branch meeting was held on , at which Miss Trott, from London, appealed on behalf of Mrs. Harvey.
Printed post-cards protesting against the vindictive sentence passed upon her are now ready for signature, and may be obtained at the office.…
Great Protest Meeting Against the Imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks.
“No Government Can Stand Ridicule. The Position is Ridiculous!”
The great meeting of indignant protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks, held at the Caxton Hall on , under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, will be not only memorable but epoch-making.
The fight for woman’s citizenship in “free England” has led to the imprisonment of a man for failing to do what was impossible.
Throughout the meeting the humor of the situation was frequently commented upon, but the serious aspect was most strongly emphasized.
Sir John Cockburn, who presided, struck a serious note at the outset; for anything, he said, that touched the liberty of the citizen was of the gravest importance.
He remarked that it was the first occasion on which he had attended a meeting to protest against the action of law.
The resolution of protest was proposed by Dr. Mansell Moullin, whose many and continued services to their Cause are warmly appreciated by all Suffragists, in a very able speech, and ran as follows:—
That this meeting indignantly protests against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the tax on his wife’s earned income, and demands his immediate release.
This meeting also calls for an amendment of the existing Income-tax law, which, contrary to the spirit of the Married Women’s Property Act, regards the wife’s income as one with that of her husband.
A Husband the Property of His Wife.
Dr. Moullin expressed his pleasure in supporting his colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, in the protest against the outrage on her husband.
The case, he said, was not a chapter out of “Alice in Wonderland,” but a plain proof that, although imprisonment for debt has been abolished in England, a man may be deprived of his liberty for non-payment of money which was not his, and which he could not touch.
The only argument that could be used was that Mr. Wilks was the property of his wife.
Twice distraint had been made on the furniture of Mrs. Wilks, the third time the authorities carried off her husband; it is the first occasion on which it has been proved that a husband is the property of his wife.
The law allows a man to put a halter round the neck of his wife, take her to the market-place and sell her, and this has been done within recent years; but there is no law which allows the Inland Revenue authorities to sell a husband for the benefit of his wife.
Governments, he added, can stand abuse, but cannot stand ridicule, and the position with regard to Dr. Wilks and her husband is both ridiculous and anomalous.
The serious question behind the whole matter was how far anyone is justified in resisting the law of the land.
The resister for conscience’ sake is the martyr of one generation and the saint of the next.
Dr. Moullin doubted whether the Hebrews or Romans of old would recognise what their laws had become; we are ashamed of the outrageous sentences for trivial offences passed by our forefathers; our children will be ashamed of the sentences passed to-day.
Everything in the law connected with women required reconstruction from the very foundation, declared Dr. Moullin.
Constitutional methods, like Royal Commissions, were an admirable device for postponing reform; all reformers were unconstitutional; they had to use unconstitutional methods or leave reform alone.
The self-sacrifice of an individual makes a nation great; that nation is dead when reformers are unwilling to sacrifice themselves.
No Man Safe.
Mr. George Bernard Shaw was the next speaker, and gave a characteristically witty and autobiographical address.
He said that this was the beginning of the revolt of his own unfortunate sex against the intolerable henpecking which had been brought upon them by the refusal of the Government to bring about a reform which everybody knew was going to come, and the delay of which was a mere piece of senseless stupidity.
From the unfortunate Prime Minister downwards no man was safe.
He never saw his wife reflecting in a corner without some fear that she was designing some method of putting him and his sex into a hopeless corner.
He never spoke at suffrage gatherings.
He steadily refused to join the ranks of ignominious and superfluous males who gave assistance which was altogether unnecessary to ladies who could well look after themselves.
“If my wife did that to me, the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
It is indefensible.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Under the Married Women’s Property Act the husband retained the responsibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself.
Mr. Wilks was not the first victim.
The first victim was G.B.S. The Government put on a supertax.
That fell on his wife’s income and on his own.
The authorities said that he must pay his wife’s supertax.
He said, “I do not happen to know the extent of her income.”
When he got married he strongly recommended to his wife to have a separate banking account, and she took him at his word.
He had no knowledge of what his wife’s income was.
All he knew was that she had money at her command, and he frequently took advantage of that by borrowing it from her.
The authorities said that they would have to guess at the income; then the Government passed an Act, he forgot the official title of it, but the popular title was the Bernard Shaw Relief Act.
They passed an Act to allow women to pay their supertax.
In spite of this Act, ordinary taxpayers were still apparently under the old regime, and as Mrs. Wilks would not pay the tax on her own income Mr. Wilks went to gaol.
“If my wife did that to me,” said Mr. Shaw, “the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
It is indefensible.”
Women, he added, had got completely beyond the law at the present time.
Mrs. [Mary] Leigh had been let out, but he presumed that after a brief interval for refreshments she would set fire to another theatre.
He got his living by the theatre, and very probably when she read the report of that speech she would set fire to a theatre where his plays were being performed.
The other day he practically challenged the Government to starve Mrs. Leigh, and in the course of the last fortnight he had received the most abusive letters which had ever reached him in his life.
The Government should put an end to the difficulty at once by giving women the vote.
As he resumed his seat Mr. Shaw said: “I feel glad I have been allowed to say the things I have here to-night without being lynched.”
Bullying Fails.
Mr. Laurence Housman laid stress on the fact that the Government was endeavouring to make Mrs. Wilks, through her affection, do something she did not consider right.
Liberty could only be enjoyed when laws were not an offence to the moral conscience of a people.
Laws were not broken in this country every day because they were not practicable.
Every man, according to law, must go to church on Sunday morning, or sit two hours in the stocks; it was unlawful to wheel perambulators on the pavement.
If the police were compelled to administer all the laws on the Statute Book, England would be a hell.
To imprison Mr. Wilks for something which he had not done and could not do was as sane as if a servant were sent to prison because her employer objected to lick stamps under the Insurance Act.
The Government had tried bullying, but women had shown that it did not pay.
Self-respecting people break down a law by demonstrating that it is too expensive to carry.
Question for the Solicitor to the Treasury.
The legal aspect was the point specially dealt with by Mr. Herbert Jacobs, chairman of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.
He said that it was stupidity, not chivalry, which deprived the husband under the Married Women’s Property Act of of the right to his wife’s earnings, but did not relieve him of responsibility to pay for her.
Imprisonment for debt has been abolished; but if it could be shown that a man had the means to pay and refused to pay, he could be sent to prison for contempt of court.
Mr. Jacobs suggested that the Solicitor to the Treasury should be asked to reply to the following question: “What has Mr. Wilks done or omitted to do that he should be imprisoned for life?”
The law, he added, does not compel a man to do that which he cannot possibly perform.
The action of the Internal Revenue authorities may be illegal; it certainly is barbarous and ridiculous.
Bad Bungling
Mr. H[enry].G[eorge].
Chancellor pointed out that the Married Women’s Property Act was an endeavour by men to remove injustice to women, but because they did not realise the injustices from which women suffer and avoided the woman’s point of view, they bungled badly.
No one can respect a ridiculous law, and the means to be taken in the future to avoid making ridiculous laws, must be to give women the right to make their opinions effectively heard through the ballot-box.
Mr. Chancellor said that he had investigated 240 Bill[s] laid on the table of the House, and had found that 123 were as interesting to women as much as to men; twenty-one affected women almost exclusively; six had relation to the franchise.
“When we consider these Bills,” he added, “we rule out the whole experience and knowledge of women.
We must abolish sex privilege as it affects legislation.
I appeal to men who are Antis to consider the Wilks case, which is possible just so long as we perpetuate the huge wrong of the continued disenfranchisement of women.”
Refinement of Cruelty
In a moving speech Rev. Fleming Williams declared that the case of Dr. Wilks and her husband ought to appeal to men all over the country.
He spoke of the personal interviews he had had with Mr. Wilks in the presence of the warder, and of the effect of imprisonment upon him.
It was impossible to contemplate without horror the spectacle of the Government’s attempt to overcome the wife’s resistance by the spectacle of her husband’s sufferings.
If she added to his pain by humiliating surrender, it would lower the high ideal he cherishes of her principles.
“She dare not do it; she will not do it!” exclaimed Mr. Williams. He added that he had had an opportunity of waiting upon the Inland Revenue Board and tried to show them how their action appears to outside people.
He had suggested that, in order to bring the law into harmony with justice, representative public men in co-operation with the Board should approach the Treasury to secure an alteration in the law.
“But,” declared Mr. Williams, “if women are made responsible by law it will not bring the Government an inch nearer the solution of the difficulty.
They may imprison women for tax resistance, but married men would not stand it.
The only way is to say to Dr. Wilks, “We will give you the right to control the use we intend to make of your money.”
The resolution was passed unanimously with great enthusiasm, and thus ended a meeting that will be historic.
The Campaign.
A great campaign is being carried on for the release of Mr. Mark Wilks.
On , the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a meeting, followed by a procession in the neighborhood of the prison, and on Sunday there was a large and very sympathetic meeting in Hyde Park.
Mrs. Mustard took the chair.
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard and Mrs. [Margaret] Parkes were the speakers.
The resolution demanding the release of Mr. Wilks was carried unanimously.
Nightly meetings are held in Brixton by the Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage.
A great demonstration will take place on , in Trafalgar-square.
Members of the Women’s Freedom League and all sympathisers are asked to come and to bring their friends.
There will be a large attendance of London County Council teachers — more than 3,000 of whom have signed a petition against the arrest of Mr. Wilks.
A deputation of Members of Parliament and other influential men is being arranged by Sir John Cockburn to wait upon Mr. Lloyd George and to see him personally about the case.
We hope earnestly that before this issue of our Vote appears, news of the release of Mark Wilks will be brought to us.
It seems to us impossible that the authorities of the country can persist in their foolish and cruel action.
But, in the meantime and in any case, it may be well for us seriously to consider the situation.
We are bound together, men and women, in a certain order.
For the maintenance of that order, it has been found necessary for communities and nations all over the world to impose laws upon themselves.
In countries that call themselves democratic, it is contended that the civil law is peculiarly binding, because the people not only consent, but, where they have sufficient understanding, demand that the laws which bind them shall, in certain contingencies, be made or changed or repealed according to their need, and because by their voice they place in seats of power the men whom they believe to be honest and wise enough to carry out their will.
That, at least, is the ideal of democracy.
For several generations the British nation has claimed the honour of being foremost in the road that leads to its achievement.
We (or rather the men of the country) boast of our free institutions, of our free speech, of the liberty of the individual within the law to which he has consented, of the right to fair trial and judgment by his peers when he is accused of offences against that law; above all — and now we have the difference between a democratically governed country and one under despotic rule — not to be liable to punishment for the omission of that which he is unable to perform.
It seems clear and simple enough — what any intelligent schoolboy knows; and yet our so-called Liberal Government, which flaunts in every direction the flag of democracy, which proclaims, here severely and there with dulcet persuasion, that liberty for all is their aim, and that “the will of the people shall prevail,” does not hesitate, when it is question of a reform movement which it dislikes and despises, to set itself in direct opposition to its own avowed principles.
For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean?
We are perfectly certain that it will not last long.
Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on.
A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides.
To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling.
In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism.
“A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!”
To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping.
If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind.
It is not we, the Suffragists alone — it is women and men in hosts who are asking, What do these things mean?
On the part of these in our movement they mean courage, determination, skilful generalship — aye, and speedy triumph.
On the part of our opponents, perplexity and failure.
“This is defeat, fierce king, not victory,” said Shelly’s Prometheus, when from his rock of age-long pain he hurled heroic defiance at his tormentor.
The ills with which thou torturest gird my soul To fresh resistance till the day arrive When these shall be no types of things that are.
Woman, in this professedly liberty-loving country, may echo the hero’s words.
Defeat, in very truth, for what can the authorities do?
Their position is an extraordinary one.
In a lucid interval, politicians — not clearly, it may be, understanding the issues involved — passed the Married Women’s Property Act.
We believe there were no Antis then to guide and encourage woman-fearing man.
This may partly account for it.
In any case, the deed was done.
Married, no less than single women and widows, became owners of their own property and lords of their own labour.
It would have saved the country from much unnecessary trouble if, then, politicians had gone a step further, if they had recognised woman’s personal responsibility as mother, wage-earner or property-owner, and had dealt with her directly.
Love of compromise, unfortunately, weighs too deeply on the soul of the modern politician for him to be able to take so wise a course, and it is left for his successor to unravel the tangle.
What are the authorities to do?
While, with threats of violence and dark hints of disciplined, organised resistance, Ulster defies them, Suffragists by almost miraculous endurance are breaking open prison doors.
While brutal men, under the very eyes of a Minister of the Crown, are torturing and insulting women, in token, we presume, of their devotion to him, the story of the wrongs of women — not only these but others — is being noised abroad.
None of our recent publications has been bought so freely as “The White Slave Traffic.”
While well-known women tax-resisters are left at large, a man who has not resisted, but who respects women and will not coerce his wife, is arrested and locked up in prison without trial, and, since he cannot pay, for an indeterminate time.
A pretty mess indeed, which will take more than the subtlety of an Asquith, a Lloyd George or a McKenna to render palatable to the men on whose votes they depend for their continuance in power!
In a few days they will be faced with a further difficult problem.
Women are prepared to resist, not only the Income, but also the Insurance Tax.
Let us see what the alternatives are.
Mark Wilks may be let out as Miss [Clemence] Housman was; but that will not help the Government.
It is a poor satisfaction to a creditor of national importance to know that his debtor is or has been in prison.
He wants his money, and the example of one resister may be followed by many others.
If so, that big thing the Exchequer suffers.
The creditor may, when Parliament comes together, pleading urgency, pass an Act which will make married women responsible for their own liabilities.
That might result in a revolt of married women which would have serious consequences.
Men who live at ease with their children, shepherded by admirable wives, would find it, to say the least, inconvenient to be deprived periodically of their services.
And these men might be in the position of Mark Wilks.
They might not be able to pay, while their wives might have no goods on which distraint could be made.
Truly the position would be pitiable.
Over the Insurance Act the same difficulties will arise.
What is a distraught Government to do?
The answer is clear.
The one and only alternative that lies before our legislators is at once to take steps whereby women — workers, mothers, property-owners — shall become citizens.
That done, we will pay our taxes with alacrity; we will bring our quota of service to the State that needs our aid, and the unmannerly strife between man and woman will cease.
In the meantime, the law and the legislator are defeated ignominiously, and it is becoming more and more evident that, in a very near future, “the will of the people shall prevail.”
It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to devise a situation which would show more clearly than does the Wilks’ case, how absolutely incapable is the average man of grasping a woman’s point of view, or of realising her grievances and legal disabilities.
For seventy years men have been cooly appropriating the Income-tax refunded by the Inland Revenue on their wives incomes.
Did anybody ever hear of a man raising a protest against the state of the law which made it possible and legal for a husband to do this?
My own experience covers a good many years of Income-tax work, and the handling of some hundreds of cases, but the only complaints I have ever heard have come from the defrauded wives.
I have observed that the men always accepted the position with the utmost equanimity.
But now, when by the exercise of considerable ingenuity, women have contrived, for once in a way, to put the boot on the other leg, the Press and the public generally is filled with horror, and the air is rent with shrieks of protest from the male sex.
The Evening News sapiently remarks that women might have been expected to have more sense than to seek to show up a law which is “so obviously in their favour”!
And The Scotsman says: “One would imagine that the last thing the Wilks’ case would be used for is to illustrate the grievance which woman suffers under the law.
Here two laws combine to favour the wife and inflict wrong upon the husband.”
And it goes on to deride women and “their inherent illogicality.”
Here we see clearly manifest the absolute incapacity of man to realise the existence of any injustice until it touches himself or his fellow man.
Nothing could well be more logical than the holding of a man responsible for non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax, since it is the necessary and inevitable corollary of the theory that a wife’s income belongs to her husband, and that all refunds of Income-tax must be made to him, and to him only.
It is in accordance with logic and also with strict business principles that no person can claim the advantages of his legal position while repudiating its disadvantages.
Thus if a man dies leaving money, his son cannot claim to take that money and at the same time repudiate his father’s debts.
He must accept the one with the other.
And in exactly the same way, women are no longer going to allow men to claim their legal right to demand re-payment of their wives’ Income-tax, unless they also accept their legal responsibility for its non-payment.
The game of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose is played out, and the sooner men realise this fact the better it will be for everybody.
The “logic” of The Scotsman and its contemporaries is no longer good enough for women.
The law must be forced to take its course where men are concerned as it does where women are concerned.
As to the provisions of the Income-tax Act favouring the wife and wronging the husband, I can only say that Mr. Wilks’ case is the first in all my experience where these provisions acted adversely to the husband.
And even in this case they only so acted because women had laid their heads together to bring it about, and thus show how little men relish a law of their own making when it begins to act on the boomerang principle, and they find themselves “hoist with their own petard.”
A few actual instances, casually selected out of a large number, will show how wives have hitherto been “favoured.”
A man and his wife have £100 a year each, taxed (at 1s. 2d. in the £) by deduction before they receive it.
There are four children, on each of whom the husband is entitled to claim a rebate of £10 a year.
(The wife, it should be noted, can never claim any rebate whether she has a dozen or a score of children.
And if a widow, having children, re-marries, the rebate on these children goes to their step-father.)
Consequently the husband can, and does, reclaim not only the tax deducted from his own income, i.e. £5 16s. 8d., but also the £5 16s. 8d. deducted from his wife’s income.
So he really pays no tax at all, and gains £5 16s. 8d. while she loses a similar amount.
Thus the actual position is, that the wife is only worth £94 a year, while he is worth £106 a year, though nominally their incomes are the same.
If single, each could claim repayment of £5 16s. 8d., therefore marriage represents a loss to the wife, but a profit to her husband.
A member of the Women’s Freedom League was forced to leave her husband on account of his misconduct, and to bring up and educate her children without any financial aid from him.
But for a number of years he regularly drew the “repayment” of her Income-tax, until a merciful Providence removed him from this mundane sphere, by which time it was calculated that she had lost, and he had gained, about £200. At his death she, of course, ceased to be a legal “idiot,” and was allowed to claim her repayment for herself.
I may remark here that the Income-tax Act has a favourite method of classifying certain sections of the community, namely, as “idiots, married women, lunatics and insane persons.”
I don’t know precisely what the difference is between a “lunatic” and an “insane person,” but doubtless there is a difference, though unintelligent persons might think they were synonymous terms.
As regards the point of resemblance between the “idiot” and the “married woman,” it is rather obscure, but after intense mental application I have succeeded in locating it; and really when somebody illuminates it for you it becomes clear as daylight.
It is quite evident to me that our super-intelligent legislators are convinced that the woman who is capable of going and getting married is an utter “idiot,” and in fact next door to a “lunatic.”
Well, men ought to know their own sex, and if they say that the women who marry them are idiots, it must be true, I suppose.
We may therefore take it that a woman evinces her intelligence by remaining unmarried.
I ought humbly to explain that, being married myself, I am only one of the idiots, and therefore my ideas on any subject must not be taken to have the slightest value.
But to return to our instances of “favouritism,” another man has £230 a year and his wife £170 a year.
She pays Income-tax (deducted before receipt) to the tune of £9 18s. 4d., and he pays 2s. 6d..
It sounds impossible, perhaps; but when you know the rules it is quite simple.
To begin with, he gets an abatement of £160, which leaves him with £70. Then he gets a further abatement of £67 for insurance premiums, a great part of which premiums are paid by his wife on her own life.
This leaves him with a taxable income of slightly over £3, on which he pays 9d. in the £1., amounting to half-a-crown.
This couple have no children.
If they had any he would begin not only to pay no tax himself, but to have some of hers repaid to him.
She, however, under any circumstances, will always be mulcted of the £9 18s. 4d.; unless she becomes a widow, when she will be able to reclaim the whole amount.
(The official forms supplied to those reclaiming Income-tax read: “A woman must state whether spinster or widow.”)
If we reverse the financial position of this couple, and assume that she receives £230 and he only £170, she would then be paying £13 8s. 4d. Income-tax.
Contrast this with his payment of half-a-crown in the same circumstances, and observe how highly she is “favoured.”
He, however, would then pay nothing and would receive a “refund” of nearly £3 10s. a year.
A very enterprising and smart young fellow was able to treat himself to a really nice motor-cycle — not the sort that has a side-car for a lady — out of his wife’s “repaid” tax; repaid to him, I mean.
He can’t support himself, but depends on her, as she has just about enough for them both to rub along on, though she can’t afford luxuries for herself, and wouldn’t have paid for his.
But the Inland Revenue gave him her money quite cooly and without the slightest fuss.
The “Scotsman” will be pleased to hear that this poor husband manages to bear up quite bravely under his “wrongs,” and seems indeed to get a considerable amount of satisfaction out of them.
His wife, I am truly sorry to say, doesn’t properly appreciate the favour shown to her by the law.
But then men are naturally brave, and women are by nature a thoroughly ungrateful lot I expect, if they could only see themselves as The Scotsman and The Evening News see them.
In this connection it is interesting to note that three years ago two members of our Edinburgh Branch, the Misses N[annie]. and J[essie].
Brown, walked from Edinburgh to London, chatting of Woman Suffrage with the villagers all along the line of route southwards, many of whom had then not even heard about this question.
They started from Edinburgh in and reached London before .
A further point of interest is that the father of these ladies was the last political prisoner in Claton Gaol in .
Mr. Brown’s offence was his refusal to pay the Annuity Tax which he considered an iniquitous imposition.
He was imprisoned for one week, but received the treatment of a political prisoner; he had the satisfaction of knowing that his protest led to the repeal of the Annuity Tax.
The next people who committed a political offence in Edinburgh were two Suffragettes, who — fifty-two years later than Mr. Brown’s incarceration — were imprisoned, but were not treated as political prisoners.
Notwithstanding the showers a good crowd gathered on to hear Mrs. Despard, who spoke of the anomalies existing in our laws affecting women and taxation, and referred at length to the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay his wife’s taxes on her earned income.
A resolution expressing indignation at this and demanding Mr. Mark Wilks’ release was passed with only five dissentients.
The chair was taken by Mrs. Mustard, who told the audience of the indignation felt by the Clapton neighbours and friends of Mr. and Dr. Elizabeth Wilks over his imprisonment.
…On evening we had our usual open-air meeting.
Mr. Hawkins kindly chaired, and Mrs. Tanner spoke with her usual excellency, bringing in the “Wilks” case in her speech, as a specimen of anomaly in law in which the man suffers.
The crowd was sympathetic as regarded “poor old Wilks,” but was swayed otherwise by mistaken ideas of our aims and motives.…
The release of Mr. Mark Wilks, under precisely the same circumstances as the release of Miss [Clemence] Housman — that is to say, after a futile imprisonment, a series of defiant suffrage demonstrations, and with no sort of official explanation — is a triumph for the Women’s Tax Resistance League, the W.F.L., and the various men’s association[s] that helped to conduct the protest campaign.
It is more than a triumph; it is an object lesson in how not to do things.
To incarcerate a helpless and innocent man for his wife’s principles, knowing that that wife was one of a movement that never strikes its colours, was foolish on the face of it.
(That it was also unjust is a matter which we recognise to be of little consequence in the eyes of those who make and administer our law).
But to let him out without rhyme or reason seems foolishness of so low a degree that it is only to be described as past all understanding.
One is reminded of the genial duffer who protested that he might be an ass, but he was not a silly ass.
Our highest authorities are not so particular about their reputations as the stage idiot.
The Pity of It.
Yet we are all set wondering what is behind it all.
Is it a contempt so great for the intelligence of the public on which they batten which makes our rulers so unconcerned about even the appearance of wisdom or consistency?
Or is it sheer contempt for women which makes them bully, badger, and torture in turns, and then dismiss the matter as of not sufficient importance to pursue?
It is too easy and flattering a solution to determine that ministers have been impressed by the women’s resolute defiance.
It hardly accounts for the milk in the cocoanut.
Nothing, for instance, would have been easier than to give Mrs. [Mary] Leigh and Miss Evans first-class treatment, and keep them in durance for months and years!
The release of the latter lady at the same time as Mr. Wilks points, we sadly fear, not to an intelligent appreciation of the gathering forces of progress and humanity, but a cruel and callous disregard of wisdom, righteousness, and decency.
If this be “representative” government, it is a sorry testimonial to the worth of the [sic] those represented.
Terminological…?
No tale appears too farcical to present to the tax-payers on behalf of the Government.
One explanation that has been seriously offered, with a view to relieving the Chancellor of the Exchequer from any odium that may be incurred by those responsible for the Wilks imbroglio, is as follows: “The Chancellor knew nothing of the case.
His official correspondence followed him during his recent Welsh peregrinations, missing him everywhere, and only catching him up on his return to London, where he at once ordered a meeting of the Board of Inland Revenue, on whose report (unpublished) he acted promptly.”
Now this is a little too thin.
Wanted, a Good Lie.
The political and militant organiser of the W.F.L., who pens these lines, has to confess with emotion that during recent wanderings in the fastnesses of the Land of George, certain correspondence, re-addressed to divers and sundry humble cottages in mean streets, did indubitably go astray.
But the political and militant organiser is not a world-renowned personage who on occasion has been reduced to the Royal necessity of travelling incognito.
The more than Royal progress of the Carsons and the Georges does not lend itself to these subterfuges; and we feel inclined to give the Chancellor the advice addressed by a too intelligent master to a schoolboy of our acquaintance, whose effort at explanatory romance was not convincing: “No, no, George, my lad; that doesn’t sound likely.
Run away and think of something better.”
In consequence of the release of Mr. Mark Wilks, a sprightly account of which appeared in The Evening Standard, the proposed demonstration on Trafalgar-square was not held by the Women’s Tax-Resistance League .
The main issues which have been brought forward by this new phase of the struggle are:— “That the present irregular method of administering the Income-tax and Married Women’s Property Acts amount to a penalty on matrimony; that the relief afforded to persons of limited income is unjustly and illegally filched from them; and that the Tax Resistance campaign has for one of its objects the determination to secure to the public one million and a half of money which is at present improperly diverted from the pockets of the people to the Government coffers.
It took a woman expert — Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie — to fathom the real meaning of the law as it is administered to-day; and it is some considerable time since she expressed the opinion, and was laughed at by male legal experts for so doing, that the situation which actually arose was possible.
At Bolton.
A tax-resistance meeting was held at Bolton on , at which Mr. Isaac Edwards presided, the speakers being Miss Hicks and Mrs. Williamson-Forrestier.
The meeting was a public one, explaining the policy and principle of Tax Resistance, and was well attended.
The goods of Mrs. Fyffe, hon. treasurer of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, member of committee of the Horsham and South Kensington Branches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and hon. secretary of the London “Common Cause” Selling Corps, have been seized for tax resistance, and will be sold on , at Whiteley’s Auction Rooms, Westbourne-grove.
A procession will form up at Roxburghe Mansion, Kensington-court, at and start at going to the corner of Westbourne-grove and Chepstow-place, where a Protest Meeting will be held.
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, and others will speak.
The procession will then go on to the sale.
It is hoped that as many members of the Freedom League and other Suffragists as can will support Mrs. Fyffe by walking in the procession and attending the sale.
Mrs. Fyffe, who is an ardent Tax Resister, was presiding at a meeting of the Kensington branch of the National Union (London Society) at her own house, when the bailiffs arrived to distrain on her goods.
It was a novel experience for the non-militant ladies!
Pleasant Amenities.
Mrs. Louis Fagan, summoned at West London Police-court for non-payment of taxes in respect of motor-car, man-servant, and armorial bearings, had quite a merry dialogue with the presiding genius, Mr. Fordham, who waxed — might one say waggish?
— during the encounter.
After refusing to discuss her “conscientious objections” — while in no way belittling them — he imposed a penalty of 20s. and 2s. costs in respect of the man-servant; £10 2s. costs in respect of the motor-car; and 2s. 6d. for the armorial bearings.
Mrs. Fagan represented that her conscientious objection included fines as well as taxes, and he expressed regret at having no alternative to offer save imprisonment.
“I shall sentence you to a month,” he said, “but you won’t do it, of course — you ladies never do.
If I really wanted you to have a month, I should have to call it five years!”
With such little pleasantries the affair passed off in the happiest manner; and Mr. Fordham was equally obliging in fixing the time for the distraint on Mrs. Fagan’s goods “at the earliest possible moment,” to suit the lady’s convenience.
The goods were seized on ; and all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration.
Mr. Lansbury’s Chivalry
At a meeting held in the Hackney Town Hall on to demand the release of Mr. Mark Wilks, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks and the Rev. Fleming Williams, who were received with enthusiasm, both addressed the audience, and a resolution of protest was carried unanimously.
The stirring speech given by Mr. [George] Lansbury contained valuable hints for Suffragists.
“Parliament,” he said, “did not do more for the cause of the women because the women did not make themselves felt sufficiently.
If, instead of remaining Liberal, Conservative, or Socialists, they went on strike against the politicians, they would get what they wanted.
“Many years ago, Mr. Lansbury continued, he had believed in the honesty of politicians, and in the sincerity of political warfare, but much water had flowed under the bridges since then, and many new ideas had gone through his head.
What was of most importance to the women of this country was not politics — whether Tory or Liberal — but the emancipation of their sex.
“The imprisonment of Mark Wilks, though it might be a laughing matter to the daily Press, was no laughing matter for the man imprisoned.
It was a jolly hard thing for Mr. Wilks.
He believed that if the working-class women of this country could be got to realise that his was no mere fight for a vote, but a fight for their complete emancipation, they would soon get this sort of thing altered.”
Resistance in Scotland
The Glasgow Herald tells us that:— “Dr. Grace Cadell, Leith, has, as a protest against the non-enfranchisement of women, refused to pay inhabited house duty on a property belonging to her in Edinburgh.
Several articles of her furniture have been poinded to meet the amount of the tax, about £2, but so far the authorities have not taken these away.”
We are also expecting news of the distraint on Miss Janet Bunten’s property for the same reason.
Miss Bunten, Hon. Sec. of the Glasgow Branch, has already lost goods in this manner, and has also been sentenced to imprisonment for refusal to pay dog license or fine in default.
The other day a woman, an utter stranger to me, came into the office to seek advice.
She was a pale, worried little creature, and had a little blind child.
Her trouble was that she had had to leave her husband on account of his brutality — he seemed to be a thoroughly bad lot — and had returned to her parents with the child.
She never saw her husband, nor received any money from him, but he was getting her Income-tax repaid to him.
Her income was very small, and she needed it all for herself and her child, and asked how this procedure could be stopped and the money obtained for her own wants.
I could only tell her that nothing could be done, as the law held that her income belonged to her husband, on hearing which, she broke down and sobbed bitterly, saying she had thought that women might be able to help her.
These are cases one hears of every week, but the Press remains conveniently silently about such, and reserves all its sympathies for the “wronged” husband.
These repayments often amount to quite respectable sums, perhaps as much as £40 or £50, for a three years claim.
I must say that personally it is terribly distasteful to me, when I have recovered tax deducted from a married woman’s income, to be obliged to draw the cheques in favour of her husband, though morally the money is hers.
Yet this is what I am forced to do for my own protection, as, if I handed the money to its real owner, I should still have to pay it to the husband in addition.
He could sue me in the County Court for it, or I might perhaps be charged with “feloniously misappropriating” his money, if I dared to hand it to the wife.
The isolated case of Mr. Wilks is a relatively small matter when compared with numerous cases of defrauded wives.
Mr. Wilks, being released, will have saved £40 by imprisonment, and lots of these wives would joyfully do a few weeks in Holloway, if thereby they could save their money.
What we want to do is to get the law altered, and the Married Women’s Property Act recognised by the Crown, so that marriage shall not involve the brand of “idiocy” and a financial penalty for a woman.
But there seems to be a general impression abroad that the only injustice lies in Mr. Wilks being imprisoned, and not in the law being as it is; and that as he has been got out, that will be the end of the whole thing, and nobody need trouble about it or make any further fuss, unless and until another husband finds himself held liable for tax on his wife’s income, and put in prison for not paying it.
Whether people are Suffragists or Anti’s or neutrals, it is equally to their interest to get the law brought up-to-date.
The Anti husband of an Anti wife might quite as easily find himself in Mr. Wilks’ position, and “tax-resistance” has nothing to do with it, because Income-tax on a wife’s income may be demanded from a husband quite without his wife’s knowledge.
There is a case going on at the present time where 2s. 8d. is being demanded from a man for Income-tax on some Consols which the authorities state are held by his wife.
She has never been asked to pay it, and is not even aware that it is being demanded from him.
He disputes paying it on the ground that he has no evidence that she possesses any Consols, as he has never asked her anything about her means and never intends to do so.
He has formally appealed against the charge, and at the hearing of the appeal his wife’s name was not mentioned, nor her existence even referred to, as the Consols in question are legally deemed to be in his possession.
This husband will doubtless be put in prison in due course.
He contends, quite logically, that if he is held liable for the tax on one of his wife’s investments, he ought to be held equally liable for the tax on all of her other investments, and while the whole position remains so unsatisfactory and anomalous he will pay nothing and do nothing, but will remain simply passive.
At the hearing of the appeal two highly-paid Special Commissioners, drawing, I believe, at least £1,000 a year each, sat to consider the matter.
There was also present a Surveyor of Taxes, who had come up on purpose from Brighton at the public expense, the appellant and his legal representative (myself).
This gentleman and I wasted our valuable time, and the three Revenue officials wasted their time (and the public’s money) for upwards of an hour, discussing a matter involving 2s. 8d., and the existence or non-existence of some Consols which none of the persons present knew anything about.
There were also one or two clerks who took everything down; and altogether it was a most amusing demonstration of the methods of the Circumlocution Office, and the sublime art of How Not To Do It.
Numbers of married women invest their money in order to escape from the anomalies of the Income-tax Act, so some day we may see an equal number of husbands being called upon to pay tax on these investments (which they know nothing about), and ultimately getting locked up sine die.
When men in considerable numbers begin to feel the shoe pinching, probably some serious effort will be made to amend the law.
“We began with a Mud March; I wonder whether we shall end with one!”
So said a marcher afternoon; the relentless rain and the merciless mud gave point to the observation.
Neither rain nor mud deterred the women from their protest procession long ago, nor did they have any daunting effect on in the march from Kingsway to Holloway.
The change in attitude of the onlookers was extraordinary and emphasises the educative influence of such demonstrations.
No word of scorn or ridicule was heard on ; such words have passed; little but amazement remained, amazement at the courage shown in trying weather conditions.
Truly it was a brave show.
Bands and banners lend splendid aid on such occasions, but the gratifying sight was to see the solidarity and co-operation of many societies.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League led the way, and were followed by the Women’s Social and Political Union, the Women’s Freedom League, the New Constitutional Society, and Actresses’ League, the Fabian Women’s Group, and, finally, the men’s societies; the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement, and the Men’s Committee for Justice to Women.
Faithful friends these, whose help is always available, and one could not help noticing that some of the men were bringing up their small sons in the way they should go!
Let us hope that the boys will not have to do much more marching for the Suffrage Cause!
An hour of it!
Who can describe the determination and courage needed?
But we arrived, and in a very few minutes the chairman, Miss Christabel Pankhurst, was in her place on the cart, surrounded by the speakers.
One’s eyes were rivetted by the sight of the tall, self-possessed lady, quiet and undemonstrative, who scarcely twenty-four hours before had been inside those prison walls.
The singing and the enthusiasm were to reach her in her cell, but the action of the authorities in releasing Miss Housman enabled her to be the seen instead of the unseen centre of the demonstration.
Her words, too, carried great weight.
Humorously she contrasted the treatment of men voters and of voteless women: agents to do everything for the men, motors to take them to the polling booth.
Turning to the prison, Miss Housman exclaimed dramatically, “Holloway is woman’s polling booth; it is there that I have been able to register my vote against a Government that taxes me without representation.”
Only words of courtesy were heard concerning all the officials with whom Miss Housman had come into contact, and she was cheered to the echo when she declared that, glad as she was to be outside Holloway, she was ready to go back again to win the fight for the recognition of woman’s citizenship.
“If that great act of justice, the Conciliation Bill, fails to carry next year, there will be not merely one but hundreds of women in prison to make the nation realise that justice is not being done.”
Thus spoke Mr. Laurence Housman, whose pride in his sister’s devotion to the woman’s Cause was shared by those who listened.
Women were only doing what men had gloried in doing in times past, he added, they were struggling for constitutional liberties; women, too, had caught the spirit of democracy.
Mrs. Despard, heedless of the drenching rain, made an appeal which touched the hearts of all who heard it; she rejoiced in the victory won by Miss Housman’s courageous act of self-sacrifice, and said that tax resistance was drawing women together in a bond as strong as death.
She laughed to scorn the idea that men had all the chivalry and clear-sightedness, women the tenderness and self-sacrifice; neither sex had a monopoly of these qualities, but she looked for the coming of the new day when man and woman should stand side by side as equals.
Miss Adeline Bourne, speaking for the actresses, amused the audience by insisting that if women united in a protest such as Miss Housman had made, the Government would be powerless to deal with them.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, who succeeded Miss Pankhurst in the chair as soon as the resolution had been moved, gave some remarkable facts as to the predicament of the officials with regard to women tax resisters; amazing differences of treatment were recorded for the same offence, as also the practical sympathy of some who have to carry out a disagreeable duty towards women resisters.
The resolution, which was passed unanimously and with enthusiasm, ran as follows:
That this meeting, held at the gates of Holloway Gaol, congratulates Miss Clemence Housman on her refusal to pay Crown taxes without representation, a reassertion of that principle upon which our forefathers won the constitutional liberties which Englishmen now enjoy, and also upon the successful outcome of her protest.
It condemns the Government’s action in ordering her arrest and imprisonment as a violation of the spirit of the Constitution and of representative government; and it calls upon the Government to give votes to women before again demanding from Miss Housman or any other woman-taxpayer the payment of taxes.
Miss Housman’s communication to the Home Secretary, asking for information as to a definite term of imprisonment, contains so able a statement of her point of view that it should be widely known.
It runs thus:—
That she has resolved to abide by the conditions by law appointed for a woman who, lacking representation, has personally fulfilled a duty — moral, social, and constitutional — by refusing to pay taxes into irresponsible hands.
But, while willing to satisfy the requirements of the law at the expense of her personal liberty to any extent, she learns that no limit has been set to these claims either by statute or by judgment, and she believes that it rests with his Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Department to rectify what she feels to be a grievance not intended in such a case as hers.
She begs, therefore, that he will be so good as to define her term of imprisonment, and she desires this not on personal grounds only, but that, thereby, the comparative cost and value of a woman’s liberty and a man’s vote may be officially recorded for the understanding of others, women and men.
A large and enthusiastic crowd listened in Hyde Park on morning to Mrs. Clarkson Swann, who explained fully the Conciliation Bill now before Parliament, and to Mrs. Emma Sproson, who has recently served six weeks in Stafford Jail for non-payment of her dog-tax.…
In the course of a well-reasoned speech, Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson said: We live in revolutionary times.
The will of the people must prevail.
The Portuguese Royal Family fell because it did not consider this.
Berlin has also revolted, and the revolt there would have been more sanguinary had it not been for women, who placed themselves in the front — themselves and their children — and it takes much self-sacrifice to sacrifice your child.
Here the women are also in revolt against the social and economical condition of things, for similar grievances prevail here to those which prevail in Tariff Reform Germany.
Mr. Lloyd George will be attacked more severely.
Hitherto he has had some unpleasant moments; now we are going to attack his pocket.
We are going to have our say in the spending of twelve millions on Dreadnoughts, and also on the reform of Poor Law system.
I am a Poor Law guardian, but I am almost ashamed to own it, for I find the whole system of Poor Law administration is rotten to the core, and I work harder as such than in presenting petitions at Downing Street.
Our next move is to pay no taxes.
It is the most direct and unanswerable method.
If we are not good enough to vote, we are not good enough to pay.
No vote, no tax.
Those little income-tax forms, Form Ⅳ. or Ⅵ., or some other number, will be just thrown into the basket and not returned.
Everyone who perhaps has not an income to be taxed can have a dog, and then refuse to pay tax.
We all at the bottom of our souls know that we want a betterment of affairs, and we women are going to try to alter things and improve conditions of men and women, and then the exports and imports will go up by leaps and bounds.
There are starving women in this richest country in the world, and therefore we are going to revolt and make a revolution among the women, and the revolution is sure to succeed if we give our lives and time and money to bring it about.
Mrs. Ayres Purdie A.L.A.A.
Mrs. Purdie spoke about the disabilities and handicap of women in professions due to their lack of status.
She was once the object of a Bill which, if it passed, would have made her liable to a fine of £10 and £1 per day thereafter so long as she continued practising her profession.
It was absurd to suppose women were going to pay M.P.’s to pass Bills such as these.
Women would never break down the barriers which kept them from advancing in the professions while they were denied representation.
Mrs. [Margarete Wynne] Nevinson.
Mrs. Nevinson… in the course of her speech said: The Conciliation Bill is a first instalment of justice, the first righteous thing that we accept and that we are willing to take.
If anybody owed you £1,000, and said, “I cannot give the whole amount to you now, but will pay you £100 on account and the rest later on,” every wise person having anything to do with finance would say, “All right, I will take the £100 now and the rest as soon as you can let me have it.”
Women are naturally becoming very indignant with the Budget, which has put Women’s Income Tax up to 1s. 2d. in the £.
Before the war we only paid 6d. Women had nothing to do with the causes involving increased taxation, and yet we now have to pay 1s. 2d.
Income-Tax Courtesy.
Here I have one of Mr. Lloyd George’s wonderful forms, with its numerous questions, to answer which intelligently I should require, apparently, the training of a lawyer and surveyor, and a fund of universal knowledge which I do not possess.
I am asked to answer those questions, but am not considered fit to vote for a member of Parliament.
This Form is addressed to me because I have a little freehold property, but it starts off with “Sir.”
I am sending it back, pointing our that I must be addressed as “Madam,” and not “Sir,” and that as I have not vote, I do not see what this matter has to do with me.
If you think of it, it is rather an insult to all women property holders to be addressed as “Sir,” and not by their proper title of courtesy.
The State seems to take for granted that there can be no free women or women freeholders in the country, but that all the land must be owned by men.
The Women’s Freedom League for the last three years has preached and practised tax resistance as a protest against unenfranchisement.
It is, therefore, very gratifying that the sister militant society has now decided, in the event of the Conciliation Bill not becoming law this session, also to adopt this form of protest.
It is to be hoped that the Women’s Tax Resistance League will succeed in persuading all the other Suffrage Societies to unite on this logical policy of refusing supplies until our grievance is redressed.
A number of members of the Women’s Tax Resistance and Men’s League rallied at Messrs.
Harding’s sale-rooms, Wilton-street, Victoria, , to support Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan in her protest on behalf of unrepresented tax-payers.
A diamond ring has been impounded, and was the first item on the catalogue.
Mrs. Fagan took advantage of the opportunity afforded to make a very telling statement of her position in respect of paying for the upkeep of unrepresentative government.
The ring was brought in by Miss [Gertrude?]
Eaton, and the “protestors” repaired to a handy pitch, where a street-corner meeting was held at which Mr. Sergeant presided, and Mrs. Fagan spoke again from a dog-cart decorated with the brown and black of the W.T.R.L. Mrs. Fagan called attention to the fact that she was not an habitual offender by stating that her recent appearance before Mr. Fordham was the first, and that it was the women who were not in such urgent need of the vote who were coming out to fight for the right to help the others.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes made one of her lucid and logical appeals, and the following resolution was passed:— “That this meeting protests against the seizure and sale of Mrs. Louis Fagan’s goods, and is of opinion that the tax-paying women of this country are justified in refusing to pay all Imperial taxes until they are allowed a voice in deciding how those large sums of money shall be spent.”
The light relief was supplied by an irate dame who scolded Mrs. Fagan for not keeping to her place “in the home,” which brought down on her devoted but misguided head the remark that if that was how she felt, it was strange that she should not be there herself instead of at the meeting.
Sold at the Cross.
A “roup” was held at Mercat Cross of the seized goods of Dr. Grace Cadell, of Leith-walk, Edinburgh, who is also “out” against taxation without representation.
Dr. Cadell and her friends arrived on the scene of action in a decorated dray, and a large crowd assembled, which was addressed at the sale and at a subsequent meeting in Parliament-square, by the undaunted resister, and by Miss M. Burn Murdock.
To-Day’s Sale.
Mrs. Fyffe’s goods will be sold for Tax Resistance , at Whiteley’s Auction Rooms, Westbourne-grove, about A procession will start at from Roxburghe Mansion, Kensington-court, to Westbourne-grove, where a Protest Meeting will be held at the corner of Chepstow-place, and the speakers will be Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Louis Fagan, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Rev. Charles Baumgarten (Rector of St. George’s, Bloomsbury), and Mr. Laurence Housman, if he arrives in time from the North.
Mrs. Fyffe hopes that all who can will come and walk with her and attend the meeting and sale.
Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.
…
At the monthly meeting of the Executive Committee of the Men’s League the following resolution was passed on the motion of Dr. Drysdale, seconded by Mr. J.M. Mitchell:—
“The Executive Committee of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage desires to record its sympathy with Mr. Mark Wilks in his imprisonment, and to point out that this imprisonment is the logical outcome of the law of coverture and of the non-recognition of women as responsible citizens.
In the interests, therefore, of men as well as women, it calls for the immediate enfranchisement of women, and for such alteration of the law as shall put women on an equality with men, as regards both the rights and duties of citizenship and responsibility before the law.”
The employment of tax-resistance as a method of protest against disenfranchisement appears to be due, in the first instance, to Miss Charlotte Babb, whose goods were distrained upon in the early days of the suffrage agitation thirteen times because she refused to pay Imperial taxes.
Following her heroic persistence, there was a series of isolated resistances to taxation by unrepresented women, of whom the best known are Miss Henrietta Müller and the Misses [Anna Maria and Mary] Priestman, of Bristol, who resisted taxation about , and Mrs. [Dora] Montefiore, whose final resistance in gave occasion for the famous six weeks’ siege of her house at Hammersmith.
There were other individual instances as well as these, but the Women’s Freedom League in made the first organised attempt to run a definite tax-resistance campaign.
Instead of isolated instances we have now got a steadily-increasing body of yearly resisters, and the action of these women has been made use of to drive home to the public the concrete injustice of taxation without representation.
a Tax-Resistance League came into existence, confining itself to the development of this one line of protest.
This year, as a sign of further growth, the sister militant society has decided to adopt the tax-resistance policy as a means of bringing additional pressure upon the Government.
These signs of the progress of this very practical anti-Government action are good to see; but just at this moment they are particularly to be welcomed, for the National Executive of the League has just decided to adopt and develop a further line of tax-resistance, in which we hope all the societies approving this general policy will concur.
So far, the strength of the tax-resistance movement has rested with the women who were spinsters or widows; but the new line of action will make the married women a more effective agent of protest.
The most that can be done by the widow and spinster is to enter her protest, and thus delay the passing of her money into the Treasury.
Except in the case of Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard — which is exceptional — no widow or spinster has successfully withheld the contribution demanded of her by the State; but with married women this is possible.
She is enabled by the state of our present law not only to enter her protest, but actually to withhold her moneys, and so to deplete the Treasury coffers.
There are many anomalies with regard to married women upon our Statute Book, and a large number of them are due to the basic wrong done by our Common Law assumption that a married woman is the subject and property of her husband, having no independent existence apart from him.
In spite of the Married Woman’s Property Acts this assumption is still acted upon to-day, old laws that ought to have been rendered null and void by the passing of the Acts, which gave the married woman the control of her own property still remaining on the Statute Book, are being applied by the authorities.
The Income Tax Commissioners provide a case in point.
This legal inconsistency places the woman at a disadvantage, sometimes the man, but if it is dealt with in the right way in this case of Income Tax the Government itself can be made to bear the burden.
It is our duty as suffragists to take advantage of every opportunity which may offer.
Even when the initial cause of the opportunity is an insulting denial of the woman’s independence, we must still employ it.
We must make this very insult to us a means of attack upon the Government which denies us liberty.
We must turn the ridiculous survivals of coverture into weapons of enfranchisement.
The existing law so stands that married women can escape the payment of Imperial taxes.
Then let them take advantage of the law.
Let them organise a depletion of the Treasury.
Let them go tax free until women are enfranchised.
This is the new tax-resistance policy which we have adopted, and which we mean to spread throughout the land.
Let us examine the position.
The standard of Income Tax law is the Finance Act of , upon which all our present Inland Revenue procedure is based.
Section 45 of this Act deals with the position of married women, and declares that the income of a married woman living with her husband shall be deemed the income of the husband, and the same shall be charged in the name of the husband, and not in her name or of her trustee.
So stands the law for the protection of the wife.
The Income Tax authorities cannot legally apply to a married woman for the payment of any Imperial tax; they cannot cite her for non-payment, they cannot levy distraint upon her.
She is not liable to Income Tax in any form whatsoever while living with her husband.
The husband is legally liable for the taxes levied upon his wife’s income, whether earned or unearned, and generally, with her co-operation, he has been able to satisfy the Income Tax authorities as to the extent of that income, and to hand over to the same body the taxes with which she provided him in respect of the claim made upon her through him.
The authorities have been, as the man in the street would say, having it both ways.
They have refused to recognise or deal with the woman, and yet they have insisted upon her husband acting as their agent in levying taxes upon her; but all the time since they and the husband have been acting illegally.
The Married Woman’s Property Act took from the husband the old jus mariti by means of which he became possessor of all his wife’s goods and properties; it took away also his old right of administration of his wife’s property, and deprived him of any legal right to control, inquire into, or interfere with, his wife’s economic affairs.
Therefore, every time a husband, acting with the compulsion of the law behind him, compelled his wife to reveal the extent and nature of her income he was breaking a bigger law and a more recent law than the one which he was obeying.
The husband has no legal right of inquiry, no legal power of control, over the income of his wife.
He cannot be forced to do what is illegal.
He can make no return for his wife.
He cannot be assessed for payment of taxes on an income that he cannot declare.
The plan of campaign is unfolded, and it is only necessary to indicate the details of procedure.
These are simple.
When the demand for a statement of the wife’s income is made for the Government by the husband, the wife must refuse to supply any information, and must refer her husband to the Married Woman’s Property Act (England, ; Scotland, ).
This refusal and reference the husband will convey to the Revenue officials.
In all probability the form will be returned once or twice, and, finally, a form will be sent direct to the wife.
She will return this, calling the attention of the senders to the fact that she is a married woman living with her husband, and referring them to the Income Tax Act of , section 45. If both husband and wife stick firmly to their guns, the authorities would seem to be able to do nothing.
The law allows everyone who pays Income Tax to claim redress for any undue and illegal levy made during the last three years.
Therefore, a married woman’s payment during the last three years can be reclaimed, if she can prove that they were paid by herself or deducted from her personal income.
This course should be followed wherever moneys are paid out by trustees and agents, or deducted from interest on investments.
By this means not only this year’s taxes, but a portion of previous years’, can be withdrawn from the Treasury.
The cumulative effect of this additional development of the tax-resistance campaign and the new impetus given to the old lines of resistance should go some considerable distance towards convincing the Chancellor of the Exchequer that women are preferable as allies and peaceful enfranchised citizens than as an army of sharpshooters interfering constantly with the smooth conduct of his financial army.
This is our plan.
Why pay taxes?
Married women, respond!
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, held a very large gathering .
A part of her long and interesting speech was taken up in pointing out to the audience how we women could obstruct the Government by refusing to pay the Imperial taxes.
She was listened to with deep attention, and many questions were asked.…
No Vote, No Tax.
— “It was mentioned on at the Suffragist demonstration in Alexandria Park, Manchester, that many of the lady Suffragists have refused to fill up their income tax forms, or to answer the urgent notices posted to them in consequence.
This plan is to be carried out all over the country as a protest against taxation without representation.”
— Manchester Evening Chronicle.
Several married women Suffragists, acting on the advice of Mrs. E[thel].
Ayres Purdie, the only woman income tax expert, were able last year to
withhold moneys from the Treasury. So strong is the law in favour of the
position we take up that a case is now in hand to claim back the moneys
taken in taxation from a married woman during the last three years. The
legal inconsistency will provide us with an effective weapon.
Married women who have been separately taxed, or who have resisted taxation
and had their own goods seized in default should put their cases into Mrs.
Purdie’s hands. The law allows every one who pays income tax to claim
redress for any undue and illegal levy made during the last three years.
Therefore a married woman’s payments during the last three years can be
reclaimed if she can prove that they were paid by herself or deducted from
her personal income. This course should be followed wherever moneys are paid
out by trustees and agents, or deducted from interest on investments. By
this means not only this year’s taxes but a portion of previous years’ can
be withdrawn from the Treasury.
On morning Mrs. [Mary McLeod]
Cleeves appeared in the Swansea Police Court to answer a summons for keeping
a carriage without a license. Mrs. Cleeves made a clear and dignified
statement of her position, but the bench sentenced her to a fine of
10s. and costs, or in
default to seven days’ imprisonment! This alternative was evidently given in
the hope of frightening our Swansea Tax Resister into paying; for immediately
before her case was called an almost identical case was considered, the
defendant — a man — being called upon to pay
10s. and costs with no
alternative. However, Mrs. Cleeves was determined not to pay her fine and
was quite prepared to be taken off to prison at once. Mrs. Cleeves, Mr.
Hyde and I drove back to Sketty in the offending carriage. Later in the day
we heard through a solicitor that the Bench had made a slip regarding the
seven days and that a distraint warrant had been issued. Since then Mrs.
Cleeves has been beseiged by friends asking to be allowed to pay her fine;
but like a true Suffragette, she refused. And on
the police came to execute the
warrant, with orders from the Superintendent to take the carriage, which they
did with as little delay as possible. The warrant was issued for a guinea,
yet the officers of the law come along and seize a carriage valued at £30!
This is a piece of gross injustice. Whatever the motive that prompted it,
which most assuredly was not a friendly one, it has turned out to be the best
thing that could have happened. The newspapers took and published photographs
of the carriage being taken away, and gave splendid notices of this peaceful
protest. The Cambria Daily Leader says:—
“No Vote, No Tax!”
Swansea Suffragette at the Police Court.
At the Swansea Police Court , Mrs.
Mary Cleeves, Chez Nous, Sketty, was summoned for having a carriage without
a license.
Sergeant Thomas, Sketty, said he called at defendant’s house and asked if
she had a license. She replied, “No,” and she didn’t intend to take one
out. “No vote, no tax!” (Laughter.) The officer told Mrs. Cleeves he would
have to report her.
Clerk: And you have seen Mrs. Cleeves use the carriage?
Witness: Yes, sir.
Before this occasion? — Yes, almost daily.
Clerk (to Mrs. Cleeves): Have you any question to ask witness?
Mrs. Cleeves: No; I perfectly agree with what he has said.
Clerk: Have you any statement to make?
Mrs. Cleeves: As a matter of principle I have decided to pay no Imperial
tax till I get the vote.
Chairman (after consultation with the clerk): This can’t be called an
Imperial tax, Mrs. Cleeves, because the local authorities get the benefit.
However, we won’t say anything about that. An offence has been committed
and proved. You will be fined
10s. and costs, or in
default seven days.
Clerk: Seventeen shillings in all, Mrs. Cleeves.
Mrs. Cleeves: I refuse to pay.
Chairman: You had better consider the matter: I’ve hinted to you that I
think you may relieve your conscience a great deal when I say that this is
not an Imperial tax.
Mrs. Cleeves sat down where defendants usually sit who cannot or will not
pay the fine.
Clerk: No, you can go, Mrs. Cleeves.
Thanking the Clerk, Mrs. Cleeves retired, and the Clerk observed to the
Inspector: “Issue a distress warrant.”
On morning all Swansea opened its
eyes in amazement and admiration. The good people of the town are used to
seeing Mrs. Cleeves drive about in her carriage. On Saturday they saw her
driving, not her carriage — that is in the hands of the police — but her
cart. Everyone looked, everyone smiled, and everyone talked of the
Suffragette Tax Resister. One vehicle we passed on the road was full of women
who, on catching sight of Mrs. Cleeves in her cart, called out: “Well done,
ma’am!” Many another smiled encouragement, and we may fairly say that Swansea
is thoroughly roused by this last instance of Governmental tyranny. Now we
are waiting to hear when the sale will take place, and we shall hold protest
meetings all over Swansea. The Cambria Daily
Leader has a paragraph headed “Mrs. Cleeve’s Resource,” in which it
says that:
Notwithstanding the loss of her vehicle she was
seen driving about in a market
cart.
On night Mrs. Cleeves, Mr. Hyde
and I drove drove over to Llanelly and held a meeting in the Town Hall
Square. On we had a magnificent
meeting at Briton Ferry. There was very great interest and enthusiasm shown
in our work. At the close of the meeting we received quite an ovation — a rare thing here in Wales. Many pamphlets and
Votes were sold, and no less than seventy-four
postcards signed. These postcards are to Mr. Lloyd George asking him to
withdraw his opposition to the Conciliation Bill. Here again friends rallied
round and asked us to return on , for two meetings which they will advertise. Wherever we have been
with our cards friends have written asking for a packet to get signed amongst
their fellow-workers. Our Post Card Campaign in Wales has opened
successfully, and we hope this augurs well for the future.
A very successful drawing-room meeting was held on the evening of
, when
Dr. Lewin kindly invited
members of the above league to meet at 25, Wimpole-street, and in spite of
the stormy night her spacious rooms were crowded.
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson presided, and in a forcible little speech urged
the members to redouble their efforts to make this very logical form of
protest known amongst their tax-paying friends. Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard was
the speaker, and her eloquent address was listened to with the deepest
attention and admiration. She threw quite a new sidelight upon the somewhat
prosy subject of taxation by showing how men were giving themselves body and
soul to the piling up of gold and how commercialism was spoiling all that was
best in our nation. Women then, observing this, must attack the stronghold,
and see to it that John Bull’s money-bags were not so easily filled in the
future, as they would assuredly not be if the money of the women taxpayers
is withheld. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes dealt with the business of the
league, and members signed pledge cards to signify which Imperial taxes they
would resist if the Conciliation Bill does not become law this Session.
An interesting discussion followed, and the collection amounted to £27.
At the Garden City.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, by
kind invitation of Miss Stephen Strong, held two most successful meetings at
Letchworth Garden City on .
She pointed out how needful it is to grasp the present opportunity of pushing
on the Conciliation Bill. She called attention to the continued injustice to
women by asking them to contribute imperial money where they had no voice in
its spending. She further urged that much had been said about indiscriminate
charity and the harm it did, yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer placed women
in the childish position of being responsible without an atom of authority.
Many of us had much too alarming ideas as to what would personally happen did
we become so courageous as to resist the tax — should we be sold up, should
we be imprisoned? for in spite of Mr. Winston Churchill’s less severe rules
than those imposed by Mr. Herbert Gladstone, prison has its horrors. Mrs.
Parkes allayed these natural fears by stating that articles to the value of
the required (unjust) tax are taken away and auctioned.
We had a capital meeting; converts were gained, earnest questioners were
satisfactorily answered, subscriptions flowed in, and a spirit of
determination took the place of uncertain fears and hesitation. Many ladies
pledged themselves to resist by filling up cards for that purpose.
Miss Lee, “Thistledown,” 2, Norton-way, Letchworth, Herts., will be glad to
give information and distribute literature.
From the edition of New Zealand’s Evening Post:
Suffragette’s Unpaid Income Tax
Husband Sent to Prison
As he refused to pay “duty and costs,” amounting to over £37, due as tax on his wife’s income, Mr. Mark Wilks, assistant schoolmaster at a Stepney school, was arrested and taken to Brixton prison.
His wife, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, has a much larger income than he, but she is a suffragist and a member of the committee of the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Her husband agrees with her contention that tax resistance is the best way of protesting against the voteless condition of women, and therefore he has refused to pay her income tax.
Several times distraints have been levied, but when bailiffs recently called for this purpose they were informed that the furniture belonged to Mrs. Wilks.
A curious point is that although according to the Married Women’s Property Act a woman’s property is entirely out of the control of the husband, he is still liable for her income tax.
Mrs. Parkes, of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, said, on being interviewed, that the law provides that the person in prison has to remain in custody till the debt is paid.
As Mr. Wilks would never pay, he would have to remain in custody for ever.
The Worship of Athene. — Miss Katherine Raleigh’s lecture on this subject will be of unusual interest, and affords a welcome opportunity for hearing a gifted lecturer on Greek art and mythology.
The proceeds will be given to the Women’s Tax Resistance League, of which Miss Raleigh is a member.
Remember the date, , Caxton Hall; chair to be taken by Dr. Marie Stopes at
On Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes gave an address on the subject of taxation at the Putney and Fulham Branch of the W.S.P.U., and on Mrs. Diplock gave a drawing-room meeting at Putney-park-avenue.
The Rev. Eliza Wilkes, of California, was in the chair; the speakers were Mrs. Sadd Brown and Mrs. Parkes.
On both occasions great interest was manifested and new tax resisters were enrolled as members of the League.
Hon. Secretary: Miss
[Mary] Hare, 8, San Remo, Hove
Members of the Freedom League in Brighton and Hove are taking interest in
the Tax Resistance Meeting, to be held in the Hove Town Hall on Wednesday,
Mrs. [Caroline] Fagan and Mrs.
[Margaret] Kineton Parkes will speak, and Miss Hare will take the chair. It
is hoped that there will be a good attendance, as all are welcome.
On , a crowd of
Suffragists of all shades of opinion assembled at Hawking’s Sale Rooms,
Lisson-grove, Marylebone, to support
Dr. Frances Ede and
Dr. Amy Sheppard, whose goods
were to be sold by public auction for tax resistance. By the courtesy of the
auctioneer, Mr. Hawking, speeches were allowed, and
Dr. Ede emphasized her
conscientious objection to supporting taxation without representation; she
said that women like herself and her partner felt that they must
make this logical and dignified protest, but as it caused very considerable
inconvenience and sacrifice to professional women, she trusted that the grave
injustice would speedily be remedied. Three cheers were given for the
doctors, and a procession with banners marched to Marble Arch, where a brief
meeting was held in Hyde Park, at which the usual resolution was passed
unanimously.
On , Mrs. [Kate]
Harvey, of “Brackenhill,” Highland-road, Bromley, Kent, gave a most
successful drawing-room meeting to a new and appreciative audience. Mrs.
Harvey, who is a loyal supporter of Tax Resistance and had a quantity of her
household silver sold in , took this
opportunity of placing before her friends and neighbours the many reasons
which led her to take this action. Mr. Laurence Housman was the principal
speaker, and gave an address of deep interest and instruction on Tax
Resistance from a historical standpoint. Mrs. Louis Fagan presided, and made
an eloquent appeal for sympathy and support for this phase of the Suffrage
movement, and short speeches were also made by Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson
and Mrs. Kineton Parkes. Sales are expected in Reading and Holborn during the
coming week.
There is a piquancy which women tax-resisters will not fail to appreciate, in the declaration of Mr. Lloyd George that he is really one of their growing company — have not the Unionist business men in Belfast joined in?
Can it be a result of the tax-resistance campaign now gathering strength in his own Principality, or is it the first indication of an intention to deal fairly with women over that million and a-half sterling which the Treasury conveniently pockets?
Those who live will see.
The “John Bright” Tradition: No Taxation Without Representation.
For a Liberal Government which has repeatedly declared that there must be “No Taxation without Representation” to discover the grandson of John Bright amongst the tax resisters, must be seriously discomforting.
Mrs. Clark, of Street, Somerset, wife of Mr. Roger Clark, grandson on his mother’s side of John Bright, is a member of the old constitutional society for Woman Suffrage, but is also a strong believer in the “No Vote No Tax” policy of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, considering that so long as women are taxed and refused representation it is their duty to make this constitutional protest against injustice.
She, therefore, refused to pay her Income-tax, but was told that though the income was hers, her husband was the person liable to pay the tax.
Mr. Clark, inheriting the “John Bright” tradition, upheld his wife in her determination to demonstrate that, as far as she was concerned, there should be “No Taxation without Representation”!
A silver jug and an Indian rose-bowl were taken to satisfy the claim of the law, and were sold by public auction on at the Crispinian Hall, Street.
There was a crowded audience, and the auctioneer opened the proceedings by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his capacity as tax collector.
After the sale a public meeting was held, presided over by Mr. Roger Clark, at which Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, organising secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance League spoke, emphasising the constitutional character of tax resistance, and insisting that a nation which approved the action of John Hampden by erecting statues to his memory must also approve the action which tax-paying women are taking to protest against unrepresentative Government.
At the close of the meeting many questions were asked, new members joined the League, and the following resolution was passed with enthusiasm, and only one dissentient:
“That this meeting is of opinion that women tax-payers are justified in refusing to pay all Imperial taxes until they are granted the same control over national expenditure as male tax-payers possess.”
A further and most startling piece of news has come to hand.
In Belfast last week 5,000 men of business came to a “momentous decision.”
They have pledged themselves to “keep back payment of all taxes which they can control, so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill is persevered in.”
It would almost seem as if these “hard-headed” men of business who represent £144,000,000 of capital, and who, we learn, are ready to risk the loss of everything, had taken a leaf out of the book of the “wild and evil spirits” whose contumacy they deplore.
But that to which we desire here to draw special attention is the extraordinary lack of any sort of principle on the part of those who govern us.
Women who persist in tax-resistance are imprisoned, and treated with the harshest rigour that the law permits; no recognition of motive; no first division; no permission, except under strict regulation, to see friends; one man is imprisoned for asking soldiers not to shoot their brothers — this in a civilised and Christian country; two or three others because they preached resistance against intolerable trade conditions, exposed the wickedness of the mere money-mongers, and advised hunger-stricken people not to pay rent until the industrial dispute was at an end.
Other people meanwhile conspire to break the laws, should they not be to their liking, threaten armed resistance, and actually drill and organise a provisional citizen-army and government, and, so far from imprisoning and torturing them, the authorities speak them fair, invite them to confer, and hint at a possible compromise.
[Our readers will be specially interested in the following account by Mrs. Ayers Purdie of her successful appeal against the Inland Revenue authorities.]
I desire it to be clearly understood that the following narrative is not an extract from Alice in Wonderland, neither is it a scene out of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera.
It is a simple and faithful account of a successful Income-Tax appeal which was heard at Durham on .
The appellant was a Suffragist, belonging to the Women’s Tax-Resistance League and the Women’s Social and Political Union.
I was conducting the case for the appellant, which I am legally entitled to do under Section 13 of the Revenue Act, 1903.
Dramatis Personæ
The dramatis personæ are as follows: Two Commissioners of Taxes, elderly gentlemen, inclining, like all their kind, to baldness; spectacled of course; one of them wearing his spectacles high on his forehead, and looking out at me from under his eyebrows with a pair of piercing eyes.
These gentlemen hear appeals under the Income-Tax Acts, and are the judges therein.
Their decision is absolutely final, except on a point of law, in which case a further appeal may be made to the High Court.
To continue the list, there is also the Clerk to the Commissioners, who is a solicitor, member of a well-known North-country firm.
His business is to record everything, and to help the Commissioners on knotty legal questions; and, finally, the Surveyor of Taxes, who conducts the case for the Crown.
Opposed to all these learned gentlemen are my client and myself.
Unlike all other cases, in which the plaintiff or appellant has the opening and closing of the case, the procedure in these appeals is reversed; the Crown has the first and the last word, which puts a handicap on the appellant.
Accordingly the Surveyor of Taxes is invited to open the proceedings with a statement of his case; and he sets forth that Dr. Alice Burn, of Sunderland, Assistant Medical Inspector for the County of Durham, is receiving an official salary of so much per annum, and, though she has a husband, he lives in New Zealand, according to her own admission, so an assessment has been made on her salary and the Surveyor claims that he is fully entitled to do so.
Then it is my turn to put my case, and I freely admit all the facts as stated by the Surveyor, but challenge the conclusion he has drawn from them; my case being that by Section 45 of the Income-Tax Act of 1842 Dr. Burn cannot be held liable for the tax.
The solicitor reads this section aloud to the Commissioners.
Most women are familiar, since the famous [Elizabeth & Mark] Wilks episode, with the words on which I am relying.
They are, “the profits (i.e., income) of any married woman living with her husband shall be deemed the profits of the husband, and shall be charged in the name of the husband, and not in her name.”
One of the Commissioners asks in whose name was Dr. Burn’s salary assessed, and is told that it has been charged in her own name.
Geographical Separation.
The Surveyor, invited to offer any arguments or evidence to support his case, says that as Dr. Burn is here and Mr. Burn is in New Zealand, she cannot be living with him.
I argue, as against this, that the case really involves a point of law as to what is meant or implied by the words “living with her husband;” that these words must be interpreted strictly in accordance with their legal signification, and therefore I shall contend that my client lives with her husband in the legal sense, though I fully admit the geographical separation.
This term, “geographical separation,” seems to strike one of the Commissioners very forcibly; he repeats it with much relish, adding, “Yes, I can see what you mean, and I suppose you will say that the Crown cannot take any cognisance of a mere geographical separation.
Quite so.”
Apparently he thinks this is a good point, and he glances towards the solicitor, as if wondering how in the world they will get over it.
By this time both Commissioners, who started with the expression of men about to be frightfully bored, have become thoroughly alert and impressed; and the Surveyor appears to realise that his task will nt be such an easy one as he anticipated.
He becomes slightly nervous and confused, a little inclined to bluster, and to take the matter personally, which causes him sometimes to contradict himself and to refute his own arguments.
Being now invited to consider the point about “the geographical separation,” he declines to have anything to do with it, and strenuously denies that any point of law is involved.
He absolutely refuses to consider the matter from this standpoint, and declares that the Commissioners do not take the legal aspect into account in forming their decision.
According to him, this case is purely one of fact, and what the Commissioners have to do is to consider the actual fact, and nothing else.
He knows that if a woman’s husband is at the other side of the world she is not living with him in actual fact, and therefore cannot be said to be living with him at all.
Impertinent Questions
Asked by me to state on what authority he bases this last assertion, he says that he bases it on his own authority; and on his own common-sense.
This leads me to inquire how it happened that, being so fully convinced that my client was not living with her husband, he yet had written to her asking her to furnish him with her husband’s name, address, occupation, the amount of his income, &c. He begs this question by complaining that her reply had been that she could not tell him her husband’s address; and, of course, if a woman could not give her husband’s address it was perfectly plain that she could not be living with him.
I point out that this does not follow, and one of the Commissioners mildly suggests that my client shall explain why she made this reply.
She readily answers that her primary reason was indignation at his questions.
The Commissioner, who seems to be rather human, and quick at grasping things, remarks, “Ah, I see.
You thought he had asked you a lot of impertinent questions, and that was your method of showing your resentment.
Very natural, I’m sure.”
The Surveyor being apparently unprepared with any further argument or evidence beyond the assertion of his own common-sense, it is again my innings.
I take up the tale by reference to the decision in Shrewsbury v. Shrewsbury, which showed that the Crown can only claim to levy tax on spinsters, widows, or femes soles, and my client does not correspond to any one of these descriptions.
I quote precedents set by the Inland Revenue Department on other occasions; as witness the successful objection made to taxation by Miss Decima Moore, Miss Constance Collier, and sundry other ladies, whose circumstances were precisely the same as those of my client.
The Surveyor pretends to be too dense to understand how those ladies whose names I have mentioned could have husbands, and has to have it all minutely explained to him before he is convinced.
A Commissioner asks if I can give any other instances, and I reply, “I am an instance myself, if that will do.
My husband’s business compels him to live in Hampshire, while my own business equally compels me to live in London; but no Surveyor of Taxes has ever ventured to assess me, or to insinuate that I am a feme-sole.
Perhaps you will tell me that I do not live with my husband,” I gently suggest to the present Surveyor of Taxes, who looks as if nothing would give him greater satisfaction if he only dared, but he does not offer to accept this invitation, and the Commissioner hastily says, “I think we are now quite satisfied on the question of precedents.”
I am then proceeding to state that the Crown has itself embodied the correct attitude towards married women in one of the forms issues from Somerset House, in which reference is made to the treatment of “a married woman permanently separated from her husband,” when the Surveyor interrupts — “Are you giving that as evidence?”
“Yes, I am,” I reply.
“Then I shall object to it,” he says.
“I deny that there is any Revenue form having such words upon it, and I object to that statement being received as evidence.”
“As he repudiates the existence of this form, I fear we must uphold his objection,” says the Commissioner apologetically to me.
“Oh,” I exclaim, affecting to be greatly dismayed, “this really was my strongest point.
Do you mean to say you will not admit it because you have not this form before you?”
“I am afraid we cannot, if the Surveyor persists in his objection.
As you see, he is also making avery strong point of it,” is the reply.
The Surveyor intimates that he will persist.
“Very well,” I say, in a tone of resignation to the inevitable; and then there is a short and uncomfortable pause.
The Surveyor looks pleased, as though he fancies he has scored at last.
The other three appear to sympathise with me; even my client begins to look apprehensive, as if she fears I am done for.
Because (as she tells me subsequently) she also thinks I cannot produce this thing, and that I have only been bluffing.
Piece de Resistance
But I make a sudden dive down to my satchel, which lies open on the floor at my feet, and where, unseen by anybody else, the disputed form (No. 44A) has been lying in wait; my last act, before I left London, having been to equip myself with this most important document.
It is laid in front of the Commissioners, and they and the solicitor stare very hard at it, shake their heads over it, and murmur to one another, “Yes, it says so, right enough,” and “This settles it, don’t you think?”
When they have quite done with it, the Surveyor has his turn, and he pounces upon it, examines it intently, up and down, and all round, as if to convince himself that there is no deception, and that it is not a conjuring trick.
(I must do him the justice to say that I honesty believe he has never seen or heard of this form before, as it is very little used.)
It is now fairly evident that my pièce de résistance, No. 44A, has clinched the business, as I knew it must, and that my case is as good as won.
But the Surveyor starts off desperately on a fresh tack.
“Even if those words are on this form,” he says, in portentious tones, “it does not follow that what is stated on official forms is necessarily in accordance with law.”
“I quite agree with you there,” is my cordial reply.
“If everything that is contrary to law were to be eliminated from the form, there would be very little left.
But you may take it that the part I am relying on is perfectly good law,” and I glance toward the solicitor, who nods his assent.
“Then I shall maintain that you cannot reply upon what any form says, because the Board of Inland Revenue can at any moment alter the wording of a form,” says the Surveyor.
“Yes, the Board always have the power to vary the forms when they think fit,” echo the Commissioners.
“But they have not yet altered this one,” I object, “and you cannot raise a valid argument against it by simply saying that it might be something different if it did not happen to be what it is.
The Board have put these words on this form to serve some particular purpose of their own; and it so happens that it equally suits my purpose to make use of them here and now.
It is ‘up to you’ to decide this case in one way or the other; but the Crown is not going, as hitherto, to claim to have things both ways.”
“Both ways, indeed,” laughs one of the Commissioners.
“Why, the Crown will have it three ways, if it is possible.”
“And I am here to show the Crown that it is not possible,” I retort.
The Surveyor is disinclined further to contest the validity of Form No. 44A; but the solicitor seems to be uneasy, as if he feels that the Crown is losing prestige, and that somebody must make the running for it.
So he starts to read an obscure and wearisome section of the Income-Tax Act relating to “foreigners” coming to reside in this country!
Ethel Ayers Purdie.
(To be continued.)
I’ll post the second part of the above article on .
After inexplicable delays, the representatives of the Law have finally made up their minds to wrestle with the case of Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight.
On , the Hon. Treasurer of the League received a call from a gentleman who embodied in his person the might, majesty and power of the London County Council, and the Court of Petty Sessions, and showed a desire to annex Dr. Knight’s property in lieu of the £2 5s. which she declines to pay.
It is hardly necessary to tell readers of The Vote that he got very little satisfaction out of his visit, seeing that no fine was forthcoming, no property could be seized, and no information was vouchsafed.
After some slight altercation, and an almost pathetic attempt at persuasion, in neither of which was any advantage gained, the Law retired, to return at some future period (unstated) with a warrant for the arrest of the smiling culprit, who declined, in accordance with the attitude taken up by the Women’s Freedom League, to furnish any information or facilities to the agents of the Government.
Miss Janet Bunten, whose goods were seized in Glasgow at twenty-four hours’ notice, was absent from home with the women marchers at the time that the Government executed its mandate for the distraint.
We are glad to be able to say that a staunch friend of Miss Bunten’s, who belongs to the Women’s Social and Political Union — some of whose members were in the same plight — bought in the goods for her.
Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Last week Mrs. Kineton Parkes spoke at Manchester and Leeds, and on Mrs. [Caroline] Fagan spoke at Woking on the subject of Tax Resistance.
New members joined the League at each place.
On , a Tax Resistance meeting was held under the auspices of the Hampstead W.S.P.U., and was presided over by Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd Brown.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes and Mr. Mark Wilks were the speakers.
Particulars appear in another column [sic] of the Caxton Hall Reception, on , to Mr. Mark Wilks.
Great interest will also be attached to the account of the case of Dr. Alice Burn, Medical Officer of Health for the County of Durham.
Mrs. Ayers Purdie appeared for her in Durham, and won our case against the Inland Revenue — a notable triumph for the Cause.
The Women’s Tax Resistance will join the Marchers at Camden-town on and proceed with the John Hampden Banner to Trafalgar-square.
“If anyone fears that he has not courage to go to prison he will soon find, when he is inside, that one of its peculiar characteristics is to produce a determination and courage undreamed of to resist, not its discipline, which is a farce, but its tyranny, which oppresses the weak, and vanishes like the mist before the strong.”
— Mark Wilks
Two meetings; the same hall; the same man as the centre of interest; yet what a difference!
In , Mr. Mark Wilks was in prison, and the Caxton Hall rang with the indignant demand for his release.
In Mr. Mark Wilks was on the platform, and the Caxton Hall rang with enthusiastic appreciation of his service to the Woman’s Cause.
“It is fitting that on this memorable day, when the Government has been defeated in the House of Commons, that we should meet to celebrate the defeat of the Government by Mr. Mark Wilks,” said Mr. Pethick Lawrence.
One had only to scan the platform and glance round the hall on to note that the Women’s Tax Resistance League has the power to call together men and women determined to do and to suffer in order to win the legal badge of citizenship for women and the amending of unjust laws.
Mr. Wilks and his brave wife, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, had a fine reception, and their speeches were clear, straight challenges to all to carry on the fight.
“We must never tire,” said Dr. Wilks, as she showed the injustice of the working of the income tax methods of collection, and told heartrending stories of the betrayal of young girls, “until we have won sex equality.”
“If anyone fears that he has not courage to go to prison he will soon find, when he is inside, that one of its peculiar characteristics is to produce a determination and courage undreamed of to resist, not its discipline, which is a farce, but its tyranny, which oppresses the weak, and vanishes like the mist before the strong.”
Thus, Mr. Mark Wilks; and, having been inside himself, he declared that he was most anxious that Captain Gonne should enjoy a similar experience, because he is resisting taxation, largely on account of the White Slave Traffic.
“They seized an obscure man; let the important ones be seized.
They did not know you were behind me; we will show the one or two men who really stand for the great scheme we call ‘Government,’ that we are behind Captain Gonne.
I have been inside and know how to do it.
Play the band and cheer.
The effect is electric!”
Mr. Robert Cholmely, M.P., from the chair, blessed the Tax Resistance movement; Mr. Pethick Lawrence acclaimed it as part of a militant policy against a Government which abandons its Liberal principles and finds itself defeated; Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard rejoiced that the best men were standing by the women; Mrs. Cobden Sanderson pleaded for more recruits for the League to help it to find more Mark Wilks; Miss Bensusan and Miss Decima Moore delighted and amused everyone by their recitations of imaginary Antis and real tax collectors.
A notable gathering on a notable day.
A small but representative gathering of old friends of the Tax Resistance League met at the house of Miss Gertrude Eaton, 3, Gloucester-walk, Kensington, on , to wish God-speed to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, prior to her departure for Dunedin, New Zealand — whither all our best wishes will follow her, a little enviously, perhaps, for in these sad days many of us would welcome the chance of starting afresh in a new land of sunshine and blue skies!
The meeting was partly of a business nature (Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson presiding) to talk over sundry affairs of the League, before its indefatigable and indomitable secretary took leave of these shores.
The most important announcement from the chair was that Mrs. Kineton Parkes had written a book, the manuscript of which she is leaving with the Committee of the League.
It is a brief history of the tax resistance movement in Great Britain, and a record of the work done by the Women’s Tax Resistance League in helping to win the Parliamentary vote for women.
The members present welcomed this news with great enthusiasm, and a publishing committee was formed to see the book through the press when the right moment comes.
Many letters of regret were sent by friends unable to be present, all joining in heartiest good wishes to Mrs. Kineton Parkes for health, happiness and prosperity.
Nothing daunted, Mrs. Kate Harvey, of Bromley, has plunged into the fray again.
In default of payment, the tax-collectors have once more broken the barricades at Brackenhill, and ear-marked goods for a forced sale.
An ingenious plan of protection had been devised and carried out, and the King’s officers wrestled with the fortifications for two hours before an entry was effected by means of a battering-ram!
The sale will take place on , and all friends and members who will give their support at the protest should hasten to send their names in to Headquarters.
It is probable that the sale will be on the premises, as for some reason or other the authorities appear nervous about the prospect of a disturbance if the affair is held in a more public spot.
As the protests of Mrs. Harvey are now recognised and appreciated at their true value by the people of Bromley, we have no difficulty in interpreting the nervousness as a fear that too great a demonstration of sympathy for the “offender” might make the task of the officials even more thankless than usual.
Miss Lena Ashwell addressed a crowded audience at the Suffrage Club, St. James’s, , under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Mrs. [Caroline] Louis Fagan presided.
Miss Ashwell said that taxation was the thing on which men succeeded in getting the vote, yet women had been constantly told that they had nothing to do with taxation.
With her peculiar charm she gave account of her interview with Mr. Lloyd George when, with other members of the League, she stated her position under the Income Tax Act.
“I had heard that this most charming and unreliable of men had the power to convince you of his own point of view, whatever your previous attitude.
I therefore took the precaution to write down all I meant to say.”
But all that the Chancellor of the Exchequer could say when pressed for amendments of the law, was that ‘the Treasury would lose by it!’ ” Miss Ashwell showed how hardly the Insurance Act dealt with the domestic servants, but it revealed a mass of misery among women hitherto unsuspected.
The Press accepted with callousness such facts as that a woman and child managed to live on 4s. a week.
“Women,” she added, “must organise as never before!”
On a drawing-room meeting was given at Harley-place by Dr. Handley Read and Dr. Constance Long, when Mr. Laurence Housman spoke on the necessity for Tax Resistance on the part of voteless women in order to make the Government realise the far-reaching spirit of revolt among all classes of women.
Speeches were also made by Dr. Constance Long, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parks, and Mr. Vernon Compton.
On , Mrs. Skipwith, who lent her drawing-room in Montagu-square and presided over the meeting, said she had twice resisted her taxes and felt that the protests had been very valuable to the Cause.
Miss Abadam was the speaker, and made a most earnest appeal to women to realise their enormous responsibility if they continued to subscribe money to the Government under existing conditions.
The December monthly meeting will be held on at the offices of the League, 10, Talbot House, 98, St. Martin’s-lane.
Miss Winifred Holiday will preside, and members who have successfully evaded payment of taxation will give their experiences.
Tea will be served at , and the meeting will begin at .
Members are invited to bring friends.
After many months of barricade, “Brackenhill” was broken into by the tax-collecting authorities, and “in the King’s name” the doors were battered in and Mrs. [Kate] Harvey’s goods were seized to cover the amount of taxes which she refuses to pay so long as no woman in the land has a voice in controlling the expenditure of the country.
The tax-collector wanted these goods to be disposed of peacefully, and therefore insisted that they should be sold on the premises and not in a public hall, as on a previous occasion.
On morning a band of Suffragist men carried placards through the streets of Bromley, on which was the device, “I personally protest against the sale of a woman’s goods to pay taxes over which she has no control,” and long before , the time fixed for the sale, from North, South, East and West, people came streaming into the little town of Bromley, and made their way towards “Brackenhill.”
Punctually at the tax-collector and his deputy mounted the table in the dining-room, and the former, more in sorrow than in anger, began to explain to the crowd assembled that this was a genuine sale!
Mrs. Harvey at once protested against the sale taking place.
Simply and solely because she was a woman, although she was a mother, a business woman, and a tax-payer, she had no voice in saying how the taxes collected from her should be spent.
The tax collector suffered this speech in silence, but he could judge by the cheers it received that there were many ardent sympathisers with Mrs. Harvey in her protest.
He tried to proceed, but one after another the men present loudly urged that no one there should bid for the goods.
The tax-collector feebly said this wasn’t a political meeting, but a genuine sale!
“One penny for your goods then!” was the derisive answer.
“One penny — one penny!” was the continued cry from both inside and outside “Brackenhill.”
Then men protested that the tax-collector was not a genuine auctioneer; he had no hammer, no list of goods to be sold was hung up in the room.
There was no catalogue, nothing to show bidders what was to be sold and what wasn’t.
The men also objected to the presence of the tax-collector’s deputy.
“Tell him to get down!” they shouted.
“The sale shan’t proceed till he does,” they yelled.
“Get down! Get down:” they sang.
But the tax-collector felt safer by the support of this deputy.
“He’s afraid of his own clerk,” they jeered.
Again the tax-collector asked for bids.
“One penny! One penny!” was the deafening response.
The din increased every moment and pandemonium reigned supreme.
During a temporary lull the tax-collector said a sideboard had been sold for nine guineas.
Angry cries from angry men greeted this announcement.
“Illegal sale!”
“He shan’t take it home!”
“The whole thing’s illegal!”
“You shan’t sell anything else!” and The Daily Herald Leaguers, members of the Men’s Political Union, and of other men’s societies, proceeded to make more noise than twenty brass bands.
Darkness was quickly settling in; the tax-collector looked helpless, and his deputy smiled wearily.
“Talk about a comic opera — it’s better than Gilbert and Sullivan could manage,” roared an enthusiast.
“My word, you look sick, guv’nor!
Give it up, man!”
Then everyone shouted against the other until the tax-collector said he closed the sale, remarking plaintively that he had lost £7 over the job!
Ironical cheers greeted this news, with “Serve you right for stealing a woman’s goods!”
He turned his back on his tormentors, and sat down in a chair on the table to think things over.
The protesters sat on the sideboard informing all and sundry that if anyone wanted to take away the sideboard he should take them with it!
With the exit of the tax-collector, his deputy and the bailiff, things gradually grew quieter, and later on Mrs. Harvey entertained her supporters to tea at the Bell Hotel.
But the curious thing is, a man paid nine guineas for the sideboard to the tax-collector.
Mrs. Harvey owed him more than £17, and Mrs. Harvey is still in possession of the sideboard!
In the Market-square in the evening Miss Boyle presided at a large and orderly meeting at which Mr. Mark Wilkes, Mr. Bell, Mr. Webber, Mr. Steer, and Mr. Jouning spoke.
The Tax Resistance banners mingled with those of the Women’s Freedom League, and the meeting was the event of evening at Bromley.
At the instigation of Mr. Webber enthusiastic cheers were given for Mrs. Harvey and the Cause, and Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, responding to an insistent call, wound up the meeting with a short speech.
At the Grand Concert Hall, Hastings, on night a public meeting was held under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, which created immense interest in the town owing to the recent decision by Judge Mackarness in favour of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies against the Mayor and Corporation of Hastings.
It will be remembered that owing to the Anti-Suffrage riots on , the authorities prohibited the protest meeting to be held that night, and it was the same mob which attacked the members of the National Union a few days later.
The postponed meeting of the Women’s Tax Resistance League was held night, and in the unavoidable absence of the Countess Brassey the chair was taken by Lady Isabel Hampden Margesson, a direct ascendant of John Hampden.
Lady Isabel, in her opening speech, fully vindicated the action of her historic ancestor, and illustrated by her well-chosen words and clearly expressed sentiments, that she is equally prepared to resist injustice and expose bad government.
Mr Laurence Housman, in a brilliant political speech, traced the constitutional history of Tax Resistance from Magna Charta to the present day, proving that only through refusing to submit to imposition have all great reforms been won.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, who was the other speaker, accused the Government of unconstitutional action in demanding taxation from a large section of the community from whom they withheld representation.
She also gave the moral reasons why women should demand the vote, and why they should also unite in protesting by the time honoured way of Tax Resistance against its continual denial.
At the close of the meeting the following resolution was carried with one dissentient:—
That this meeting is of opinion that women are justified in refusing to pay all Imperial taxes until they are granted the same control over national expenditure as male taxpayers possess.
It is satisfactory to know that there was adequate police protection.
It is stated on good authority that the Chief Constable was himself in attendance at this meeting, together with seventy members of the Force, and as many of these men were taken from night duty it caused the authorities a good deal of extra expense.
This police protection would have been more to the point if it had been in evidence in the streets of Hastings on .
On , Mrs. Kineton Parkes spoke at Bristol under the auspices of the New Constitutional Society, and on Wednesday, at Cardiff, under the Women’s Social and Political Union.
No Vote, No Dog License.
At the Assize Court, Kingston-on-Thames, on , Miss Isabelle Stewart, B.Sc., was summoned for non-payment of her dog license.
Defendant did not appear, but it was explained that she had declined to pay the tax on conscientious grounds.
As a suffragist she believed that it was unjust to tax women while they were unrepresented in Parliament.
She was accordingly fined £2 inclusive, and [as] it was stated that she would not pay a fine she considered unjust, distraint was ordered to be levied.
A number of sympathisers were in the Court, including Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who is refusing to pay the licences on her eight dogs.
A meeting was held by the Coronation Stone in the Market Square.
Miss M. Lawrence presided, pointing out that had Miss Stewart been a man she would have had two votes; as a woman she had none.
Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd Brown then addressed the crowd.
She commented on the treachery of a Government that had gone back on its principle of no taxation without representation and on the different forms of treatment meted out to Sir Edward Carson, Jim Larkin, and the Suffragists respectively.
The crowd throughout was sympathetic, and at the end of the meeting swarmed round the speaker and argued in an amicable way with her.
Mrs. Harvey’s Thanks.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League has received a very charming letter of thanks from Mrs. Harvey for the bouquet presented to her by Miss Clemence Housman on behalf of the League at the Caxton Hall Meeting on .
Mrs. Harvey sends through The Vote the following
message of thanks to all who were present at her sale. Our readers will be
interested in the sequel:—
To the Editor of The Vote.
Dear Madam, — As it was impossible for me personally to speak to
everyone who came to my sale on , will you allow me to express my heartfelt thanks to them
through the medium of your paper?
I have, after due consideration, sent the following letter to the Surveyor
of Taxes. This time I have allowed the authorities to score “partial
success” their next attempt will be “dead failure.” — Yours faithfully.
K. Harvey.
To the Surveyor of Taxes, Bromley.
Sir, — With reference to the sale of my goods here on
, in
consequence of distraint for non-payment of Inhabited House Duty: there is
a question as to the legality of the sale, but I have to-day told the
tax-collector that the buyer shall be allowed to remove his purchase. I
wish you clearly to understand that, although I can give no definite reason
at the moment, I still feel grave doubts concerning the sale and shall make
it my business to obtain clear knowledge upon this point and also to learn
why my house was broken into and my property destroyed with such
unnecessary violence.
I believe the tax-collector has to bear all losses, and I think
he has suffered enough for this time. — I am, yours truly,
K. Harvey.
A Message with a Meaning.
Mrs. Harvey writes further on :—
“I have just received the first demand note for this year’s taxes. I have
torn it up, put it in the envelope in which it came, and re-posted it to the
Tax Collector. I suppose it is now reposing in his rubbish basket.”
Protest by London Graduates.
We publish with pleasure the following letter of protest against Mrs.
Harvey’s treatment in prison, and warmly thank the seventy signatories
for the practical step they have taken:—
4, Brandon House, Mortimer-street,
W.
.
To the Editor of The Vote.
Madam, — I beg to forward for publication the following extracts from a
letter addressed to the Home Secretary, relating to the imprisonment in
Holloway, in , of Mrs.
Katherine Harvey, the well-known suffragists of Brackenhill, Bromley, Kent,
who was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment by the Bromley magistrates for
resistance of the license and insurance of her manservant, David Asquith.
The cell in which Mrs. Harvey was confined was maintained in so damp a
condition that her health was seriously affected.
The letter is signed by more than seventy graduates of the University of
London, and is accompanied by an affidavit made by Mrs. Harvey and a
certificate from her medical man.
Among the signatories are the following:—
Dr.
L. Garrett Anderson, Professor W.M. Bayliss,
F.R.S.,
Dr.
F.F. Blackman, F.R.S., Sir Edward Busk,
Lady Busk,
Dr.
R.W. Chambers,
Dr.
Alice M. Corthorn, Mr. Gerald Gould, Professor W.D. Halliburton,
F.R.S.,
Mr. P.J. Hartog, Sir Victor Horsley,
F.R.S.,
Mrs. Scharlieb,
M.D.,
Rev.
J.H. Shakespeare
Dr.
Barbara Tchaykovsky,
Dr.
Florence Willey. — I am, yours faithfully,
Frances Wood.
Extracts from the Letter to the Right
Hon. Reginald McKenna,
M.P.
We submit to you that to maintain a cell in so permanently wet a condition
that the prisoner contracts rheumatism and gastric catarrh is to inflict
additional suffering not contemplated by law. The case is one for prompt
and impartial inquiry, and we trust that you will order such inquiry to be
made and the results of that inquiry to be made public.
Our plea is made not only on behalf of Mrs. Harvey but of all prisoners
alike, in the name of common humanity and justice.
Drawing-room meetings were held on , the hostesses being Mrs. Webb, of West-hill, Sydenham, and Miss
K. Balfour, Victoria-road, Kensington, and Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes
spoke on both occasions. On Mrs.
Kineton Parkes spoke at Southampton, under the auspices of the National Union
of Women Suffrage Societies. On
also the monthly meeting was held at the League’s Offices. Miss Winifred
Holiday presided, and members gave their experiences of tax evasion.
Few places could seem so unpropitious as a field for Suffrage propaganda as Bromley, in spite of the constant presence of a Suffragist of the calibre of Mrs. [Kate] Harvey; yet, strange to say, the outcome of her protest meeting on Monday was more than gratifying, and the event must be chronicled as an unmitigated success.
By the skilful handling of Miss Munro, a dense crowd which threatened disorder settled down to listen in patience to four speeches of more than average excellence; and when at the close three cheers were raised for Mrs. Harvey, there was a definite show of goodwill and appreciation of the attitude and view which inspired the protest.
From early in the day Mrs. Huntsman and a noble band of sandwich-women had paraded the town announcing the sale and distributing leaflets.
In the afternoon a contingent of the Tax Resistance League arrived with the John Hampden banner and the brown and black pennons and flags.
These marched through the town and market square before entering the hall in which the sale and meeting were to be held, and which was decorated with the flags and colours of the Women’s Freedom League.
Mr. Croome, the King’s officer, conducted the sale in person, the goods sold being a quantity of table silver, a silver toilette set, and one or two other articles.
The prices fetched were trifling, Mrs. Harvey desiring that no one should buy the goods in for her.
Much hostility was displayed throughout the proceedings; and several Freedom Leaguers were of opinion that it was long since so much unpleasantness had been experienced as during the day’s campaign.
When the Inland Revenue vacated the rostrum and Miss [Anna] Munro took the chair, an ugly spirit appeared to possess the meeting for a few brief moments; but it was charmed away by the chairman’s tact and firmness, and an excellent and most courteous hearing was given to all the speakers — melting, towards the end, into real sympathy.
The first speech was from Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, in her most spirited style, winning a hearty meed of applause; and she was followed by Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, who has an admirable “way” with a crowd.
Miss [C. Nina] Boyle then spoke, provoking much amused laughter; and the last speaker, Miss Hicks, closed the “case for the defence” with a well-pointed and finely-balanced argument.
After that came questions, which Miss Munro dealt with in her usual adroit manner.
The audience departed well satisfied and good-humoured, and several new members were won.
Tea was served at Brackenhill after the meeting, a party of ten having been entertained to lunch earlier in the day by Mrs. Clarkson Swann.
In the forenoon Mrs. Harvey and some of her friends, including Mrs. Snow, Mrs. Fisher, Miss Boyle, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Mrs. Clarkson-Swann, and some members of Mrs. Harvey’s household held rendezvouz at the local Sessions Court to hear the case against Mrs. Harvey in respect of not paying a tax on her gardener.
As when Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight was summoned, the representative of the London County Council brought his case into court in the most slovenly, scandalous fashion — these cases furnishing a lurid light on the way the liberties of the public are held cheap by careless authorities.
A spirited defence, which made the cocksure representative aforesaid look extremely foolish, was put up by Mrs. Harvey’s counsel; the verdict of the court being 30s. fine, and costs.
Mrs. Harvey declared she would not pay fine or costs, and the ultimate verdict was “distraint or seven days” — in the second division.
Among those who were at Bromley for the protest were Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Huntsman, Mrs. Kux, Mrs. Macpherson, Mrs. Smith, Miss F[lorence].
A. Underwood, Miss Howard, Miss Rowell, Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr, Miss Barrow, and Miss Taylor.
In pursuance of our policy of tax-resistance, the Women’s Freedom League has decided to resist the Insurance Act on the ground that we refuse to acquiesce in any legislation which controls the resources of women without the consent of women.
We are now threatened with prosecution by the Insurance Commissioners, but it remains to be seen whether the latter will make good their case.
Miss Cummins, who lives in the pretty little district of Froxfield, near
Petersfield, had goods sold in respect of non-payment of King’s Taxes
on afternoon. Miss [C. Nina] Boyle
and Miss [Jessie?] Murray attended the sale from Headquarters, and among
local supporters were Miss Cummins and her sister, Mrs. Baddeley
(W.S.P.U.),
Mr. Powell, Mr. Roper, and others. The assistant auctioneer, to whom it fell
to conduct the sale, was most unfriendly, and refused to allow any speaking
during the sale; but Miss Boyle was able to shout through a window at his
back, just over his shoulder, an announcement that the goods were seized
because Miss Cummins refused to submit to taxation without representation,
after which quite a number of people who were attending the sale came out to
listen to the speeches. Perched on the parapet of the churchyard wall, Miss
Murray opened the brief meeting, followed by Miss Boyle, both receiving
unexpected attention. Mr. Powell then spoke a few effective words to the men
present, calling upon them as voters to give effect to the women’s protest
by approaching their member and warning him that Women’s Suffrage was a
question to which he would be expected to give serious attention.
It would appear that, in spite of its remote position and quiet, uneventful
life, Suffrage has made great way in the Petersfield district. There are some
250 Suffragists, and several influential secessions from the Liberal
Association have taken place over the question.
Arrest and Release of Captain Gonne.
Captain Gonne,
R.A., was
arrested at his residence at Bognor, on
, and taken to Lewes gaol for
non-payment of Imperial taxes. Captain Gonne, whose wife is a member of the
Women’s Tax Resistance League, refuses to pay his wife’s income-tax, because
he supports her in the belief that there should be no taxation without
representation, and because he wishes to do his share towards altering the
iniquitous laws regulating the taxation of married women. He refuses to pay
his own taxes as a protest against the Government’s broken pledges to women
and their torture of women prisoners. The Women’s Tax Resistance League at
once organised a campaign of protest, in which the Women’s Freedom League and
other Suffrage societies would have joined, to hold meetings outside Lewes
Gaol. On night, however, he was set
free; and the Women’s Tax Resistance League is now raising serious points in
regard to the legality of the arrest and the treatment otherwise meted out to
him. It is well known that Captain Gonne’s health has suffered severely of
late, and his serious indisposition is attributable to the excessive violence
of Liberal stewards at meetings which Captain Gonne has attended on behalf of
the women’s cause.
The following correspondence has been sent us for publication by the
Women’s Tax Resistance League:—
To the Home Secretary, Home Office, Whitehall, S.W.
Sir, — Will you kindly inform my committee why, having decided to
release Captain Gonne,
R.A., from
Lewes Jail, you discharged him before it was possible for his family to
send for him, as they were prepared to do, rather than expose him in his
delicate state of health to a cross-country railway journey unaccompanied?
Did you not state in the House of Commons that prisoners were never released
without such necessary precautions having been taken? — Faithfully
yours,
(Signed) Margaret Parkes.
To the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Treasury-chambers, Whitehall, S.W.
Sir, — Are you aware of the fact that on
evening last Captain Gonne,
R.A., was
arrested at Bognor for non-payment of Imperial taxes and conveyed to Lewes
Jail, and that he was released with no reason given at
? Will
you kindly supply the committee immediately with
answers to the following questions, as we consider that it is most important
to know the reason for such apparently unconstitutional procedure?
By whose authority was Captain Gonne arrested and upon what charge?
Is it not usual in such cases to levy distraint upon the premises in
respect of which the taxes are due?
By whose authority were orders sent to the Governor of Lewes Jail for
Captain Gonne’s release?
If the imprisonment was a just one, for what reason was he released in
less than 48 hours?
Awaiting the favour of your reply. Faithfully yours,
(Signed) Margaret Parkes.
Magistrate Compliments a Woman Tax Resister.
Miss A[gnes Edith] Metcalfe, B.Sc.,
ex-H.M.I.,
was summoned at Greenwich Police-court on
, for non-payment of
dog license. In a short speech she said that she refused on conscientious
grounds to pay taxes while women had no vote. The magistrate congratulated
Miss Metcalfe on the clearness and eloquence with which she made out her
case. He regretted that the law must take its course, and imposed a fine of
7s. with
2s. costs, recoverable by
distraint. The alternative was one day’s imprisonment. We would like to
contrast this with Miss I[sabelle] Stewart’s case which was identical, but
her sentence was £2 fine or fourteen days’ imprisonment.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes has just returned from Ireland, where
successful public meetings were held in Dublin and Cork, and tax resistance
resolutions passed. She attended, as delegate for the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, the Suffrage Conference held in Dublin, and spoke upon the present
position of Women’s Suffrage. She also took part in the public debate with
the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage, on which occasion the
Suffragists won by a large majority.
On Mrs. Kineton Parkes spoke at a meeting at Clacton-on-Sea under the auspices of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Mrs. Arthur Sykes presided, and a resolution was passed unanimously demanding a Government measure for Woman Suffrage and urging women to resist taxation by every means in their power as a protest against the continued denial of justice.
On the League took its part in the Suffrage Exhibition held at Eastbourne.
A stall for the sale of tax-resistance literature was in the able hands of Miss Edith Hulme, of St. Leonards-on-Sea, and Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes spoke on the principles and practice of tax resistance.
The following new pamphlets are now on sale at the offices of the League at 10, Talbot House, 98, St. Martin’s-lane, W.:— “The A.B.C. of Tax Resistance,” price 1d.; “The Third Annual Report,” price 1d.; “Married Women and Taxation,” price 3d.
At the meeting held by the Central London Branch at Chandos Hall on , Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, secretary to the Tax-Resistance Committee, said there was a large body of women who in their hearts really approved of militant methods, but could not join in them, who yet did want to do more than the constitutional Suffragists had done hitherto.
She believed that tax-resistance was the one thing which would combine militant and constitutional women on one platform.
The one great difficulty was that out of perhaps one hundred women who wanted to tax-resist, only about eighty could do it.
Unearned income was taxed at its source.
Inhabited house duty was perhaps the easiest to resist, but women who lived in flats had this paid by their landlords.
They looked at tax-resistance from the higher standpoint; they had conscientious principles against paying any taxes whatsoever while women were unrepresented.
Government Use of Taxes.
Were they — the tax-paying women of the country — doing right in having their money spent on things of which they did not approve?
They need only take one instance — the South African War.
That might or might not have been a just war, but not one woman in the country had been asked to register her opinion about that war, yet all the women paid for it, directly or indirectly.
They did rather want to ask themselves what their money was used for.
They paid for the salaries of Cabinet Ministers, and they would be asked in all probability, before very long, to pay Members of Parliament.
Did they realise for one moment that their money was being used to pay sweated wages to other women?
The Government were the very worst payers of wages to women.
They resisted only imperial taxes, not local rates.
The latter they paid because they had the municipal vote, but Inhabited House Duty, Income-tax, Property tax, dog licenses, carriage licenses, and those for Armorial Bearings and Liveried Servants, they resisted.
The easiest to resist was Inhabited House Duty; the next easiest, earned income — actresses and doctors could do this.
The Government had bluffed women about their taxes; women had paid far more than they ever need for many years through ignorance.
One woman had written across her tax-payer: “You call me a lunatic, therefore you cannot expect me to be responsible; you call me a pauper, therefore how can you possibly expect me to pay?”
Married Women and Taxes.
Dealing with the position of married women, Mrs. Parkes said that there were two laws on the Statute-book of England which were absolutely at variance with one another — the Married Women’s Property Act and the Income-tax act of .
Married women were not liable to Income-tax.
Supposing a wife was earning £100 a year.
The law said that no woman was to pay Income-tax if she was married, but it was added to the husband’s, and he had to pay, though incomes of £100 only were not taxable.
They had a test case, and the Government had withdrawn their claim, proving that the woman had the rights of the case.
They ought to combine in large numbers on this part of the question.
Another brief note in the same issue said that Anna Munro had also promoted tax resistance (and census resistance) as a tactic in a speech to the West Sussex branch of the Women’s Freedom League.
Refusal to pay Imperial taxes, which has been described as the best of all
protests, was the subject of an interesting address given by Mrs. [Margaret]
Kineton Parkes at the Caxton Hall on , when Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn presided and Mr. Bart Kennedy was
also amongst the speakers. Mrs. Parkes introduced her subject by explaining
that as one of the planks of the Suffrage platform was “Taxation without
representation is tyranny” it was inconsistent for any Suffragist to pay
Imperial taxes. They should not refuse to pay rates, for they had the
municipal vote, but they should, if they wanted to be consistent to their
principle, decline to pay Imperial taxes, such as inhabited house duty, taxes
on armorial bearings, income-tax,
&c. The
society she represented, which was organising this refusal to pay Imperial
taxes, had been in existence , and included Suffragists from every camp, Conservative,
Liberal, Socialist, as well as non-party, and was making every effort to get
a large number of influential women to refuse to pay taxes, and thus cause a
block at Somerset House. The isolated refusal to pay was ineffective and only
caused trouble to the refuser; but a large and unexpected number would cause
considerable trouble to the Government and would bring the question at issue
home to them. Even now it had been found that the Government rather than go
to the trouble of selling up the recalcitrant “debtor,” and attracting
attention to the principle involved, had quietly dropped the matter in
several instances. Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard had had no application for taxes
since she had been sold up .
This principle of taxation and representation she had found appealed to
women who had not given the subject any previous consideration, and it always
had an immediate influence on a male audience. A working woman was not asked
to pay less taxes because she was a woman, though she was usually asked to
receive less by her employer.
To married women with incomes she suggested that they should ask their
husbands not to fill in the amount in the space left on the income-tax
paper for details of wife’s income. Then, if they sent her a separate paper,
she could refuse to pay. In the past they had not given the Government half
enough work, and they should make it as difficult as possible for them to
recover money from women. She asked anyone present who knew women who paid
taxes to send in their names, that they might be approached by her society.
The Women’s Freedom League had been the pioneers in this method of Government
resistance.
Miss [Muriel] Matters, who spoke subsequently, observed that, while the
Government gave the male taxpayer a vote as receipt for his money, they said
to the woman, “Pay up and shut up.” Mrs. [Dora] Montefiore gave a brief
account of how to make it difficult for the Government to recover taxes from
women.…
A highly successful meeting under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League was held in the Town Hall, Buxton, on .
Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr presided.
The principal speaker was Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard, who said that for five years she had refused to pay imperial taxes, and pointed out that women were virtually in a position of slavery so long as they were forced to obey laws which they had no hand in making.
The secretary, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, explained the object and progress of the League.
A resolution to the effect that women were justified in resisting taxation until they were enfranchised was carried with only three objectors.
The Chapel-en-le-Frith Glee Singers gave an admirable rendering [of] “Women of To-day” (music by Montague King).
A drawing-room meeting had been previously held at Park House, by kind invitation of Miss Ashmall-Salt.
In connection with the League, a shop has been opened at Spring Gardens, where daily meetings are held.
On , Dr. [Winifred] Patch, of Highbury (Women’s Freedom League), made her second appearance at her public examination in the bankruptcy proceedings brought against her by the Inland Revenue Department, adjourned from .
The crowd of suffragist sympathisers was far larger than on the previous occasion, and included Mrs. Despard, Dr. and Mrs. Clark; Miss Evelyn Sharp, Mrs. Juson Kerr, Mrs. [Barbara] Ayrton Gould, Miss [Bertha] Brewster, Miss Smith Piggott, Miss [Agnes Edith] Metcalf, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, Miss [Kate] Raleigh, Mrs. Julia Wood, Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Miss Gertrude Eaton, Mrs. Mustard, Mrs. Tanner, Miss [Sarah] Benett, and many others.
To vary the proceedings Dr. Patch offered this time to make an affirmation, and answer any questions which seemed to her to merit a reply.
These were not very numerous.
Dr. Patch then stated her position:—
I do not acknowledge the authority of the Court, for it is being employed by the Crown not to fulfill its proper function of adjusting equitably the claims of creditor and debtor, but to enforce an unconstitutional demand, as did the Court of the Star Chamber 250 years ago.
It is to the British Constitution that the British Empire owes its place among the leading nations of the world, and it is the duty of her children to whom her honour is dear to keep her true to those principles.
I was a tax resister before the outbreak of the war.
The political truce with the Government was tacitly accepted by suffragists, and this would have prevented me from beginning tax resistance after war broke out.
I have paid no taxes for many years, and it is a breach of faith of the Government to have just started proceedings against me now.
By taking my money which is at my bank you only prevent me from putting it into War Loan, as I intended to do.
As regards the money left to me by my brother, who fell a few months ago, gallantly fighting for our country, I do not know whether you wish to take this from me.
I am a suffragist, I love my country, but I claim the right to give to my country in my own way what she has no right to take from me by force until women are represented in the Councils of the nation.
I ask that the judgment of bankruptcy against me be annulled.
The Court adjourned the proceedings for another fortnight, pending the receipt of the signed statement of particulars from Dr. Patch, which the authorities are so anxious to add to their documents.
Further developments will be announced.
Luncheon to Dr. Patch at Headquarters
After the proceedings at Bankruptcy-buildings, Dr. Patch was entertained at headquarters to luncheon, for providing which the Minerva Cafe added to its crown of laurels.
Mrs. Despard presided over a large gathering of supporters.
She expressed, amid applause, the warm appreciation and admiration of all for Dr. Patch’s service to the great cause of Votes for Women.
Dr. Clark praised the ability she has displayed in her plucky action, and declared that no class which possesses power gives in without a struggle.
Mrs. Kineton Parkes pointed out the heavy cost at this time of her sacrifice for conscience’ sake, and hoped that a memorial would tell future generations of Dr. Patch’s service to the cause of Votes for Women.
After short speeches from Miss Evelyn Sharp and Mrs. Mustard, Dr. Patch thanked everyone for their support, and used the words of the late Professor Kettle as expressing the attitude of unenfranchised women:
Bound in the toils of hate we may not cease, Free, we are free to be your friends.
An interesting sequel to the seizure of Mrs. Tollemache’s goods last week, and the ejection of the bailiff from her residence, Batheaston Villa, Bath, was the sale held , at the White Hart Hotel.
To cover a tax of only £15 and costs, goods were seized to the value of about £80, and it was at once decided by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and Mrs. Tollemache’s friends that such conduct on the part of the authorities must be circumvented and exposed.
The goods were on view the morning of the sale, and as there was much valuable old china, silver, and furniture, the dealers were early on the spot, and buzzing like flies around the articles they greatly desired to possess.
The first two pieces put up were, fortunately, quite inviting; £19 being bid for a chest of drawers worth about 50s. and £3 for an ordinary leather-top table, the requisite amount was realised, and the auctioneer was obliged to withdraw the remaining lots much to the disgust of the assembled dealers.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, in her speech at the protest meeting, which followed the sale, explained to these irate gentlemen that women never took such steps unless compelled to do so, and that if the tax collector had seized a legitimate amount of goods to satisfy his claim, Mrs. Tollemache would willingly have allowed them to go.
Another note in the same issue mentioned that “the quarterly meeting of the Scottish Council of the Women’s Freedom League… expressed high appreciation of the splendid stand made by Miss [Janet Legate] Bunten, hon. treasurer of the Glasgow Branch, in defence of the principle that ‘taxation without representation is tyranny.’
Miss Bunten intimated her determination to continue this fight.”
The hon. treasurer of our Brighton branch (Mrs. Jones-Williams) is the first person in Brighton to refuse to pay taxes as a protest against the unenfranchised condition of women.
The local authorities, apparently not knowing the usual procedure, took the unusual course of sending a bailiff to take possession.
Thanks to the activity of some members of the men’s league, the authorities consented to the man being in “walking possession.”
Once before this course has been taken, when a bailiff was put in possession at Mrs. Rose Hyland’s in Manchester.
Not even this unnecessary piece of annoyance will make us pause in our efforts to refuse our consent to taxation without representation.
Sale on .
We congratulate the Brighton branch and Mrs. Jones-Williams on the firm stand they have made in the matter, and urge all Suffragists in the town to rally to the protest meeting .
Mrs. [Edith] How-Martyn will be one of the speakers.
Another Passive Resister,
and a member of the N.E.C., Mrs. Francis, the hon. secretary of the branch, writes:— “ ‘With this ring I thee wed’ — that’s sorcery; ‘with my body I thee worship’ — that’s idolatry; and ‘with my worldly goods I thee endow’ — that’s a lie,” says old Sir J. Bowring.
“Wishing to test the validity or otherwise of the vow which, according to the forms of the Established Church, my husband made at the altar at the time of our marriage, and also with an ever-increasing sense that tax-resistance is not only morally justifiable, but morally imperative, I have refused consent, as joint controller of our mutual finances, to the payment of my half of the year’s taxes.
My husband has therefore retained this amount while paying his own share, and explaining the reasons for taking this action.
An entreating letter has followed from the tax-collector, but the threat of distraint has not yet been received.
“We hope that if and when these protests have to be pushed to extremity our friends will do their utmost to help make them widely known and effective.”
Notwithstanding the mud and odoriferous atmosphere of the back streets off Drury-lane, quite a large number of members of the Tax Resisters’ League, the Women’s Freedom League, and the Women’s Social and Political Union, met outside Bulloch’s Sale Rooms shortly after to protest against the sale of Miss Bertha Brewster’s goods, which had been seized because of her refusal to pay her Imperial taxes.
Before the sale took place, Mrs. Gatty, as chairman, explained to at least a hundred people the reasons of Miss Brewster’s refusal to pay her taxes and the importance of the constitutional principle that taxation without representation is tyranny, which this refusal stood for.
Miss Leonora Tyson proposed the resolution protesting against the injustice of this sale, and it was seconded by Miss F[lorence].
A. Underwood, and supported by Miss Brackenbury.
The resolution was carried with only two dissentients, and these dissentients were women!
On , a drawing-room meeting was held at 30, Hyde Park Gate, by kind permission of Mrs. [Adela] Stanton Coit.
Mrs. [Edith] Zangwill was in the chair, and gave an opening address which was full of charm and subtle truth.
Her delightful personality always serves to emphasise the depth of thought contained in her remarks.
Miss [Alice] Abadam was the principal speaker, and her address was a masterpiece of oratory directed to emphasise the grave responsibility of the taxpaying women of this country towards the moral, spiritual and political emancipation of woman.
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes gave a short account of the work of the society, formed to put into practice the principles of tax resistance, which was followed by a good discussion, opened by Dr. Stanton Coit.
The secretary of the league also addressed a crowded audience in the Public Hall, Croydon, on the subject of tax resistance, , and the chair was taken by Miss Green, treasurer for the local branch of the W.S.P.U.
On Mrs. Tollemache, or Batheaston,
near Bath, had old silver sold for refusal to pay her imperial taxes. The
speakers at the protest meeting, which was held after the sale, were Mrs.
Kineton Parkes, Mr. Jeudwine, and the
Rev. B.C.S. Everett; Mrs.
Everett presided. A drawing-room meeting was given by Mrs. [Letitia?] Hartley
Withers, of Linden-gardens, on ,
when Mrs. [Edith] Zangwill made a brilliant speech in support of tax
resistance as a logical and constitutional protest against the Government’s
betrayal of women. Mrs. [Ruth] Cavendish Bentinck presided, and the
Rev. C. Baumgarten spoke.
Mrs. [Mary McLeod] Cleeves, who made such a determined stand last autumn
against being taxed and unrepresented, and whose dogcart was seized and
sold, is again defying the authorities.
Mrs. Cleeves, as a married woman, is not liable to pay income-tax, but,
regardless of the Act of Parliament which clearly states this position, the
local tax-collector has put in a bailiff in an endeavour to make Mrs. Cleeves
pay taxes which she is not legally bound to do. Mrs. Cleeves handed the
following statement to the official:—
I protest against your being here in possession, and I protest against any
of the goods in this house being seized. Everything here belongs to me, and
as a married woman I am not responsible for the payment of income-tax.
(When I offered to give the tax-collector Mr. Cleeves’s address, he
refused to take it.)
M. McLeod Cleeves.
The Tax Resistance League, as well as ourselves, is going to support Mrs.
Cleeves in any action which it is deemed wise to take, and in the meantime
both Leagues have written to the authorities at Somerset House and Mr. Lloyd
George. The following letter was sent from the League:—
To Inland Revenue Office.
.
Sir,— I have to request your immediate attention to the serious irregularity
in the case of Mrs. Mary McLeod Cleeves, a member of this League. An
assessment was made on Mr. Ed. A.
Cleeves, but in defiance of the assessment Mrs. Cleeves has been receiving
threatening demands, in her own name, for payment of the assessment. She
has, of course, refused to pay it as she is not liable, and no assessment or
charge may legally be made on her.
The local officials, however, have now proceeded to trespass on her
premises, commit damages, and take possession of her goods to recover a sum
which they are forbidden to charge on her, and which will be paid by the
person assessed as soon as he returns to this country, which may be at any
time now. This person has always paid it, and never refused to discharge his
legal obligations.
I may remind you that your department has said, in reply to a question asked
on behalf of Dr. Elizabeth
Wilks, that the Crown cannot seize the property of a married woman in order
to satisfy the husband’s debt to the Crown. The case of Mrs. Cleeves is
absolutely identical with that of
Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, of
Clapton, London, who informed the persons who were sent to levy a distress
on her property that she was not the person charged or liable, and that her
goods could not be seized. On hearing this the persons immediately withdrew,
and declined to proceed with the distraint. She has not been molested since,
but you will recall that after this incident you addressed a letter to her
husband, Mr. Mark Wilks, in which you call his attention to the fact that he
is the only person liable for all taxes, and that if he fails to pay, the
Board’s solicitor will take proceedings against him to make him pay.
You have now been asking him to pay this money for upwards of a year.
I must ask that, as the above is clearly the proper legal procedure, it shall
be adhered to in the case of Mrs. Cleeves also. Will you be good enough to
instruct the local officials that the distraint must be withdrawn, and that
they must refrain from molesting Mrs. Cleeves or trespassing on her property?
I would add that when the assessment was increased last year, Mrs. Cleeves
wished to raise an objection, but was quite properly informed that she could
not be heard, as she had no locus standi in the matter, as
she was not a person who could be charged under any circumstances, and
therefore could have no grievance, but that Mr. Cleeves was the only person
who could be recognised or listened to. It seems inexplicable that the
officials should seize the property of a person whom they have declared to
have no locus standi in the matter.
Requesting your immediate attention to the above facts, I am, yours
faithfully,
Edith How Martyn. Women’s Freedom League, 1,
Robert-street, Adelphi, London, W.C.
We are determined to do our best to make the authorities abide by their own
Acts of Parliament.
Dividends of Married Women.
All deductions from dividends paid on stock held by married women are illegal,
and married women should write to the secretaries of the companies and request
them to follow the procedure laid down by Parliament and to recover the
income-tax from the husbands, and in future to send the dividend in full.
Steady persistence along the lines afforded by the inconsistencies in the
law must end in drawing the attention of Parliament. Once that attention is
gained, it will be comparatively easy to insist that the first alteration in
the law must be to give representation where taxation is imposed.
Also from the same issue:
Protest at Brighton.
Owing to the enormous pressure put upon our space we are unable to give
details of the final stage of the proceedings taken against Mrs. Jones
Williams for her refusal to pay taxes. The goods seized were sold at the
public auction room. Before selling them the auctioneer allowed Mrs. How
Martyn to make a short explanatory speech, and he himself added that it was
an unpleasant duty he had to perform.
There was also much material about the related campaign of census resistance
in this issue.
One brief note on a meeting of the Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire branch,
mentioned that “Mrs. Scott, of High Wycombe, took the chair, and gave a short
speech on the necessity for tax resistance, which some in the district are
much in favour of.”
On Thursday evening, , a good
public meeting was held in the Town Hall, Uxbridge. The chair was taken by the
Hon. Mrs. [Evelina]
Haverfield, who gave a most earnest and spirited address upon the fundamental
basis of the Suffrage movement. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes spoke on the
principles of tax resistance, and gave a short resumé of the work being done
by the society formed to put these principles into practice. Mrs. [Anne]
Cobden Sanderson made an urgent plea to the women of Uxbridge to boycott the
Census, and gave most lucid and logical reasons why the women should refuse
to be counted, and endeavoured to show the serious results which follow to
women from legislation without their consent. This meeting was entirely
given and arranged by Miss [Kate] Raleigh, who is a member of the New
Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage, and also the “Women’s Tax
Resistance League.”
On Tuesday, , Dr. [Elizabeth] Knight and Mrs. [Hortense] Lane had a waggon sold for non-payment of taxes, Mrs. [Isabel] Tippett came to speak.
The auctioneer was very sympathetic, and allowed Miss [Anna] Munro to make a short speech before the waggon was sold.
He then spoke a few friendly words for the Woman’s Movement.
After the sale a meeting was held, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro were listened to with evident interest by a large number of men.
The Vote and other Suffrage literature was sold.
In the evening a meeting was held on Cornhill.
A large audience gathered, and listened for an hour.
At the evening, as well as the morning meeting the logic of tax resistance was appreciated.
Ipswich may congratulate itself on a good demonstration.
We are very grateful to Dr. Knight and Mrs. Lane for giving us this opportunity of declaring our faith in “No Vote No Tax.”
Elizabeth Knight also penned a fundraising request for the same issue, to defray the costs of her defense and imprisonment.
A resolution on the militant policy declared that “We continue our policy of resistance to taxes and to the Insurance Act until a measure for Woman Suffrage is on the Statute Book; that Suffragists refuse subscriptions to churches and organised charitable institutions till the vote is granted, with a view to women making their power felt and to show the difference their withdrawal from religious and social work would make…”
Dr. Knight has not yet been consigned to Holloway to serve the sentence inflicted on her for her courageous resistance of Mr. [Lloyd] George’s extortions.
In the meantime, the Waggon was once more seized for taxes at Woodbridge, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro took charge of the protest, which was made .
Miss Kate Raleigh gave a most interesting lecture on the “Daily Life of a Taxpaper [sic] in Ancient Athens” at Dr. Alice Corthorn’s drawing-room meeting held under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, on .
Miss Raleigh held her audience spellbound as she showed the man’s day to be full of interests and life, while the woman had nothing beyond her weaving and spinning, even marketing being an excitement denied to her.
The chair was taken by Mrs. [Adeline] Cecil Chapman, who concluded her short speech with this advice to her audience:
“It’s dogged that does it — you must keep on and worry, worry, worry.”
A keen discussion followed, and a hearty vote of thanks was given to Dr. Alice Corthorn and Miss Raleigh.
Woman Scientist’s Protest.
On scientific instruments and book-cases belonging to Miss Ethel Sargent, Botanist of Girton College and President of the Botanical section of the British Association at the Birmingham Conference — a unique distinction — were sold at Girton as a protest against being taxed for national expenditure while she was denied a vote.
The sale attracted wide attention, and Miss Sargent’s dignified speech, maintaining that resistance to taxation without representation was “the only resource for voteless women,” made a deep impression.
Her speech was reported at length in the Press.
Forthcoming Sales.
, Mrs. Bacon and Mrs. Colquhoun will have goods sold for tax-resistance at , at Messrs. Westgate and Hammond, 81, South-street, Romford.
Procession from auction room to open-air protest meeting.
Speakers, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes and Miss Nina Boyle.
, Drs. [Francis] Ede and [Amy] Sheppard will have goods sold for tax-resistance at at Messrs. Hawkings, 26, Lisson-grove.
Procession from Marble Arch Tube at sharp.
Speakers, Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, and others.
But what possibly terrified the Government most was the formation of huge “Political Unions,” whose motto was, “To protect the King and his Ministers against the Boroughmongers.”
At Birmingham the Union included 150,000 persons, who resolved that should the Bill fail to pass again, they would all refuse to pay any more taxes.
[Mary Russell] The Duchess of Bedford has consented to become a member of our Society, and requested us to conduct her protest when distraint has been levied for the amount of her unpaid taxes.
The following Sales took place last week:—
On , Miss Baker, of Torquay, who had refused to pay inhabited house duty, had goods sold by public auction.
At the subsequent meeting Mrs. Kineton Parkes spoke on the reasons for sale to a large crowd.
On , Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence and Miss Hayes, of Marlow, Bucks., had their goods sold by public auction.
The sale aroused great interest, and a successful meeting was afterwards held, the speakers being Miss Nina Boyle, Miss [Agnes Edith] Metcalfe, and Miss Amy Hicks.
On , Miss Ina Moncrieff, of Tregunter-road, South Kensington, had her goods sold at Harding’s Auction Rooms.
The speakers at the subsequent meeting were Miss Watson and Mrs. Kineton Parkes.…
There is a waggon on the Cowslip Farm at Witnesham, Suffolk, which has
become quite celebrated. It has been sold twice annually for
and still remains on
the same farm.
It was drawn into Bond’s Sale Yard at Ipswich on
, and the plate on it
disclosed it as the property of
Dr. Elizabeth Knight and Mrs.
[Hortense] Lane. A placard described it as Lot 21, and when the other lots had
been sold the auctioneer approached the waggon, followed by a large crowd who
were curious to see what was the meaning of three women being seated inside,
apparently with a set purpose. Just as the crowd assembled
Dr. Knight came into the sale
yard to look after the welfare of her property.
Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the
sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able to
give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the weapons
employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of women. Then
came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not been aware he
was to sell “distressed” goods, and he very much objected to doing so. He
declared that he regarded Dr.
Knight and Mrs. Lane as persons, and thereby showed himself to be in advance
of the law of the country. The meeting and the auctioneer together made the
assembly chary of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great
triumph for the tax-resisters. Further developments are eagerly awaited, for
it is assumed that the Government will not thus easily give up its claim to
tax unrepresented women, and will endeavour to find a less scrupulous
auctioneer. Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting by
carrying placards round the crowded market.
C[onstance].E.A[ndrews].
Women’s Tax Resistance League.
At a Members’ Meeting at the offices of the League on
, with Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson
in the chair, speeches were given on the following subjects:— “The Recent
Sales and Protests,” by Mrs. Kineton Parkes; “Married Women’s Dividends” — test case, by Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie; “Married Women and Income Tax,” by
Miss Amy Hicks, M.A.; an interesting
discussion followed.
Sales of the Week.
On , Mrs. Skipwith, 13,
Montagu-square, W., and Gorse Cottage,
Woking, had a silver dish sold at Woking for refusal to pay Property Tax. A
good protest meeting was held, the speaker being Mrs. [Myra Eleanor] Sadd
Brown. On , a clock, belonging to
Miss Bertha Brewster was sold by auction at Wilson’s Repository,
Chenies-mews, Gower-street, because of non-payment of Inhabited House Duty.
At the subsequent protest meeting at the corner of Grafton-street, and
Tottenham Court-road, the speakers were Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, Miss Sarah
Bennet, and others. On at
Eastchurch, Kent, Miss [Kate] Raleigh’s goods were sold for refusal to pay
Imperial Taxes. The speakers were Mrs. Sadd Brown, Mrs. Kineton Parkes, and
Miss Raleigh.
On old silver was sold at the
house of Miss Wratislaw, Bath, because of her refusal to pay Inhabited House
Duty. The articles were sold under
similar circumstances. Prior to the sale there was a procession, and
immediately afterwards a protest meeting, when Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes
moved the following resolution:— “That this meeting protests against the
seizure and sale of Miss Wratislaw’s goods, and considers that women are
justified in refusing to pay the Imperial taxes until they have the same
control over national expenditure as male tax-payers possess.” A successful
drawing-room meeting was held the next afternoon which aroused considerable
interest. New members were enrolled.
On Romford was shaken out of its
sleepy calm by the tax-resistance sale of goods belonging to Mrs. Colquhoun,
of Gidea Park, and Mrs. Bacon, of Hornchurch. A big crowd collected for the
protest meeting and listened attentively while Mrs. Kineton Parkes, of the
Women’s Tax Resistance League, and Miss C. Nina Boyle, of the Women’s Freedom
League, explained the reason for the refusal to pay King’s taxes, and
answered the questions which were put after the speeches were over. The usual
resolution was passed.
Medical Women Refuse to Pay Unjust Taxes.
On , a gold watch and chain were sold
under distraint for King’s taxes at Messrs Hawkings’ Auction Rooms,
Lisson-grove, the property of
Drs. Frances Ede and Amy
Sheppard, practising at Upper Berkeley-street. A procession with banners
marched from Marble Arch to the Auction Rooms, via
Edgware-road. As soon as Lot 1 was announced,
Dr. Ede protested against the
sale, and her brief speech was listened to with grave attention. The watch
and chain were knocked down at £8
18s.
6d. After three cheers had been
given to the tax resisters, the procession continued to Mary-le-bone Baths,
where an open-air meeting was held.
Dr. Ede presided; the speakers
were Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. Kineton Parkes. At the close of
the meeting, the following resolution was carried: “That this meeting
protests against the seizure and sale of goods belonging to
Drs. Ede and Sheppard, and is
of opinion that women tax-payers are justified in refusing to pay all
Imperial taxes till they have the same control over national expenditure as
male tax-payers possess.”
Come and protest against the official robbery of married women carried on by
the Government for their own benefit. Earl Russell and Mr. [Israel] Zangwill
will speak on the subject at the Caxton Hall on
The meeting is organised by the
Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Distraint was levied, on , upon
the property of [Mary Russell] the Duchess of Bedford in non-payment of
Imperial taxes due in respect of the Prince’s Skating Rink, and a silver cup
was taken to satisfy the claim. The Duchess has instructed the Women’s Tax
Resistance League to point out that this is quite out of order, because as a
married woman she is not liable to taxation, and therefore neither assessment
nor demand note should have been served upon her, but upon the Duke of
Bedford. She, however, allowed the authorities to proceed in this perfectly
irregular manner because she wished to use their mistake as an opportunity of
making her protest against the treatment of Woman Suffrage by the present
Government in the practical way of refusing to pay taxes until women are
enfranchised. Her comment is: “Obviously it is not my business to point out
the law to those whose duty it should be to understand it.”
A quantity of silver, the property of Miss Rhoda Anstey, Principal of the
Anstey Physical Training College, Erdington, Warwickshire, was sold on
, by public auction, under
distraint for King’s taxes. The sale and protest meeting took place in the
gymnasium of the college, and the speakers at the meeting were Mrs.
[Margaret] Kineton Parkes and Miss Dorothy Evans; Miss Leonora Tyson presided.
On goods, the property of
Dr. [Francis] Ede and
Dr. [Amy] Sheppard, of Upper
Berkeley-street, Portman-square, W.,
were sold by public auction at 26, Lisson-grove,
W.;
Dr. Ede made a protest against
the sale in the auction rooms. The speakers at the protest meeting which was
held after the sale were Miss Amy Hicks,
M.A.,
Dr. Ede, and Mrs. [Anne]
Cobden Sanderson.
On , Miss Rose, of Frinton-on-Sea,
had goods sold under distraint for King’s taxes, and Miss Amy Hicks,
M.A., was the speaker at the protest
meeting held in the small Town Hall, Miss Rose being in the chair.
The first tax resistance sale in the Lake District took place on
,
when Mrs. [Kate Raven] Henry Holiday had goods sold by public auction at
Hawks-head, Ambleside. A most enthusiastic protest meeting was held after the
sale, the speakers being Mrs. Kineton Parkes and Miss [Winifred] Holiday.
On , goods, the property of Miss
Corcoran, were sold at Loughborough by public auction, followed by a
successful protest meeting.
Miss Beatrice Harraden’s goods were sold on
, at Gill’s Auction Rooms,
Cambridge-road, Kilburn. Miss Harraden explained, in the auction room, the
reasons for her refusal to pay. At goods belonging to
Dr. Mabel Hardie and Miss
Gibbs were sold. There was a procession after the sale to public meeting at
corner of Harrow-road and Elgin-avenue.
Dr. Jessie Murray’s goods were
sold on , at Davies’ Auction Rooms, 15,
Upper-street, Islington, and a protest meeting held after sale at Highbury
Fields.
On goods of Mrs. Beaumont Thomas
and Mrs. Mary Sutcliffe will be sold at Warren’s Auction Room, 73, Battersea
Rise (five minutes from Clapham Junction) at
Protest meeting after sale. Supporters urgently needed.
It’s been a while since I’ve dug into the archives to hunt for information on how tax resistance was used in the British Women’s Suffrage Movement.
Here is a very early example, as reported by the Buffalo (New York) Express on :
London, — Miss Muller [Henrietta Müller, I think —♇], a member of the London School Board for the Lambeth District, is the first woman in England to pose as a martyr in the cause of woman suffrage.
She has undertaken in her own person to prove her devotion to the principle “No taxation without representation.”
Miss Muller is a leader of the Woman Suffragists, and was one of the first to propose, during the pendency of Mr. Woodall’s amendments to the Franchise bill, that women throughout the kingdom should form societies to resist the payment of taxes until the franchise should be extended to women householders.
When Mr. Woodall’s amendment was so overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Commons the ardor of the ladies perceptibly cooled, and but little has lately been heard of the proposed tax-resistance societies and defense fund.
Miss Muller, however, never wavered, and when the rate collector made his rounds this year she promptly and absolutely refused to pay a farthing for taxes upon her house.
This is situated in the fashionable precincts of Cadogan Square.
The collector argues and implored in vain, and finally distrained a portion of the furniture in Miss Muller’s residence in satisfaction of the levy.
was set for the execution of the writ, and Miss Muller, far from relenting to save her property, publicly advertised the date of the seizure, and invited the women of England to come and witness the disgraceful spectacle of a woman being robbed by the minions of the law because she dared to ask for a voice in the disposition of her taxation.
The invitation was accepted by hundreds of well-dressed but excited and indignant women, who crowded into Cadogan Square and nearly mobbed the bailiffs while they were removing the lares and penates from the Muller residence.
An indignation meeting was afterward held in Miss Muller’s drawing-rooms and many bitter and vehement denunciations of the tyranny and injustice of the law were indulged in.
Miss Muller was visited by a Cable News correspondent, and was found to be full of fight and determination to continue in her resistance.
She is a small and slender but sinewy woman of about forty-five, and gives one the impression of a veritable volcano of temper and pluck.
She sadly bewailed the seizure by the minions of the law of her favorite belongings, and said that the wretches had purposely picked out those articles which were most cherished by her on account of their associations and overlooked others of greater value.
“But,” she added, “they did not collect the rates, and they never will if they rob me of every stick of my furniture and pull the doors and windows out of my house.
I shall continue this fight if I am the only woman left in England to do so, but I hope and believe that thousands of English women will be found brave enough to follow my example.”
A paragraph of unsigned editorial commentary accompanied that piece:
The Smith sisters [Abby & Julia] of Glastonbury, Ct., who struggled so hard for the principle of “no taxation without representation,” now have an imitator in England.
The Smith sisters regularly refused to pay their taxes because they could not vote, and as regularly saw their cows sold by the tax collector, they protesting but bidding them in.
Miss Muller, the English woman who is following the same principle, lives in a fashionable quarter of London.
She witnessed the carting off of some of ber choicest furniture by the minions of the law, and invited several hundred other women to be present and witness the outrage.
It was no doubt a touching spectacle.
Our cable special clearly shows that Miss Muller was very mad.
But the public will refuse to sympathize very profoundly with a reform martyr of that sort.
Women suffrage may be advisable, though some of us do not believe in it.
But the policy of trying to reform the laws by refusing to obey them is certainly not the height of wisdom.
My next example is a brief note from the Camperdown Chronicle:
Women can refuse, as Mrs Montefiore is again doing, to pay income tax so long as they remain unenfranchised, on the old historic ground that “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
If resistance, passive or active, ever can be justified, it assuredly is so justified in the case and cause of injured and insulted womanhood.
—“Ignota.” in “Westminster Review.”
From the Albany Advertiser:
Resistance Overcome.
London, .
The widow of Sir James Steel, a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, refused to pay house or property tax on the ground that she is denied a vote.
A portion of her furniture was sold by auction to cover the amount of the tax.
Five thousand persons were present at the sale.
At first I thought that must be referring to Flora Annie Steele, but she was never married to a James Steel[e].
Turns out this was Barbara Joanna Steel.
She promoted tax resistance in 1907 to the Edinburgh National Society for Woman’s Suffrage, telling them:
On the ground that the franchise has not been extended to women, and she is therefore without a vote, the widow of Sir James Steel, a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, lately refused to pay her house and property taxes.
The authorities thereupon ordered the sale by auction of a sufficient portion of Lady Steel’s household furniture to meet the demand of the tax collector, and the sale was held in the presence of 5,000 people.
A boycott of the census is (says the “Daily Chronicle” of ) to be the latest method of the militant suffragists for calling attention to their claims to the vote.
The announcement was made by Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard at a “King’s Speech meeting” of the Women’s Freedom League, held in the Caxton Hall.
The census would cost a great deal of money, said Mrs. Despard, and involve an enormous amount of labor.
So far as they were concerned, this census should not be taken.
“We shall prove,” said Mrs. Despard, “whether there is a people, or whether there can be a people without the women.
We shall call upon women householders and women lodgers all over the country to refuse absolutely all information when the census takers come round.”
Women, she went on, had been proud to belong to the nation, but they had been denied their citizenship.
Was it not logical, therefore, that they should say, “Very well; citizens we are not, and we shall not register ourselves as citizens?”
That was logical, as a protest should be, and it would be effective.
Speaking of the preparations for the census, Mrs. Despard asserted that the officials were trying to get cheap labor: little girls from the schools at six and seven shillings a week.
Mrs. Despard added that the members were going to obstruct other Government business and make other protests, and they would stop the census boycott only when they had the promise of the Prime Minister that a Woman’s Suffrage Bill would be introduced this session.
Tax resistance is to be another method of obstruction, and Mrs. Despard, who has already been “sold up” twice for refusing to pay taxes, produced a third summons to which she intimated that she would pay no attention.
A diamond ring, the property of the Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, seized because she refused to pay fines inflicted for failing to take out licenses for five dogs, a male servant, and a carriage, was sold by auction at Ashford (Middlesex) lately.
It was explained that the princess, as a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance league, refused to pay money to a Government which failed to give women representation in Parliament.
The ring was sold for £10, and was subsequently, on behalf of the league, returned to the princess.
London, — The first instance of a suffragist being committed to prison for non-payment of taxes as a protest against the disfranchisement of women occurred when Miss Clemence Housman, an authoress, and sister of Lawrence Houseman, was taken to Holloway Gaol by the Sheriff’s officer.
Similar protests have previously ended in distraint but Miss Houseman had no distrainable goods and was accordingly committed.
Miss Houseman, who belongs to the Women’s Social and Political Union and is on the committee of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, refused to pay for the taxicab in which she was taken to prison and the Sheriff’s officer paid the fare of $2,50, which curiously enough was the amount of the tax she originally declined to pay.
The monotony of purely educational work for woman suffrage has been enlivened by the arrest, imprisonment, and release of Miss Clemence Housman, writes an English correspondent, for non payment of the habitation tax.
Miss Housman a year ago refused to pay this tax, which was only 4/6 (1.10 dollar), and during the year has had sundry notices served upon her, the cost of which brought the amount up to between twenty five and thirty dollars.
The Government offered to compromise, but Miss Housman remained firm.
At length she received notice that she would be arrested on a certain day.
This was made the occasion by the Tax Resistance League of a protest meeting and a tea at the home of Miss Housman’s brother, Lawrence Housman, the noted dramatist and noted suffragist, for Mr. Housman is always speaking and writing for this cause and has thoroughly identified himself with it as his own.
The “John Hampden” dinner was the name under which the members of the “Women’s Tax Resistance League” gave a dinner recently in London.
At the end of the dining hall hung a picture of the hero, who resisted the ship money imposition, and on the menu cards appeared the legend, “No vote, no tax.”
The guests included many well-known people interested in woman suffrage, and the speakers, Earl Russell, Mrs. Despard, Sir Thomas Barclay, and Mr. Laurence Houseman, all upheld the right of women in refusing to pay taxes while they had no voice in the government of the country.
Miss Green, a member of the New Constitutional Society, and honorary treasurer to the Women’s Tax Resistance League, London, having again refused to pay inhabited house duty for 14 Warwick Crescent, Paddington, her bookcase was sold at Messrs.
Gill’s auction rooms in Kilburn.
Many sympathisers attended the sale, and the usual speech of protest having been made, three cheers were raised for Miss Green before the party left the auction room.
A procession then formed up, headed by a waggon decorated with the colours of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and an open air meeting was held on the High-road, Kilburn.
Dr. Helen Hanson, who presided, spoke of the special injustice under which the voteless taxpaying women are suffering, and expressed her satisfaction in finding that they are now combining to protest in this way.
I’ve encountered “Miss Green” in the archives a couple of times before, but never with enough information for me to be able to attach a first name to her.
Discovery by Mrs. Mark Wilks Gives Suffragets Brilliant Idea.
Campaign of Sympathy
Wilks in Jail Because His Wife Refused to Pay Her Taxes.
London, . —
Mrs. Mark Wilks, whose husband is in jail because she refuses to pay her taxes, is entitled to immense credit for discovering a new and very formidable weapon for suffragets, members of the Women’s Social and Political Union said .
Suffragets are very generally women of property and will follow Mrs. Wilks’ example.
Their husbands in turn will follow Wilks’ example — go to jail, because they can’t help themselves.
It is not, of course, that the suffragets have anything against their husbands.
Many of these husbands are themselves suffraget sympathizers.
Indeed, suffragets are campaigning to create sympathy for Wilks.
Mrs. Wilks’ discovery is too valuable not to be utilised, however.
Husbands will have to be sacrificed on the altar of votes for women.
The plan will work only in the case of husbands whose wives have independent incomes.
Nor will it work in cases where husbands pay taxes on their wives’ incomes.
Some husbands, like Wilks, have not enough money to pay the taxes.
Suffraget-sympathizing husbands, who can pay, are counted on to refuse to do so.
Thus will a large proportion of Englishmen with suffraget wives be in jail shortly.
The suffragets think the scandal and injustice of it will be a big thing, for them.
Under the married women’s property act a husband has no control over his wife’s property or income.
Under the income tax act, he is responsible for the taxes.
If the taxes are not paid the husband — not the wife — is imprisoned.
Mrs. Wilks refused to pay her income tax, $185, and her husband was locked up.
He will spend the rest of his life in prison unless his wife says otherwise or the law is changed.
When at liberty, he is a teacher in the suburb of Clapton.
The arrest and imprisonment “during the King’s pleasure” of Mr. Mark Wilks, the Clapton schoolmaster, who is unable to pay the tax on his wife’s income, is to be the subject of numerous protest meetings, organised by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, during the next few days (said the “Daily News and Leader” on ).
the Wilks campaign opens with a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
On there will be another mass meeting in Hyde Park, and on a procession will march from Kennington Church to Brixton Gaol, where the central figure in the fight is detained.
In addition, a protest meeting is to be held outside the gaol every morning, and on Mr. Bernard Shaw will address a similar gathering in the Caxton Hall.
Under Two Acts.
A clear and humorous account of the affair was given to a “Daily News and Leader” representative by Mrs. Charles Stansfield; a sister of Mrs. Wilks.
“Mr. Wilks is in prison,” she said, “because he has not got £37 to pay a tax on property he does not own and cannot control.
That is really the whole case.
Under the Income Tax Act the property of his wife is his property for the purposes of taxation, but under the Married Women’s Property Act it is entirely out of his control.
“Every man who is married to a woman with an income of her own is in that position; and if he cannot pay his wife’s taxes he is liable to imprisonment.
It seems to place an enormous weapon in the hands of rich wives.”
It seems that in and Mrs. Wilks refused to make any return of her income either to the Inland Revenue authorities or to her husband, and, in consequence, the furniture, which is hers, was seized and sold.
The Schoolmaster’s Plight.
“In ,” her sister explained, “she claimed that such distraint was illegal, asserting that under the Income Tax Act she, as a married woman, was exempt from taxation.
As a consequence, all taxes charged upon her were withdrawn, and the authorities contented themselves afterwards with making their claim, sometimes on Mr. Wilks, sometimes on both conjointly, and, finally, on him alone.
“All this is interesting,” she added, “as showing the ridiculous position that arises through the operation of the two Acts.
But the serious side of the matter is that Mr. Wilks is in prison for debt, and his position as a master in a London County Council school must be endangered.
He does not know for what period he will be in prison, and he has no possible way of settling the debt.”
Which prompted George Bernard Shaw to wax wittily (from the Barrier Miner):
Mr. G.B. Shaw was the chief speaker at a meeting held in Caxton Hall, London, by the Women’s Tax Resistance League last month, “to protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the taxes on his wife’s earned income.”
Sir John Cockburn was in the chair.
Mr. Shaw said that this was the beginning of the revolt of his own unfortunate sex against the intolerable henpecking which had been brought upon them by the refusal by the Government to bring about a reform which everybody knew was going to come, and the delay of which was a mere piece of senseless stupidity.
From the unfortunate Prime Minister downwards no man was safe.
He know of cases in his boyhood where women managed to make homes for their children and themselves, and then their husbands sold the furniture, turned the wife and children out, and got drunk.
The Married Women’s Property Act was then carried, under which the husband retained the responsibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself.
As Mrs. Wilks would not pay the tax on her own income Mr. Wilks went to gaol.
“If my wife did that to me,” said Mr. Shaw, “the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
(Laughter.)
It is indefensible.”
Women, he went on, had got completely beyond the law at the present time.
Mrs. [Mary] Leigh had been let out, but he presumed that after a brief interval for refreshments she would set fire to another theatre.
He got his living by the theatre, and very probably when she read the report of that speech she would set fire to a theatre where his plays were being performed.
The other day he practically challenged the Government to starve Mrs. Leigh, and in the course of the last fortnight he had received the most abusive letters which had ever reached him in his life.
The Government should put an end to the difficulty at once by giving women the votes.
As he resumed his seat Mr. Shaw said — “I feel glad I have been allowed to say the things I have, here to-night without being lynched.”
A resolution protesting against the imprisonment of Mr. Wilks was unanimously carried.
Mr. Zangwill wrote, expressing sympathy with the protest, and said, “Marrying an heiress may be the ruin of a man.”
Anna Stout, wife of the former New Zealand prime minister Robert Stout, gave her opinions of the suffrage movement (as found in the Perth Western Mail), including these remarks:
…the Tax-Resistance League… secured hundreds of converts to the cause.
“Twenty-six million pounds” Lady Stout said, “are paid annually in taxes into the Treasury by English women, and naturally there is much resentment created when the injustice of their not having a voice in the expenditure of it is pointed out to them.
We appeal to their pockets first, but almost invariably find hearts and brains behind them.”
Urges This Method of Getting Jailed for Non-Militant Suffragettes.
The non-militant suffragettes of Britain have decided to “let slip the dogs of war” to help win the cause that window smashing, red pepper distribution, mall destruction, and other gentle forms of militant protest have been ineffective in promoting.
Mrs. [Ethel] Philip Snowden, whose husband is an M.P. for Blackburn, announced on in a talk before the Equal Franchise Society how the dogs were going to be utilized.
Any old dog will do.
Mrs. Snowden herself has a dog, the breed of which she did not mention, and Philip Snowden, M.P., is not responsible for the dog.
Mrs. Snowden herself must pay the license for the dog.
Mr. Snowden, as a Member of Parliament, is responsible for the other taxes of Mrs. Snowden, which she has refused to pay, declaring that taxation without representation is unjustifiable, a sentiment that has been uttered on this continent, but they cannot put Mr. Snowden in jail for the refusal of Mrs. Snowden to pay her taxes, as he is exempted as an M.P..
The proposition of Mrs. Snowden seems to squint at the acquisition by all British maids and matrons of dogs and the refusal of the owners to pay the dog license.
Mr. Snowden, M.P., may not even know that Mrs. Snowden, N.M.S. — non-militant suffragette — has a dog; but she has.
By buying up dogs of all sorts and refusing to pay the licenses the suffragettes may get into jail with facility and honor.
Why place a bomb on the front porch or spread carbolic acid in a mail box, when you may get jugged just as well merely by refusing to pay your dog tax?
Mrs. Snowden commented on the “outrageous incompetence of the Liberal Government” and said she felt that her party no longer could trust its affairs with the Liberals.
The physical force party, Mrs. Snowden said, might destroy the sympathy of the British public.
Mrs. Pankhurst had started a crusade that she could not control.
The doctrine that the end justified the means might wind up with the blowing off of [Prime Minister H.H.] Asquith’s head.
The dodging of the dog tax seemed to Mrs. Snowden the lever with which the non-militants might pry themselves into prison.
The possibilities were large.
Every male member of the audience admitted this.
Think of a lady who had accumulated a pack of hounds refusing to pay the licenses thereon and thus making herself liable to a life sentence!
If one dog sent you to prison for one month, how many months would you be forced to serve if you owned 100 or 200 dogs?
Meanwhile you might put on all the dogs blankets inscribed “Votes for Women” and turn them loose in the Strand to the confusion of the bobbies and Parliament.
Destraint has been levied upon [Mary Russell] the Duchess of Bedford, who, as a protest against the non-enfranchisement of women refuses to pay property tax for the Prince’s Skating Rink, which is owned by her.
The tax is eight months overdue.
(When she first announced that she would resist payment of the tax the Duchess of Bedford said:— “I am very strongly opposed to the militant tactics adopted by a portion of those who are in favour of women’s franchise, and I have therefore taken this, the only course open to me, which appears justifiable, of protesting against the way in which the question of woman suffrage has been treated by the Government.)
This is an interesting example of how the violent tactics of the most militant wing of the British women’s suffrage movement (which make today’s “black bloc” look like the kumbaya chorus) gave the tax resistance movement space to present themselves as the reasonable non-militant alternative.
At this time in the United States, by contrast, tax resistance was considered a far-out militant tactic only adopted by the most radical fringe of the suffragist movement.
Distraint was levied on the Duchess of Bedford for non-payment of taxes due in respect of Prince’s Skating Rink.
A silver cup was taken to satisfy the claim.
The Duchess, who refused to pay the taxes on suffrage grounds, has instructed the Women’s Tax Resistance League to point out that the distraint is quite out of order, because as a married woman she is not liable to taxation.
The assessment or demand not should have been served not upon her, but upon the Duke of Bedford.
“Obviously,” she adds, “it was not my business to point out the law to those duty it should be to understand it.”
Carrie Chapman Catt was an American suffrage activist who felt the need to distance herself from the militant tactics of some of her fellow-strugglers across the pond.
But she had kinder words to say about the tax resisters.
From the New York Sun:
“The non-militant organization that interested me most was the Tax Resistance League, which has an enormous influence in England just now.
I went to the sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s curios, on which she had refused to pay taxes.
A member of the league made a speech along the lines of no taxation without representation which had a familiar Fourth of July sound.
It was expressly stated that this was the Duchess’s manner of protesting against militancy, though I fancy we should have considered it rather militant here.”
“No Vote, No Helping Government,” Is Suffragettes Latest Slogan.
Homes Sold Over Women.
One Firm Soldier of “The Cause” Calm While Husband Languishes in Jail for Her.
London, — The suffrage impasse in England is to be solved by a new and startling campaign.
This is to take the form of resistance to paying taxes — and is to be run by all the militant suffragettes in the kingdom who have homes but no votes.
The militants themselves are already jubilant at the prospect of their success, and are asking what Mr. Lloyd-George can possibly do to make up for this leakage in the revenues of England.
This movement is seriously worrying Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and those unfortunate and always unwelcome officials — the tax collectors of England.
The women are either going to jail or having their jewelry and furniture distrained upon and sold by public auction, for the settlement of the Government’s claims.
Everyone of these public auction sales, too, is made the occasion for a grand procession of women tax resisters.
They march to the scene of the fray with drums beating and banners and pennons flying.
Some of the best suffrage speakers in the country are rallying to their aid.
Frequently thousands of people surround the auction halls and when the sale is over the “victim of distraint” mounts a platform outside the hall and addresses the multitude on the text “No Vote, No Tax.”
The suggestion that “taxation and representation should go together” and that “taxation without representation is tyranny” evidently appeals to the sense of fair play in a British crowd, so that converts are easily made, money comes rolling in, and propaganda goes merrily on.
Tax Resistance Three Years Old.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League started as a small cloud — no bigger than a man’s hand — in Lloyd-George’s financial sky, about three years ago.
That it has been growing steadily ever since is probably due to the fact that it is continually stirring the imagination and touching the sense of humor of the “man in the street.”
The society has been able to attain such proportions that shortly it will give a preconcerted “signal” to the women householders in every large city and town in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, causing a general “tax strike.”
Every sympathizer who is a householder will, at a given moment, openly refuse to pay any more imperial taxes until political representation is accorded her.
Some startling developments are likely to follow.
Among the important and extremely active members of the league are the Duchess of Bedford, whose husband owns over 84,000 acres of land and whose collection of pictures at Woburn Abbey is one of the finest and most historic in the world; Princess Sophia Dhulep Sing, an Indian lady, at present in residence in England; Beatrice Harraden, author of “Ships That Pass in the Night,” and Miss Clemence Housman, sister of Laurence Housman, whose fame as an author and artist are recognized in America as well as in his own country.
His “Englishwoman’s Love Letters” made quite a sensation over here some years ago.
All London was agog when it became known that the Duchess of Bedford, aided and abetted by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, had definitely and emphatically refused to pay property tax and house duty on one of her own houses.
People who were not versed in the law speculated as to whether Mr. Lloyd-George would have the courage to order the Duchess to be arrested like an ordinary commoner and dragged off to Holloway Jail, there to endure the rigors of a plank bed and jail fare or to win her freedom by resorting to the hunger strike.
Fortunately, however, such indignities are not necessary in collecting the King’s taxes in England if tax-resisting rebels possess furniture, plate, or jewelry upon which distraint can be made.
Mr. Lloyd-George’s emissaries were therefore able to seize and carry off a beautiful silver trophy cup from the Duchess’ collection of plate, and sell it by public auction.
The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps, the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had.
It was made the occasion for widespread propaganda.
The newspapers gave columns of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the auction room, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, the secretary of the league; Mrs. Lilian Hicks, the honorary treasurer, and other Suffrage speakers held forth on the advisability and necessity of every self-respecting woman householder in Great Britain following the Duchess of Bedford’s lead.
Miss Clemence Housman’s Case a Poser.
The case of Miss Clemence Housman was really a “poser” for Mr. Lloyd-George.
It led to a long struggle between the woman and the authorities, and a denouement which was of the nature of an anti-climax for the Government.
The amount in question was an exceedingly small one — about $1 — but Miss Housman, incited and encouraged by the belligerent Tax Resistance League, refused on principle to pay.
As she had no goods on which to distrain, she was herself seized and thrown into Holloway Jail, there to remain until the tax was paid.
When it became evident that Miss Housman was a woman of determination and was quite prepared to spend the rest of her natural existence within the grim walls of Holloway Castle, the authorities reflected that the maintenance of a prisoner thirty or forty years in jail, and the public excitement this would involve, was too expensive and troublesome a method of collecting $1, so the doors of her cell were, after five days, thrown open and Miss Housman emerged a free and triumphant woman.
The most important and sensational event in the history of the tax-resistance movement, however, was the capture by the Government of the unfortunate husband of a woman tax-resister.
The case arose through the refusal of Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, as a Suffragist and tax-resister, to pay the tax levied on her earned income.
On two previous occasions this refusal had been followed by a distraint on her goods, but one of the peculiar anomalies of the income tax law, as distinct from the property tax in England is that, in spite of the Married Woman’s Property Act, a husband can be made liable for his wife’s income tax.
Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, realizing, therefore, that as a married woman she was not really liable to this taxation, informed the authorities that the claim should be sent not to her, but to her husband.
The government fell into the trap and sent the claim to Mark Wilks, a schoolmaster, who immediately declined to pay on the grounds that he had no legal means of ascertaining his wife’s income.
The treasury refused to accept this plea, and after a long correspondence decided to seize the person of Wilks and throw him into jail.
A public agitation was immediately started, among those who made strong protests on the platform and in the press being George Bernard Shaw, Sir John Cockburn, K.C.M.G., the Rt.
Hon. Thomas Lough, M.P., and Laurence Housman, with the result that Wilks, after being several weeks in jail, was suddenly released, no reason being given by the British Home Secretary for this act of clemency and wisdom.
The incident formed excellent subject for jest by all the humorous papers in England, and one of them suggested that now that husbands could be placed in durance vile for the non-payment of their wives’ income tax, it would be an excellent way for women who held the purse strings not only to get rid of lazy and troublesome husbands, but to have them maintained at the expense of the state!
Another ingenious form of protest adopted by women tax-resisters has been to refuse admission to the officials of the Inland Revenue who came to seize the goods, barricading their homes against the intruders.
Mrs. Dora Montefiore, a well-known Australian Socialist, was the first to adopt this novel method, and several others have since followed her example, the last being Mrs. [Kate] Harvey, whose house has been barricaded for months past.
Mrs. Harvey decided to resist Mr. Lloyd George’s insurance tax, and also refused to pay her gardener’s license.
In the meantime she took the precaution of getting a bill of sale on her furniture, so that the authorities, balked in every direction of their prey, have now seized the lady herself and committed her to jail for two months.
A vigorous agitation for her release is going on, and it is confidently expected that within a few days Halloway’s portals will again open wide and that a huge mass meeting already being organized, in Trafalgar Square, will publicly welcome her back to the arms of her fellow tax-resisters.
Primitive but effective means were resorted to by a bailiff, who, acting on a distraint order, sought to enter the house of a leading suffragette.
The lady in question was Mrs. Kate Harvey, of the Women’s Freedom League.
She had declined to pay taxes, and was being supported in her resolve by Mrs. Charlotte Despard, the well-known president of the league.
Mrs. Harvey resides in “Brackenhill,” a large mansion in Highland road, Bromley (Kent).
Failing to gain an entrance to the house, the bailiffs procured a battering ram, and, with the assistance of the police, accomplished his purpose at the end of two hours by smashing in the front door.
[Mrs. Harvey has for years been an ardent exponent of tax resistance.
In her goods were seized and sold for inhabited house duty, and her residence was barricaded against the King’s officers for eight months, entry by force being a last effected under a warrant.
On the same date Mrs. Harvey was sentenced to distraint or seven day’s imprisonment for a tax unpaid on a male servant.
Her companion, Mrs. Despard, has served two terms of imprisonment.]
Considerable difficulty attended the levying of a distress upon the goods of Mrs. Harvey, of the Tax Resistance League; at Bromley, Kent, on Tuesday.
Upon the arrival of a tax collector, a bailiff, and a police sergeant, they found the outer gate locked and the doors of the house barricaded.
The gate offered little obstruction, but to get the door of the house open was a difficult matter.
Finally, after a heavy beam was used as a battering ram, the door went in with a crash.
The door, however, led only to a narrow passage, where a still more obstinate door barred the way.
A crowbar, battering ram, and a small jemmy were here brought into use, but even with those it was nearly half an hour before the door, almost splintered, gave way.
Later, the hall was entered, where the tax collector was met by Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Despard.
Here was little furniture visible, and it was not until a locksmith had forced the door of the dining room that the bailiff was able to place his levy upon goods.
The amount of the tax, it is understood, is about £15.
The remaining articles concern the resistance of Sophia Duleep Singh.
First, from the New York Herald:
Sophia Duleep Singh, of Woman’s Tax Resistance League, Refusing to Pay, Loses Gems.
A pearl necklace and a gold bangle studded with pearls and diamonds, belonging to Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, have been seized to satisfy fines and costs of about $80, which she was ordered to pay for keeping a carriage, a groom and two dogs without a license.
The jewels will be sold at a public auction.
The Princess is a member of the Woman’s Tax Resistance League.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, of Faraday House, Hampton Court, made her second appearance at Feltham Police Court, Middlesex, on .
She is a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and was summoned for keeping a male servant, a carriage, and two dogs without licences.
The Magistrate imposed fines of £5 each in respect of the groom and carriage, and £1 5/ for each of the dogs, with costs amounting, to 18/.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, of Faraday House, Hampton Court, saw her jewels seized under a distress warrant rather than pay fines and costs amounting to over £16 for keeping a groom, a carrage, and two dogs without licences.
By order of the Justices of the Spelthorne Division of Middlesex, the jewels were offered for sale by public auction at the Twickenham Town Hall on .
The auctioneer (Mr. Alaway) explained that the jewels seized by the police consisted of a necklace, with 131 pearls, and a gold bangle, with a heart-shaped pendant, with a diamond centre surrounded with pearls.
He was proceeding with the sale when Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who occupied a seat in the front of the hall, rose, and exclaimed:— “I protest against this sale, seeing it is most unjust to women that they should be compelled to pay unjust taxes, when they have no voice in the government of the country.”
The bidding started at £6, and when it had reached £10 the lot was knocked down to Miss Gertrude Eaton, a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
Bidding for the gold bangle started at £5, and only two other bids being received, it was sold to the same lady for £7.
In the Washington Herald, Clara Bewick Colby continued her impressions of the British women’s suffrage movement with a note on tax resistance:
There is a league existing for this very purpose to enroll women who are willing to have their property sold for taxes.
When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to the auction-room.
The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and explained to the crowd what it all means.
Here are the banners, and the room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation is tyranny.
Not of American Origin.
I always felt at home on these occasions as I saw the familiar mottoes ranged around.
I had supposed they were of American origin, as we had quoted them in our suffrage work; but I found that all the principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence belonged to an earlier struggle for freedom which had been won on British soil, and exactly the same as the women are waging now.
The women remain at these auctions until the property of the offender is disposed of.
The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be called.
The object lesson of the sale and the subsequent meeting on the street corner or in the nearest park carries the message to an outlying part of London, and to a people who otherwise would know nothing of the agitation.
The discrimination which the government shows on every hand is apparent in this matter of seizing goods, for some are never annoyed for their delinquent taxes, while others are pounced upon with severity.
The league makes resistance systematic and effective so that no effort is lost.
Sometimes no one will bid for the sufragist’s property and they carry it home again, but the government cannot seize it for that assessment.
Of all forms of militancy this is most logical, and it is one that women might well adopt everywhere, as it was inaugurated in America when the Smith sisters of Glastonbury, Conn., allowed their New Jersey cows to be sold year after year under protest.
Mrs. Despard, sister of Gen. Sir John French, who is president of the Woman’s Freedom League, has been sold out repeatedly, until she has around her only the barest necessaries of life.
There is an imperial tax for the non-payment of which the person and not the property is seized.
Miss Housman, sister of the distinguished dramatist, Lawrence Houman, lives with him, but owns a little property subject to the imperial tax.
It was only a trifle — four and six ($1.05) — but she refused to pay.
Various processes were served upon her until the sum had grown to about $15. She was warned repeatedly by the officer that she would be arrested if she did not pay, but she was obdurate.
At length the officer arrived to escort Miss Housman to Holloway jail.
He was very polite and took her in a taxi, which cost exactly the sum of the original tax.
(Here it would have been for that distance the sum of the tax and costs).
Miss Housman was from day to day interviewed by various officials to get her to pay her tax, which she declared she had no intention of doing.
The government was in a quandary.
There was a law to put Miss Housman in prison but there was no law to let her out until she paid the tax and costs.
The government offered to knock off the costs and let her off with the original four and six.
Miss Housman was still obdurate.
To all intents and purposes she was in Holloway for life.
To make capital of the situation and to keep up her courage the Tax Resistance League organized a procession to Holloway.
I was extremely glad to be on the spot and able to show that I was not a fair-weather suffragist, for the weather had been perfect on the occasions of the five processions in which I had already taken part in England, and this day was rainy and the streets muddy.
It was a long trudge the four miles to Holloway but many made it, and, lo! when we got in front of the frowning old fortress the meeting that had been planned for protest became one of victory, for the government had weakened and Miss Housman was free.
She was a very quiet, delicate woman who had never taken any other part in the movement, and she made her first suffrage speech this day under the walls of Holloway jail.
Miss Housman has just been called upon by the board of inland revenue to pay arrears on her taxes, and she has again expressed her determination to abide by “plain constitutional duty in refusing consent to taxation without representation.”
There is a general movement among tax resisters to send their dues to one or other by the national funds for relief labeled “Taxes withheld from the government by voteless women.”
Jail Procession Frequent.
How many times had the women gone to Holloway to welcome out the prisoners on the day of their release!
This was before the days of forcible feeding and the hunger strike which has made it necessary to take away the tortured victims in an ambulance and to a nursing home as quickly as possible.
In the earlier days they have often been met with bands, sometimes the horses would be taken off the wagon and young girls would draw it in a triumphal procession.
Then there was breakfast and speaking, and everything to make it a gala occasion.
I was present at one of these breakfasts in Queen’s Hall decorated with flowers and banners and with tables for hundreds.
It was a queer sensation in those days to look upon sweet and ladylike young women — I remember that on this occasion one was the niece of the violinist Joachim — and to know that they had actually been prisoners.
It was not long before they were looked upon as something sacred, as those who had made special sacrifices for the cause, and they wore badges to show that they had been prisoners and in every place were given the post of honor until their numbers mounted up to the hundreds.
One, of their favorite banners bears the inscription:
“Stone walls do not a prison make. Nor Iron bars a cage.”
I came across the poem the other day from which this is taken.
It contains four stanzas, written by Sir Richard Lovelace in prison in the middle of the seventeenth century.
The balance of the stanza quoted is:
“Minds innocent and quiet, take That for a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love. And in my soul am free. Angels alone, that soar above. Enjoy such liberty.”
We shall see in the next paper which will deal with Lady Constance Lytton’s two prison experiences, that this is the spirit that animates women in prison even when undergoing tortures.
They are upheld by a sense of devotion to a great cause, and they feel that they are enduring this for the sake of all women.
With such consecration there often comes to such prisoners a development of spirit that is truly marvelous.
All ordinary values have slipped away and the sense of personality is lost in the new sense of solidarity.
They are at one with all the suffering women and the wronged women of the past and of the present.
I never talked with one who regretted having gone through the tortures of the prison.
They are the birth-pangs of the new age.
Rides in the Wagon.
From this wonderful breakfast and the inspiring speaking I was privileged to ride with the group that accompanied the released prisoners to the suffrage headquarters.
Notwithstanding that the young girls dressed in white and harnessed to the wagon with their green, white and purple ribbons, had drawn the six women all the way from Holloway, they gaily took up the march and drew the wagon the additional two miles to St. Clement’s Inn.
There was one young woman not released with the rest because she had infringed a prison regulation and had written a letter to her mother.
She was to be out a week later, and the same demonstration was made for her, only varied with elaborate use of the Scotch heather which gave the colors of the Union, white, purple and green.
Again the girls drew the wagon from Holloway and the young Scotch woman who was being escorted away in triumph bore a banner with the words (warning Mr. Asquith) “Ye mauna meddle with the Scotch thistle, laddie.”
Sometimes the decisive turn in a tax resistance campaign has come when the resisters have coalesced into a formal group with the authority to organize and coordinate resistance actions.
Today I’ll give some examples of this.
The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia formed in the to fight taxes associated with a recently-enacted Road Act, and, once organized, the League was successful in its fight.
Organizer Jonathan Norman remarked to a meeting of the League in : “They had before them an example of what might be achieved by union.
In everything they had been victorious; the dray-tax. which from time to time was threatened to be enforced, was ultimately abandoned altogether.
The various memorials from the different hundreds, backed by the memorial of the united delegates, had caused the Government to introduce an amended Act, which promised almost everything they desired.”
When Charles Ⅹ and his ministers threatened to bypass the elected legislature and start taxing and spending on their own initiative in , French liberals declared that since such actions violated the constitution, the people were under no obligation to pay for them with their taxes.
Taxed landholders in Brittany formed the “Breton Association” to coordinate their resistance.
This Association had a two-fold object.
They proposed, in the first place, to refuse to pay any illegal tax, and in the second place to raise by contribution a common fund for indemnifying any subscriber, whose property or person might suffer by reason of his refusal.
The members subscribed each ten francs.
In the event of any tax being imposed without the consent of the Chambers, or with the consent of a Chamber of Deputies created by any illegal alteration of the existing law, payment of the tax was to be refused, and the money subscribed was to be employed in defending and indemnifying the persons who should so refuse, and to prosecute all who might be concerned in the imposing, or the levying of such illegal taxes.
The association enacted a trigger mechanism for an organized tax strike and a process for collecting and distributing a mutual insurance fund.
In this way they were able to present a credible threat to the planned royal usurpation — so much so that the newspapers that dared to print the Association’s charter were prosecuted and their editors imprisoned.
This only served to fuel the movement: “The associations spread over the greater part of the kingdom; they embraced more than half the Chamber of Deputies, and a very considerable number of peers.”
The Rebeccaites formed Farmers Unions which met in secret to discuss the same sort of grievances that, in disguise, Rebecca and her sisters would address vigilante-style, and which corresponded with each other in a regional network.
One farmer said: “This Union among us is a very excellent thing if all join.
When they elect members of Parliament they do just as they please, and we have no voice, but here we have.
There is no way of putting things to rights till we get up this Union, and then we can do as we please and think best.
If we had had this Union many years ago we should be better off than we are now!”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League formed in when about twenty women from existing suffrage groups came together in London “with the single-minded aim of starting ‘an entirely independent society quite separate from any existing suffrage society with the object of spreading the principles of tax resistance.’ ” League organizer Margaret Kineton Parkes explained that it “included Suffragists from every camp, Conservative, Liberal, Socialist, as well as non-party, and was making every effort to get a large number of influential women to refuse to pay taxes” because “[t]he isolated refusal to pay was ineffective and only caused trouble to the refuser; but a large and unexpected number would cause considerable trouble to the Government and would bring the question at issue home to them.”
Elias Rishmawi was among those who organized tax resistance in Beit Sahour during the first intifada.
He remembers how important it was to have formed a network of committees so as to distribute communication and decision-making in anticipation of Israeli military disruption by means of curfews and arrests of the resistance leadership.
Direct action-oriented pacifists in the United States came together in to form Peacemakers.
“[T]his is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee,” they announced.
By the group had about 2,000 members, about 150 of which were resisting taxes.
A second group, War Tax Resistance, promoted the tactic within the anti-Vietnam War activist community.
In , the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee formed to help a variety of groups that included war tax resistance as part of their work to coordinate and share resources and expertise.
During the Great Depression in the United States, taxpayers’ leagues, some of which organized property tax strikes, proliferated in the thousands.
Such groups “spring up like mushrooms,” one critic complained, “every time you go out in the morning, you find more of them.”
These leagues attacked the taxes on multiple fronts — not only organizing tax strikes but also coordinating legal suits and pressuring political figures.
A proposed sales tax boycott in Ottawa in
was boosted by the group Human Action to Limit Taxes.
“As individuals we are lost,” one resister said.
“But as a group we would have some impact.”
In the Birmingham Political Union of the Middle and Lower Classes formed.
It would play a strong role — and would advocate tax resistance — in the battle to pass the Reform Act of .
But it also began as a war tax resistance group, asking its members to sign the following oath:
That in the event of the present ministers so misconducting the affairs of the country as to make it probable we shall be involved in a Continental war [with Belgium], we will consider the propriety of checking so mischievous an event by withholding the means as far as may lay in our power, and will then consider whether or not refusing to pay direct taxes may not be advisable.
Similarly, the Catalonian “National Union” began life as a committee to direct a tax resistance action in and grew into the organizing party for an ambitious reform movement: “its demands included the entire reorganization of the vital forces of the nation: fiscal and administrative reform, the amelioration of the judicial system, the introduction of an effective system of compulsory education, the improvement of the provincial governments.”
A variety of local groups, with independent organizations, were key to the victory of the Anti-Poll Tax movement.
In Danny Burns’s book on the Poll Tax Rebellion, he stresses how important it was for the success of the campaign that people formed and ran their own small-scale, neighborhood resistance groups, rather than ceding control of the movement to the various established left-wing partisan and labor-union groups who wanted to use the movement to their own ends but were also afraid to identify themselves too closely with the law-breaking resisters.
Prior to the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, many people’s only experience of politics was a traditional Labour Party or trade union meeting — the sort of meeting where the top table takes up 90% of the discussion; where the only items discussed are those decided by the executive committee; where half the meeting time is spent discussing procedural motions or the order of words in a resolution; where political factions throw rhetoric across the room in angry and unproductive exchanges.
Essentially, boring meetings which stretch long into the night.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been to these meetings just once and never returned.
To engage people in a mass campaign, the Anti-Poll Tax Unions had to challenge this culture of organisation.
They had to make people feel wanted and included and give everyone a sense that they had a role.… This immediate form of organisation also meant that people weren’t patronised by those who had political experience.
In the local groups, people didn’t need permission to act, they just had to get on the phone to their neighbours and get something going.
People stay involved in political campaigns if they can contribute in the way that they feel is most effective.
Very often this is not by sitting in boring meetings.
…most of the successful Anti-Poll Tax Unions operated on a principle of parallel development.
Rather than trying to assert majority control or spend hours reaching consensus, people were allowed to get on with what they thought was most important.
Everything could be done in the name of the Anti-Poll Tax Union, which existed to coordinate activity against the Poll Tax, not to specify its exact nature.
However, he also notes:
…it was sometimes in the places where the Anti-Poll Tax Unions were weakest that resistance was strongest.
For example, St. Pauls was almost the only area in Bristol which couldn’t sustain an Anti-Poll Tax group.
Local people didn’t feel the need to set up new groups because, as in many inner city areas, they already had strong networks of solidarity, and there was already a high level of general hostility to officials of any sort.
… By the end of , three times as many people had turned up to court to contest their cases from St. Pauls than any other area.
White supremacists in Louisiana met in
to form “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” to coordinate their resistance to state and city taxes enacted by the reconstruction government there, and to provide legal support for resisters.
Property owners of Silver Lake Assembly met in to decide how to respond to a property tax they felt was being illegally put over on them by a government with no authority to do so.
They decided to respond as a group, “and perfected an organization for the purpose,” issuing a resolution saying that they “individually and collectively will resist the payment of the so-called taxes.”
When trying to bring new tax resisters into a movement, there are lots of hopeful short-cuts, but sometimes there is no substitute for addressing potential resisters individually: whether that be through letters, petitions, or face-to-face meetings.
When the United States approved a billion-dollar military aid package to the government of Colombia in , the president of the Mennonite Church of Colombia, Peter Stucky, and Ricardo Esquivia, the director of that church’s Justapaz organization and the coordinator of the Evangelical Council of Colombia’s Human Rights and Peace Commission, wrote a letter to their sister churches in the U.S..
In that letter, they explained the disastrous consequences of fueling the civil war and the military wing of the war on drugs there, explained how the church there was trying to respond more productively to the crisis, and called on churches in the U.S. to do their part:
In reality, the government of the United States, using the tax-payers money, is supporting the Colombian government in what we consider to be a negative form.
This means that the message arriving from the North to the Colombian people becomes a message of death and destruction.
For that reason we are calling the churches in the North to redeem their taxes, on one hand by demanding that the U.S. government invests this money in life-producing projects, and on the other hand by redirecting part of their taxes toward a different project in your community or the world that promotes abundant and dignified life, as our Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us.
The American Mennonite Central Committee responded by urging taxpayers to redirect their taxes from the U.S. government to the Mennonite-run “Taxes for Peace” fund, which in turn would be dedicated that year to peace-building efforts in Colombia.
This sort of advocacy can be dangerous, as this next example will show.
In , R.W. Benner, a Mennonite minister, got worried reports from members of his congregation who were being told in no uncertain terms that they would buy so-called “Liberty Bonds” to support the U.S. war effort, or they would answer for their refusal.
Benner wrote to his bishop, L.J. Heatwole, who responded with a letter in which he reiterated the position of the church that Mennonite brethren “Do not aid or abet war in any form… [and] Contribute nothing to a fund that is used to run the war machine.”
He noted:
In a number of places where brethren have refused to contribute to the different war funds, outlandish threats have been made and in a few cases have been put into execution — such as, tar and feathering, painting houses yellow, decorating autos and buildings with flags to test them out on their principles of nonresistance.
But he urged his fellow-Mennonites to keep the faith and to embrace this sort of martyrdom like good Christians.
Benner conveyed this message to his flock.
For this, both of them were charged under the Espionage Act and convicted.
(To give you some idea of the railroading involved, Heatwole did not learn that a guilty plea had been entered on his behalf by his court-appointed attorney until after he appeared for the trial!)
Letters, or “epistles,” from war tax resisting Quakers to their fellow-Friends were an important way of spreading and maintaining the practice in the Society.
American war tax resistance can be said to have begun on , when John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and several other Quakers addressed a letter in which they explained to other Friends why
as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directed by the [recent] Act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal, which we hope to be enabled to bear with patience.
David Cooper reflected on how thoughtful letters like these helped him maintain his war tax resistance in times of doubt:
I read with singular satisfaction the piece which you lent me respecting taxes, as it was very strengthening to my mind, which before was somewhat encompassed with weakness on this account.… I have since felt much weakness, and had come to no solid conclusion of mind, until I read your little manuscript, which caused my heart to rejoice, under a feeling sense that it is the truth which leads those who walk and abide in it to hold forth this testimony unto the world.
And oh, says my soul, that I may yield faithful obedience to its monitions, let what will be the consequence.
Yearly Meetings would sometimes send letters to Quarterly or Monthly Meetings to reiterate the Quaker position on war tax resistance and give instructions as to how it should be enforced.
For instance, this is from an letter from the North Carolina Yearly Meeting:
…all our members should stand firm, and be faithful in bearing their testimony against war and military operations; taxes and fines appertaining thereunto, either directly or indirectly; or any way conniving or compromising with the specious and plausible offers of the legislature, by the tax proposed in the late act, to screen us from muster fines or military services.
And in order that all our members may be clearly informed on this subject, and be fully prepared to meet the trial likely to come upon us by this law, we have thought it best to send it down in this epistle.
An organizer of the Dublin water charge strike recalls:
…months of work had been done in local areas convincing people of the primacy of [non-payment].
This was done through local public meetings, door-to-door leaflets and even knocking on doors and talking to people… The building of the campaign in this way was crucial.
Local campaign groups were built and then came together and federated, rather than a central committee being formed first and then coming along to organise people.
…it became clear that while people might not have come out to the meeting, they had kept the information about the campaign and the campaign contact numbers had their place on a lot of fridge doors.
American women’s suffrage activist Anna Howard Shaw wrote a letter to women in the movement in , urging them to refuse to fill out income tax returns.
“In this manner we can show our loyalty to those who struggled to make this a free republic and who laid down their lives in defense of the equal rights of all free citizens to a voice in their own Government.
… Let our protest be universal, and let every believer in justice unite in this mode of passive resistance and steadfastly refuse to assist the Government in its unjust and tyrannical violation of its fundamental principle that ‘taxation and representation are one and inseparable,’ and thus prove ourselves worthy descendants of noble ancestors, who counted no price too dear to pay in defense of liberty and equality and justice.”
She told a reporter: “Since my letter was sent all over the country, I have received letters of encouragement and support from all directions,” and she soon thereafter won support for her stand from the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.
Only some of the women’s suffrage activists in Britain were responsible for paying taxes, so although tax resistance was an important part of the campaign there, it was a part not everybody could participate in.
The movement made a special effort to find women who had taxes they could resist.
For example, at one meeting in , Margaret Kineton Parkes “asked anyone present who knew women who paid taxes to send in their names, that they might be approached by her society.”
In , Marie Lawson launched what she called a “snowball” protest: a sort of chain letter in which she sent out letters that advocated tax resistance (and protested on behalf of an imprisoned resister) and that asked the recipients to join her and to in turn send the same letter “to at least three friends.”
Public burnings of poll tax notices were good excuses for people to join in festive resistance activities.
The campaign to resist Thatcher’s Poll Tax used some creative outreach techniques (quotes from Danny Burns’s history of the movement):
“The Aberdeen Anti-Poll Tax group was formed when people from the radical bookshop came together with a community arts group:
“…The local community arts group had a theatre group called “Wise Up” and they got a show together about the Poll Tax.
They took this show around the estates with information for people about registration and how to fight it, to encourage them to set up local groups and support networks.
The plays were performed in local community centres.
Attendance for the plays varied from about 10 to 40 or more.
The meetings which followed were encouraging because people gave their names as contacts or asked people to set up future meetings.”
“In my local group… the union was built up through a door-to-door campaign.
A group of five or six people (mostly friends) formed the core.
They advertised a public meeting on the Poll Tax and about 50 people turned up.
Out of these some joined the organising group.
This small group then mass-produced a window poster which said ‘No Poll Tax Here.’
The poster was dropped through the letter-boxes of 2000 households and the group waited to see who put them up.
Posters appeared in about 100 windows.
Activists then went round and spoke to these people individually, inviting them to attend the next organising meeting; about fifteen did — enough to form the core of a group.”
“[Our] network was strengthened by a door-to-door survey of over 500 households.
The survey was not intended to be scientifically accurate.
Its purpose was to give the APTU a fairly accurate picture of what was happening on the ground, and, perhaps more significantly, it was a pretext for engaging people in conversation about the Poll Tax, informing them of the non-payment campaign and encouraging them to join their local APTU.… Over a third of the people canvassed became paid up members of the union.
By the end of the exercise Easton had over 300 members and street reps for almost every street.
The canvass was not left there.
The key to its success was the second visit.
The group compiled all the statistics on a street by street basis and many of the reps then went back, door-to-door, and told people the results of the survey in their street and the neighbouring streets.
A newsletter was delivered to everyone telling them what the overall results were for Easton.
This meant that people knew how few of their neighbours were going to pay and it gave them confidence not to pay themselves.
They had spoken to the canvassers personally, so they knew that the survey was genuine.”
“An independent television company approached the Easton group in order to work with us on a film about the Poll Tax.
The film was never shown, but the way the community was engaged in the process of making it is instructive.
The film producers wanted a shot of all the doors in the street, opening one by one as the occupants came out of their houses with banners and signs.
Charles, the local street rep, went round to people’s houses every evening for a week and explained to them what was wanted.
Out of 30 houses in the street (a cul-de-sac) 28 agreed to participate.
The street is multi-racial with a fairly wide class mix.
It was inspiring to see white working class men standing shoulder to shoulder with Asian women and their kids, holding the same banners and engrossed in conversation.
Some of them had never spoken to each other before.
The film was made, but more importantly, as [a] result of making it, virtually every one of those households joined the Union, and most still had posters in their windows a year later.
People were brought into the campaign, not through a leaflet or a canvasser, but through an interesting activity.
They didn’t have to go to the campaign, it came to them.”
A tactic that I’ve encountered on many occasions in my research into tax resistance campaigns is that of disrupting government auctions of goods, particularly those of seized from tax resisters.
Here are several examples that show the variety of ways campaigns have accomplished this:
Religious nonconformists in the United Kingdom
Education Act-related resistance
Some disruption of auctions took place during the tax resistance in protest of the provisions of the Education Act that provided taxpayer money for sectarian education .
The Westminster Gazette reported:
There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as “the fighting parson,” entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays.
At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.
The New York Times reported that “Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.” And the San Francisco Chronicle noted:
Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
In Leominster, a ram and some ewe lambs, the property of a resistant named Charles Grundy, were seized and put up at auction, as follows: Ram, Joe Chamberlain; ewes, Lady Balfour, Mrs. Bishop, Lady Cecil, Mrs. Canterbury and so on through the list of those who made themselves conspicuous in forcing the bill through Parliament.
The auctioneer was entitled to a fee under the law of 10 shillings and 6 pence, which he promptly turned over to Mr. Grundy, having during the sale expressed the strongest sympathy for the tax-resisters.
Most of the auction sales are converted into political meetings in which the tax and those responsible for it are roundly denounced.
Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance
Auction disruptions were commonplace in the Annuity Tax resistance campaign in Edinburgh.
By law the distraint auctions (“roupings”) had to be held at the Mercat Cross — the town square, essentially — which made it easy to gather a crowd; or sometimes in the homes of the resisters. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine reported of one of the Mercat Cross roupings:
If any of our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale.
Latterly the passive hubbub rose as if by magic.
Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate; and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of Passive Resistance.
The tax had grinded the faces of the poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation.
Irish, Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering.
Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges; Irish traders flew from St. Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy.
And here were the black placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude — ROUPING FOR STIPEND!
This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods.
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.
Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland appeared before a committee that was investigating the resistance campaign.
He mentioned that “Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those sales.”
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that
occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer
by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any
customer who was of that party.
Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?
A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.
Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who declined?
A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to
Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he
said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as
auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration
with his friends, he declined to act.
Q: Any other?
A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates
of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that
men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among
not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in
getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that
influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last
moment.
It was difficult for the authorities to get any help at all, either from auctioneers, furniture dealers, or carters.
The government had to purchase (and fortify) their own cart because they were unable to rent one for such use.
Here is an example of an auction of a resister’s goods held at the resister’s
home, as described in the testimony of Thomas Menzies:
A: I saw a large number of the most respectable citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.
Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?
A: No.
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a back street, rather than go by the direct way.
Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?
A: He refused to act again, he gave up his
position.
He then described a second such auction:
A: The house was densely packed; it was impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not force their way up, except with great difficulty.
The consequence was, that nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys down.
Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were considerably subdued.
Sheriff Clerk Maitland also described this auction:
I found a considerable crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all the rooms crowded with people.
I said that it was necessary to carry out the sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare.
On another occasion, as he tells it, the auction seemed to go smoothly at first, but the buyers didn’t get what they hoped for:
At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an orderly way as far as the sale was concerned.
We got in, and only a limited number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance.
Certain goods were knocked down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those were the only things which had to be taken away.
There was no vehicle ready to carry them away.
Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them.
After the police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.
A summary of the effect of all of this disruption reads:
So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police funds.
In , it was found necessary to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from the recusants.
But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing payment of the arrears.
All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds, induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.
The Tithe War
William John Fitzpatrick wrote of the auctions during the Tithe War:
[T]he parson’s first step was to put the cattle up to auction in the presence of a regiment of English soldiery; but it almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
The Sentinel wrote of one auction:
Yesterday being the day on which the sheriff announced that, if no bidders could be obtained for the cattle, he would have the property returned to Mr. Germain, immense crowds were collected from the neighbouring counties — upwards of 20,000 men.
The County Kildare men, amounting to about 7000, entered, led by Jonas Duckett, Esq., in the most regular and orderly manner.
This body was preceded by a band of music, and had several banners on which were “Kilkea and Moone, Independence for ever,” “No Church Tax,” “No Tithe,” “Liberty,” &c. The whole body followed six carts, which were prepared in the English style — each drawn by two horses.
The rear was brought up by several respectable landholders of Kildare.
The barrack-gates were thrown open, and different detachments of infantry took their stations right and left, while the cavalry, after performing sundry evolutions, occupied the passes leading to the place of sale.
The cattle were ordered out, when the sheriff, as on the former day, put them up for sale; but no one could be found to bid for the cattle, upon which he announced his intention of returning them to Mr. Germain.
The news was instantly conveyed, like electricity, throughout the entire meeting, when the huzzas of the people surpassed anything we ever witnessed.
The cattle were instantly liberated and given up to Mr. Germain.
At this period a company of grenadiers arrived, in double-quick time, after travelling from Castlecomer, both officers and men fatigued and covered with dust.
Thus terminated this extraordinary contest between the Church and the people, the latter having obtained, by their steadiness, a complete victory.
The cattle will be given to the poor of the sundry districts.
Similar examples were reported in the foreign press:
Cork. — A most extraordinary scene has been exhibited in this city.
Some cows seized for tithes were brought to a public place for sale, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and followed by thousands of infuriated people.
All the garrison, cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir George Bingham, were called out.
The cattle were set up at three pounds for each, no bidder; two pounds, no bidder; one pound, no bidder; in short, the auctioneer descended to three shillings for each cow, but no purchaser appeared.
This scene lasted for above an hour, when there being no chance of making sale of the cattle, it was proposed to adjourn the auction; but, as we are informed, the General in command of the military expressed an unwillingness to have the troops subjected to a repetition of the harassing duty thus imposed on them.
After a short delay, it was, at the interference and remonstrance of several gentlemen, both of town and country, agreed upon that the cattle should be given up to the people, subject to certain private arrangements.
We never witnessed such a scene; thousands of country people jumping with exulted feelings at the result, wielding their shillelaghs, and exhibiting all the other symptoms of exuberant joy characteristic of the buoyancy of Irish feeling.
At Carlow a triumphant resistance to the laws, similar to that which occurred
at Cork, has been exhibited in the presence of the authorities and the
military. Some cattle had been seized for tithe, and a public sale announced,
when a large body of men, stated at 50,000, marched to the place appointed,
and, of course, under the influence of such terror, none were found to bid
for the cattle. The sale was adjourned from day to day, for seven days, and
upon each day the same organised bands entered the town, and rendered the
attempt to sell the cattle, in pursuance of the law, abortive. At last the
cattle are given up to the mob, crowned with laurels, and driven home with an
escort of 10,000 men.
In a somewhat later case, a Catholic priest in Blarney by the name of Peyton refused to pay his income tax on the grounds that the law treated him in an inferior way to his Protestant counterparts.
His horse was seized and sold at auction, where “the multitude assembled hissed, hooted, hustled, and otherwise impeded the proceedings.”
There was precedent for this. During the Tithe War period and thereafter, the
authorities had to go to extraordinary lengths to auction off seized goods. As
one account put it:
In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale; and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom
The tax resisters in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain were particularly adept in disrupting tax auctions and in making them opportunities for propaganda and protest.
Here are several examples, largely as reported in the movement newsletter called The Vote:
“On a sale was held… of
jewellery seized in distraint for income-tax… Members of the
W.F.L.
and Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn
(Hon.
Sec.) assembled to
protest against the proceedings, and the usual policeman kept a dreary
vigil at the open door. The day had been specially chosen by the
authorities, who wished to prevent a demonstration…”
“The sale of Mrs. Cleeves’ dog-cart took place at the Bush Hotel, Sketty,
on afternoon. The
W.F.L.
held their protest meeting outside — much to the discomfort of the
auctioneer, who declared the impossibility of ‘drowning the voice
outside.’ ”
“Notwithstanding the mud and odoriferous atmosphere of the back streets
off Drury-lane, quite a large number of members of the Tax Resisters’
League, the Women’s Freedom League, and the Women’s Social and Political
Union, met outside Bulloch’s Sale Rooms shortly after
to protest against the sale of Miss Bertha Brewster’s goods, which had
been seized because of her refusal to pay her Imperial taxes. Before the
sale took place, Mrs. Gatty, as chairman, explained to at least a hundred
people the reasons of Miss Brewster’s refusal to pay her taxes and the
importance of the constitutional principle that taxation without
representation is tyranny, which this refusal stood for. Miss Leonora
Tyson proposed the resolution protesting against the injustice of this
sale, and it was seconded by Miss F[lorence]. A. Underwood, and supported
by Miss Brackenbury. The resolution was carried with only two
dissentients, and these dissentients were women!”
“The goods seized were sold at the public auction room. Before selling
them the auctioneer allowed Mrs. How Martyn to make a short explanatory
speech, and he himself added that it was an unpleasant duty he had to
perform.”
“A scene which was probably never equalled in the whole of its history
took place at the Oxenham Auction Rooms, Oxford-street, on
. About a fortnight before
the bailiffs had entered Mrs. Despard’s residence in Nine Elms and seized
goods which they valued at £15. Our President, for some years past, as is
well known, has refused to pay her income-tax and inhabited house duty on
the grounds that taxation and representation should go together; and this
is the third time her goods have been seized for distraint. It was not
until the day before — — that Mrs. Despard was informed of the time and place where
her furniture was to be sold. In spite of this short notice — which we
learn on good authority to be illegal — a large crowd composed not only of
our own members but also of women and men from various Suffrage societies
gathered together at the place specified in the notice. ¶ When ‘Lot
325’ was called Mrs. Despard mounted a chair, and said, ‘I rise to
protest, in the strongest, in the most emphatic way of which I am capable,
against these iniquities, which are perpetually being perpetrated in the
name of the law. I should like to say I have served my country in various
capacities, but I am shut out altogether from citizenship. I think special
obloquy has been put upon me in this matter. It was well known that I
should not run away and that I should not take my goods away, but the
authorities sent a man in possession. He remained in the house — a
household of women — at night. I only heard
of this sale, and from a man
who knows that of which he is speaking, I know that this sale is illegal.
I now claim the law — the law that is supposed to be for women as well as
men.’ ”
“[A] most successful protest against taxation without representation was
made by Mrs. Muir, of Broadstairs, whose goods were sold at the Auction
Rooms, 120, High-street, Margate. The protest was conducted by Mrs.
[Emily] Juson Kerr; and Miss Ethel Fennings, of the W.F.L.,
went down to speak. The auctioneer, Mr. Holness, was most courteous, and
not only allowed Mrs. Muir to explain in a few words why she resisted
taxation, but also gave permission to hold meeting in his rooms after the
sale was over.”
“One of the most successful and effective Suffrage demonstrations ever
held in St. Leonards was that arranged jointly by the Women’s Tax
Resistance League and the Hastings and St. Leonards Women’s Suffrage
Propaganda League, on ,
on the occasion of the sale of some family silver which had been seized at
the residence of Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison for non-payment of
Inhabited House Duty. Certainly the most striking feature of this protest
was the fact that members of all societies in Hastings,
St. Leonards, Bexhill and
Winchelsea united in their effort to render the protest representative of
all shades of Suffrage opinion. Flags, banners, pennons and regalia of
many societies were seen in the procession.… The hearty response from the
men to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes’s call for ‘three cheers for Mrs.
Darent Harrison’ at the close of the proceedings in the auction room, came
as a surprise to the Suffragists themselves.”
“On , the last item on
the catalogue of Messrs. Whiteley’s weekly sale in Westbourne-grove was
household silver seized in distraint for King’s taxes from Miss Gertrude
Eaton, of Kensington. Miss Eaton is a lady very well known in the musical
world and interested in social reforms, and
hon. secretary of the
Prison Reform Committee. Miss Eaton said a few dignified words of protest
in the auction room, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson explained to the
large crowd of bidders the reason why tax-paying women, believing as they
do that taxation without representation is tyranny, feel that they cannot,
by remaining inactive, any longer subscribe to it. A procession then
formed up and a protest meeting was held…”
“At the offices of the collector of Government taxes, Westborough, on
a silver cream jug and sugar
basin were sold. These were the property of
Dr. Marion McKenzie, who
had refused payment of taxes to support her claim on behalf of women’s
suffrage. A party of suffragettes marched to the collector’s office, which
proved far too small to accommodate them all. Mr. Parnell said he regretted
personally having the duty to perform. He believed that ultimately the
women would get the vote. They had the municipal vote and he maintained
that women who paid rates and taxes should be allowed to vote. (Applause.)
But that was his own personal view. He would have been delighted not to
have had that process, but he had endeavoured to keep the costs down.
Dr. Marion McKenzie thanked
Mr. Parnell for the courtesy shown them. A protest meeting was afterwards
held on St. Nicholas
Cliff.”
“Mrs. [Anne] Cobden-Sanderson, representing the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, was, by courtesy of the auctioneer, allowed to explain the reason
of the protest. Judging by the applause with which her remarks were
received, most of those present were in sympathy.”
“The auctioneer was entirely in sympathy with the protest, and explained
the circumstances under which the sale took place. He courteously allowed
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr to put clearly
the women’s point of view; Miss Raleigh made a warm appeal for true
freedom. A procession was formed and an open-air meeting subsequently
held.”
“The auctioneer, who is in sympathy with the suffragists, refused to take
commission.”
“[A] crowd of Suffragists of all shades of opinion assembled at Hawking’s
Sale Rooms, Lisson-grove, Marylebone, to support Dr. Frances Ede and Dr.
Amy Sheppard, whose goods were to be sold by public auction for tax
resistance. By the courtesy of the auctioneer, Mr. Hawking, speeches were
allowed, and Dr. Ede
emphasized her conscientious objection to supporting taxation without
representation; she said that women like herself and her partner felt that
they must make this logical and dignified protest, but as it caused very
considerable inconvenience and sacrifice to professional women, she
trusted that the grave injustice would speedily be remedied. Three cheers
were given for the doctors, and a procession with banners marched to
Marble Arch, where a brief meeting was held in Hyde Park, at which the
usual resolution was passed unanimously.”
“An interesting sequel to the seizure of Mrs. Tollemache’s goods last
week, and the ejection of the bailiff from her residence, Batheaston
Villa, Bath, was the sale held , at the White Hart Hotel. To cover a tax of only £15 and
costs, goods were seized to the value of about £80, and it was at once
decided by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and Mrs. Tollemache’s friends
that such conduct on the part of the authorities must be circumvented and
exposed. The goods were on view the morning of the sale, and as there was
much valuable old china, silver, and furniture, the dealers were early on
the spot, and buzzing like flies around the articles they greatly desired
to possess. The first two pieces put up were, fortunately, quite
inviting; £19 being bid for a chest of drawers worth about
50s. and £3 for an
ordinary leather-top table, the requisite amount was realised, and the
auctioneer was obliged to withdraw the remaining lots much to the disgust
of the assembled dealers. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, in her speech at
the protest meeting, which followed the sale, explained to these irate
gentlemen that women never took such steps unless compelled to do so, and
that if the tax collector had seized a legitimate amount of goods to
satisfy his claim, Mrs. Tollemache would willingly have allowed them to
go.”
“Under the auspices of the Tax Resistance League and the Women’s Freedom
League a protest meeting was held at Great Marlow on
, on the occasion of the sale
of plate and jewellery belonging to Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, the
well-known artist, and to Miss Hayes, daughter of Admiral Hayes. Their
property had been seized for the non-payment of Imperial taxes, and
through the courtesy of the tax-collector every facility was afforded to
the protesters to explain their action.”
“At the sale of a silver salver belonging to
Dr. Winifred Patch, of
Highbury, Steen’s Auction Rooms, Drayton Park, were crowded on
by members of the Women’s Freedom
League, the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and other Suffrage societies.
The auctioneer refused to allow the usual five minutes for explanation
before the sale, but Miss Alison Neilans, of the Women’s Freedom League,
was well supported and cheered when she insisted on making clear the
reasons why Dr. Patch for
several years has refused to pay taxes while deprived of a vote. A
procession was then formed, and marched to Highbury Corner, where a large
open-air meeting was presided over by Mrs. [Marianne] Clarendon Hyde, of
the Women’s Freedom League, and addressed by Mrs. Merrivale Mayer.”
“Practically every day sees a sale and protest somewhere, and the banners
of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, frequently supported by Suffrage
Societies, are becoming familiar in town and country. At the protest
meetings which follow all sales the reason why is explained to large
numbers of people who would not attend a suffrage meeting. Auctioneers are
becoming sympathetic even so far as to speak in support of the women’s
protest against a law which demands their money, but gives them no voice
in the way in which it is spent.”
“The sale was conducted, laughably enough, under the auspices of the
Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League; for, on
obtaining entrance to the hall, Miss Anderson and Mrs. Fisher bedecked it
with all the insignia of suffrage protest. The rostrum was spread with our
flag proclaiming the inauguration of Tax Resistance by the W.F.L.;
above the auctioneer’s head hung Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard’s embroidered
silk banner, with its challenge “Dare to be Free”; on every side the
green, white and gold of the
W.F.L.
was accompanied by the brown and black of the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, with its cheery ‘No Vote, no Tax’ injunctions and its John Hampden
maxims; while in the front rows, besides Miss Anderson, the heroine of the
day, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Fisher, were seen the inspiring figures of our
President and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, vice-president of the
W.T.R.L.”
“…all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which
the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the
certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration…”
“From early in the day Mrs. Huntsman and a noble band of sandwich-women
had paraded the town announcing the sale and distributing leaflets. In the
afternoon a contingent of the Tax Resistance League arrived with the John
Hampden banner and the brown and black pennons and flags. These marched
through the town and market square before entering the hall in which the
sale and meeting were to be held, and which was decorated with the flags
and colours of the Women’s Freedom League. Mr. Croome, the King’s officer,
conducted the sale in person, the goods sold being a quantity of table
silver, a silver toilette set, and one or two other articles. The prices
fetched were trifling, Mrs. Harvey desiring that no one should buy the
goods in for her.”
“Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the
sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able
to give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the
weapons employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of
women. Then came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not
been aware he was to sell ‘distressed’ goods, and he very much objected to
doing so.… The meeting and the auctioneer together made the assembly chary
of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great triumph for the
tax-resisters.… Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting
by carrying placards round the crowded market.”
“There was a crowded audience, and the auctioneer opened the proceedings
by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he
attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his
capacity as tax collector. After the sale a public meeting was held… At
the close of the meeting many questions were asked, new members joined the
League…”
The authorities tried to auction off Kate Harvey’s goods on-site, at her
home, rather than in a public hall, so that they might avoid
demonstrations of that sort. “On
morning a band of Suffragist
men carried placards through the streets of Bromley, on which was the
device, ‘I personally protest against the sale of a woman’s goods to pay
taxes over which she has no control,’ and long before
, the time fixed for the
sale, from North, South, East and West, people came streaming into the
little town of Bromley, and made their way towards ‘Brackenhill.’
Punctually at the
tax-collector and his deputy mounted the table in the dining-room, and the
former, more in sorrow than in anger, began to explain to the crowd
assembled that this was a genuine sale! Mrs. Harvey at once protested
against the sale taking place. Simply and solely because she was a woman,
although she was a mother, a business woman, and a tax-payer, she had no
voice in saying how the taxes collected from her should be spent. The tax
collector suffered this speech in silence, but he could judge by the
cheers it received that there were many ardent sympathisers with Mrs.
Harvey in her protest. He tried to proceed, but one after another the men
present loudly urged that no one there should bid for the goods. The
tax-collector feebly said this wasn’t a political meeting, but a genuine
sale! ‘One penny for your goods then!’ was the derisive answer. ‘One
penny — one penny!’ was the continued cry from both inside and outside
‘Brackenhill.’ Then men protested that the tax-collector was not a genuine
auctioneer; he had no hammer, no list of goods to be sold was hung up in
the room. There was no catalogue, nothing to show bidders what was to be
sold and what wasn’t. The men also objected to the presence of the
tax-collector’s deputy. ‘Tell him to get down!’ they shouted. ‘The sale
shan’t proceed till he does,’ they yelled. ‘Get down! Get down:’ they
sang. But the tax-collector felt safer by the support of this deputy.
‘He’s afraid of his own clerk,’ they jeered. Again the tax-collector asked
for bids. ‘One penny! One penny!’ was the deafening response. The din
increased every moment and pandemonium reigned supreme. During a temporary
lull the tax-collector said a sideboard had been sold for nine guineas.
Angry cries from angry men greeted this announcement. ‘Illegal sale!’ ‘He
shan’t take it home!’ ‘The whole thing’s illegal!’ ‘You shan’t sell
anything else!’ and The Daily Herald Leaguers,
members of the Men’s Political Union, and of other men’s societies,
proceeded to make more noise than twenty brass bands. Darkness was quickly
settling in; the tax-collector looked helpless, and his deputy smiled
wearily. ‘Talk about a comic opera — it’s better than Gilbert and Sullivan
could manage,’ roared an enthusiast. ‘My word, you look sick, guv’nor!
Give it up, man!’ Then everyone shouted against the other until the
tax-collector said he closed the sale, remarking plaintively that he had
lost £7 over the job! Ironical cheers greeted this news, with ‘Serve you
right for stealing a woman’s goods!’ He turned his back on his tormentors,
and sat down in a chair on the table to think things over. The protesters
sat on the sideboard informing all and sundry that if anyone wanted to
take away the sideboard he should take them with it! With the exit of the
tax-collector, his deputy and the bailiff, things gradually grew quieter,
and later on Mrs. Harvey entertained her supporters to tea at the Bell
Hotel. But the curious thing is, a man paid nine guineas for the sideboard
to the tax-collector. Mrs. Harvey owed him more than £17, and Mrs. Harvey
is still in possession of the sideboard!”
“The assistant auctioneer, to whom it fell to conduct the sale, was most
unfriendly, and refused to allow any speaking during the sale; but Miss
Boyle was able to shout through a window at his back, just over his
shoulder, an announcement that the goods were seized because Miss Cummins
refused to submit to taxation without representation, after which quite a
number of people who were attending the sale came out to listen to the
speeches.”
“The auctioneer was very sympathetic, and allowed Miss [Anna] Munro to
make a short speech before the waggon was sold. He then spoke a few
friendly words for the Woman’s Movement. After the sale a meeting was
held, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro were listened to with evident
interest by a large number of men. The Vote and
other Suffrage literature was sold.”
“A joint demonstration of the Tax Resisters’ League and militant
suffragettes, held here [Hastings]
as a protest against the sale of
the belongings of those who refused to pay taxes, was broken up by a mob.
The women were roughly handled and half smothered with soot. Their banners
were smashed. The police finally succeeded in getting the women into a
blacksmith’s shop, where they held the mob at bay until the arrival of
reinforcements. The women were then escorted to a railway station.”
“The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps,
the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had. It was
made the occasion for widespread propaganda. The newspapers gave columns
of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the
auction room…”
“When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to
the auction-room. The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the
proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and
explained to the crowd what it all means. Here are the banners, and the
room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress
upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is
a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for
which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation
is tyranny. … The women remain at these auctions until the property of the
offender is disposed of. The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized
from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be
called.”
American war tax resisters
There have been a few celebrated auction sales in the American war tax resistance movement.
Some of them have been met with protests or used as occasions for outreach and propaganda, but others have been more actively interfered with.
When Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home was seized, for example, there were
“months of continuous picketing and leafletting” before the sale. Then:
The day began with a silent vigil initiated by the local Quaker group.
While the bids were being read inside the building, guerrilla theatre took place out on the sidewalk.
At one point the Federal building was auctioned (offers ranging from 25¢ to 2 bottle caps).
Several supporters present at the proceedings inside made brief statements about the unjust nature of the whole ordeal.
Waldo the Clown was also there, face painted sadly, opening envelopes along with the IRS person.
As the official read the bids and the names of the bidders, Waldo searched his envelopes and revealed their contents: a flower, a unicorn, some toilet paper, which he handed to different office people.
Marion Bromley also spoke as the bids were opened, reiterating that the seizure was based on fraudulent assumptions, and that therefore the property could not be rightfully sold.
The protests, odd as they were, eventually paid off, as the IRS had in the interim been caught improperly pursuing political dissidents, and as a result it decided to reverse the sale of the Bromley home and give up on that particular fight.
When Paul and Addie Snyder’s home was auctioned off for back taxes, it was
reported that “many bids of $1 or less were made.”
Making a bid of pennies for farm property being foreclosed for failure to meet mortgages was a common tactic among angry farmers during the Depression.
If their bids succeeded, the property was returned to its owner and the mortgage torn up.
In some such cases, entire farms plus their livestock, equipment and home furnishings sold for as little as $2.
When George Willoughby’s car was seized and sold by the IRS,
Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.
The Rebecca rioters
On a couple of occasions the Rebeccaites prevented auctions, though not of goods seized for tax debts but for ordinary debts.
Here are two examples from Henry Tobit Evans’s book on the Rebecca phenomenon:
A distress for rent was levied on the goods of a man named Lloyd… and a bailiff of the name of Rees kept possession of the goods.
Previous to the day of sale, Rebecca and a great number of her daughters paid him a visit, horsewhipped him well, and kept him in safe custody until the furniture was entirely cleared from the house.
When Rees was freed, he found nothing but an empty house, Rebecca and her followers having departed.
Two bailiffs were there in possession of the goods and chattels under execution… Having entered the house by bursting open the door, Rebecca ran upstairs, followed by some of her daughters.
She ordered the bailiffs, who were in bed at the time, to be up and going in five minutes, or to prepare for a good drubbing.
The bailiffs promptly obeyed, but were driven forth by a bodyguard of the rioters, who escorted them some distance, pushing and driving the poor men in front of them.
At last they were allowed to depart to their homes on a sincere promise of not returning.
Reform Act agitation
During the tax resistance that accompanied the drive to pass the Reform Act in the in the United Kingdom, hundreds of people signed pledges in which they declared that “they will not purchase the goods of their townsmen not represented in Parliament which may be seized for the non-payment of taxes, imposed by any House of Commons as at present constituted.”
The True Sun asserted that
The tax-gatherer… might seize for them, but the brokers assured the inhabitants that they would neither seize any goods for such taxes, nor would they purchase goods so seized.
Yesterday afternoon, Mr Philips, a broker, in the Broadway, Westminster, exhibited the following placard at the door of his shop:— “Take notice, that the proprietor of this shop will not distrain for the house and window duties, nor will he purchase any goods that are seized for the said taxes; neither will any of those oppressive taxes be paid for this house in future.” A similar notice was also exhibited at a broker’s shop in York Street, Westminster.
Another newspaper account said:
A sale by auction of goods taken in distress for assessed taxes was announced to take place at Ashton Tavern on , at Birmingham.
From forty to fifty persons attended, including some brokers, but no one could be found except the poor woman from whose husband the goods had been seized, and the auctioneer himself.
A man came when the sale was nearly over, who was perfectly ignorant of the circumstances under which it took place, and bid for one of the last lots; he soon received an intimation, however, from the company that he had better desist, which be accordingly did.
After the sale was over nearly the whole of the persons present surrounded this man, and lectured him severely upon his conduct, and it was only by his solemnly declaring to them that he had bid in perfect ignorance of the nature of the sale that he was suffered to escape without some more substantial proof of their displeasure.
Railroad bond shenanigans
There was an epidemic of fraud in the United States in in which citizens of local jurisdictions were convinced to vote to sell bonds to pay for the Railroad to come to town.
The railroad never arrived, but the citizens then were on the hook to tax themselves to pay off the bonds.
Many said “hell no,” but by then the bonds had been sold to people who were not necessarily involved in the original swindle but had just bought them as investments.
In the course of the tax resistance campaigns associated with these railroad
bond boondoggles, auction disruption was resorted to on some occasions. Here
are some examples:
St. Clair [Missouri]’s taxpayers joined the movement in to repudiate the debts, but the county’s new leaders wanted to repay the investors.
Afraid to try taxing the residents, they decided to raise the interest by staging a huge livestock auction in , the proceeds to pay off the railroad bond interest.
On auction day, however, “no one seemed to want to buy” any animals.
To bondholders the “great shock” of the auction’s failure proved the depth of local resistance to railroad taxes.
Another attempt was made the other day to sell farm property in the town of Greenwood, Steuben county [New York], on account of a tax levied for the town bonding in aid of railroads, and another failure has followed.
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.” The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
The White League in Louisiana
In Reconstruction-era Louisiana, white supremacist tax resisters disrupted a tax auction.
There was a mob of fifty or sixty armed men came to prevent the deputy tax-collector effecting a sale, armed with revolvers nearly all.
Mr. Fournet came and threatened the deputy and tax-collector.
The deputy and tax-collector ran into their offices.
I came down and called upon the citizens to clear the court-house, but could not succeed.
I then called upon the military, but they had no orders at that time to give me assistance to carry out the law.
Mr. [Valsin A.?] Fournet came with eight or ten.
When the deputy tax-collector attempted to make a sale Mr. Fournet raised his hand and struck him.
The deputy then shoved him down.
As soon as this was done forty, fifty, or sixty men came with their revolvers in hand.
…very few people attended tax-sales [typically], because the white people were organized to prevent tax-collection, and pledged themselves not to buy any property at tax-sales, and the property was generally bought by the State.
Miscellaneous
The First Boer War broke out in the aftermath of the successfully resisted
auction of a tax resister’s waggon. Paul Kruger wrote of the incident:
The first sign of the approaching storm was the incident that happened at the forced sale of Field Cornet Bezuidenhout’s waggon, on which a distress had been levied.
The British Government had begun to collect taxes and to take proceedings against those who refused to pay them.
Among these was Piet Bezuidenhout, who lived in the Potchefstroom District.
This refusal to pay taxes was one of the methods of passive resistance which were now employed towards the British Government.
Hitherto, many of the burghers had paid their taxes, declaring that they were only yielding to force.
But, when this was explained by the English politicians as though the population were contented and peacefully paying their taxes, some asked for a receipt showing that they were only paying under protest and others refused to pay at all.
The Government then levied a distress on Bezuidenhout’s waggon and sent it to public action at Potchefstroom.
Piet Cronjé, who became so well known in the last war, appeared at the auction with a number of armed Boers, who flung the bailiff from the waggon and drew the waggon itself back in triumph to Bezuidenhout’s farm.
When the U.S.
government seized Valentine Byler’s horse because of the Amish man’s
conscientious objection to paying into the social security system, no
other Amish would bid at the auction.
Between the Wars in Germany, the government had a hard time conducting
auctions of the goods of tax resisters. Ernst von Salomon writes:
Everywhere bailiff’s orders were being disobeyed.… Compulsory sales could not be held: when the young peasants of the riding club appeared at the scene of the auction on their horses and with music, nobody seemed willing to make a bid.
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a Bureau of Land
Management auction by making winning bids on everything that he
had no intention of honoring.
During the Poujadist disruptions in France, “They also took to spiking
forced tax sales by refusing to bid until the auctioneer had lowered the
price of whatever was up for sale to a laughably small figure. Thus a tax
delinquent might buy back his own shop for, say 10 cents. At an auction
the other day, a brand-new car went for one franc, or less than one-third
of a cent.”
in roughly the same region
of France:
It was in the south where the wine growers refuse to pay taxes to the government.
A farmer had had half a dozen rabbits sent him by a friend; he refused to pay duty on them, whereupon they control or local customs tried to sell the six “original” rabbits and their offspring at auction.
The inhabitants have now boycotted the auction sales so that the local officials must feed the rabbits till the case is settled by the courts.
In York, Pennsylvania in , a group
“surrounded the crier and forbid any person purchasing when the property
which had been seized was offered for sale. A cow which had been in the
hands of the collector was driven away by the rioters.”
In the Dutch West Indies in “The
household effects of a physician who refused to pay the tax were offered
for sale at auction today by the Government. Although the building in
which the sale was held was crowded, there were no bids and the articles
were not sold.”
In Tasmania, in , “Large quantities of
goods were seized, and lodged in the Commissariat Store [but] Lawless mobs
paraded the streets, tore down fences, and, arming themselves with rails
and batons, smashed windows and doors.… The fence round the Commissariat
Store was torn down…”
During the Bardoli tax strike, “There were meetings in talukas contiguous
to Bardoli, not only in British territory, but also in the Baroda
territory, for expression of sympathy with the Satyagrahis and calling
upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the
authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by bidding for any
forfeited property that may be put to auction by the authorities.”
Some links that have graced my browser tabs in recent days:
The IRS has launched a “view your tax account” service.
If you’re a resister and want to keep an eye on how much money they’re after you for, this is a convenient way to do it.
This service supplements the agency’s “Get Transcript” service, with which you can get more detailed information about your account, your past filings, IRS actions taken with regards to your account, and what it knows about your income sources.
In , a “Sale of Suffragette’s
Goods at Southend” made the headlines when the first public auction of goods
seized by bailiffs in default of payment of the ‘king’s taxes’ by a local
suffragette took place.
The suffragette in question was a Mrs Rosina Sky. A member of the Southend
and Westcliff branch of the WSPU
and of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, Mrs Sky had refused to pay £5 tax,
as required by law. As a result a “quantity of silver goods” were taken from
her home in Cliff Town Road and sold at a public auction.
The Southend Standard intimated how this form of
passive resistance was beginning to work. The article described how the
auction chairman was happy to allow a pro suffragette representative, a ‘Mrs
Kineton-Parkes’, to take to the stage to speak in Mrs Sky’s favour, saying
“taxation and representation must go together.”
“Mrs Sky has paid her taxes for over 20 years and fulfilled loyally every
duty of a citizen,” the auction was told. Half a dozen silver dessert spoons
and some other silverware were sold off to a member of the public
sympathetic to Mrs Sky’s cause, meaning the entire lot did not need to go
under the hammer and could be returned to her.
Following the auction, according to the newspaper, a crowd — made up of
members of the public who had attended the auction as well as
representatives of the WSPU
and the WTRL — marched
along Southchurch Road to Southend Technical Colleges where more speeches
were held. The article reported how “a lot of chaff being indulged the
while” as the protesters made their way through the streets.
Rosina Sky
Here’s another example of a suspicious package shutting down an IRS building, this time in Austin.
Sounds like it was a false positive triggered by an overcautious dog on bomb-sniffing duty.
In a separate incident in Philadelphia, several employees “suffer[ed] eye irritation” when they “came in contact with a wet envelope that had a sweet smell” — so that sounds more serious.
The IRS told tax preparers they would have to get identification numbers — PTINs — so the agency could keep track of them.
Then it told them they would have to buy these numbers from the agency at $64 a pop.
Some preparers sued, saying this amounted to the IRS inventing its own tax to fund itself, without going through Congress for legally-authorized funding.
The judge hearing the suit agreed and said that not only were the fees illegal, but that the agency would have to fully refund the estimated $175–300 million it has collected from selling the numbers so far.
That’s about 1½–2½% of the agency’s annual budget.
New Society Publishers began in to bring out a “Barbara Deming Memorial Series” of books meant to highlight women involved in nonviolent action.
The first book in the series was You Can’t Kill the Spirit by Pam McAllister, which included a chapter on women tax resisters, and another separate section on the Igbo Women’s War, which was also a tax resistance campaign in part.
Here are some excerpts from this book:
Injustice, Death and Taxes: Women Say No!
The world just didn’t make sense to thirty-two-year-old Hubertine Auclert.
On the one hand she was considered a French citizen expected to obey the laws of her country and to pay property taxes.
On the other hand, she was denied the citizen’s right to vote simply because she was a woman.
The male rulers couldn’t have it both ways, Auclert decided.
She began plotting a way to unhinge the system.
On election day in , Auclert and several other tax-paying women of Paris initiated the first stage of the action.
They stomped past a line of startled men and presented themselves for voter registration.
They demanded that they be recognized as full citizens of France with rights as well as responsibilities.
They demanded an end to the injustice of taxation without representation.
The men were amazed: there was nothing wrong with the system’s inconsistencies as far as they were concerned!
The women were turned away.
It was time for stage two.
Taking advantage of the publicity the women had generated, Auclert called for a women’s “tax strike.”
She reasoned that, since men alone had the privilege of governing the people and allotting national budgets, men alone should have the privilege of paying taxes.
“Since I have no right to control the use of my money,” she wrote, “I no longer wish to give it.
I do not wish to be an accomplice, by my acquiescence, in the vast exploitation that the masculine autocracy believes is its right to exercise in regard to women.
I have no rights, therefore I have no obligations.
I do not vote, I do not pay.”
During the tax strike, Auclert was joined by twenty other women — eight widows and the rest, presumably, single women.
When the authorities demanded payment, all but three of the women ended their participation in the strike.
The remaining women continued to appeal the decision.
But when law enforcement officers attempted to seize their furniture, Auclert and the others gave in.
They decided they had done the best they could to call attention to the injustice.
Auclert was not the first woman to organize against the taxation of women without government representation.
Mid-nineteenth-century United States saw a number of women’s rights tax resisters.
In … Lucy Stone decided to publicize the injustice of government taxation of women who, because they were denied the vote, were without representation.
, Henry David Thoreau had spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax, an action he had taken in opposition to the U.S. war with Mexico.
Now Lucy Stone decided to use the same tactic to publicly draw attention to women’s oppression as voteless taxpayers.
When she refused to pay her taxes, the government held a public auction and sold a number of her household goods.
Like Lucy Stone, [Lydia Sayer] Hasbrouck’s radicalism led her to become a tax resister, refusing to pay local taxes in protest against the denial of her right to vote.
A tax collector, so the story goes, managed to steal one of Hasbrouck’s Bloomer outfits from her house and advertise it for sale, the proceeds to go toward the taxes she owed.
Abby Kelly Foster had always been an active worker and speaker for women’s rights, but, in , at the age of sixty-three, she was newly inspired.
She had just heard about Julia and Abby Smith, two sisters in neighboring Connecticut, who were refusing to pay the taxes on their farm in order to protest the denial of suffrage to women.
This was just the sort of nonviolent direct action that appealed to Abby.
Her husband, Stephen, agreed.
That year, they refused to pay their taxes on their beloved “Liberty Farm” in order to give voice to the urgency and justice of women’s suffrage.
When they refused again in , the city of Worcester, Massachusetts took action.
The farm was seized and put up for auction to the highest bidder.
Letters of support for the Fosters’ tax resistance poured in from the progressive leaders of the day.
Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote, “Of course I need not tell either of you at this late day how much I appreciate this last chapter in the lives full of heroic self sacrifice to conviction.”
Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent words of encouragement.
William Lloyd Garrison, a pacifist abolitionist, wrote, “I hope there is not a man in your city or county or elsewhere who will meanly seek to make that property available to his own selfish ends.
Let there be no buyer at any price.”
Unfortunately, Osgood Plummer, a politically conservative neighbor, bid $100 for the farm, but he retreated when Stephen Foster chided him.
Later, Plummer wrote a letter to the local newspaper explaining that he had only wanted to teach the Fosters a lesson about obeying the law.
With no other bidders, the deed to Liberty Farm reverted to the city.
For the next few years, Abby and Stephen lived with the fear and uncertainty of losing the farm, but they continued their tax resistance until Stephen’s ill health became an overriding concern.
In , the Fosters ended their protest and paid several thousand dollars to save the farm.
The point had been made.
In , the Women’s Tax Resistance League of London published a little pamphlet entitled Why We Resist Our Taxes… “The government of this country which professes to be a representative one and to rest on the consent of the governed, is Constitutional in its relation to men, Unconstitutional in its relation to women,” wrote Margaret Kineton Parkes, author of the pamphlet.
Parkes did not mean all women, however.
She hastened to reassure the reader that the tax resisters were not in the least radical but only fair-minded, concerned with votes only for women householders, certainly not for all women.
The League, she claimed, was about passively resisting the unconstitutional government ruling England.
Because they had been granted the municipal vote, women tax resisters were more than willing to pay local “rates,” and they promised they’d have equal willingness to pay “imperial taxes” as soon as they were granted the parliamentary vote.
The London tax resisters devised a new way to reach beyond those already enlightened members of the public who attended suffrage meetings.
They began making suffrage speeches at public auctions, a tactic that had unexpectedly good results.
Many people were converted to the suffrage cause once they had the chance to hear the argument from the resisters themselves.
The auctioneers not only permitted the women to make their speeches, but sometimes actively invited the speeches and even addressed the cause in their own words.
One auctioneer who openly supported the tax-resisting suffragists ended his remarks by saying: “If I had to pay rates and taxes and had not a vote, I should consider it a great disgrace on the part of the Government, but I should consider it a far greater disgrace on my part if I did not protest against it.”
Since the granting of suffrage, women’s tax resistance has most often been undertaken to protest a government’s military spending or its involvement in a specific war — such as the U.S. war in Vietnam.
For part of her life, Barbara Deming was a war tax resister.
In her essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium,” she explained the rationale for this form of nonviolent noncooperation.
Words are not enough here.
Gandhi’s term for nonviolent action was “satyagraha” — which can be translated as “clinging to the truth…” And one has to cling with one’s entire weight… One doesn’t just say, “I don’t believe in this war,” but refuses to put on a uniform.
One doesn’t just say “The use of napalm is atrocious,” but refuses to pay for it by refusing to pay one’s taxes.
At , Juanita Nelson threw on the new white terry cloth bathrobe she’d recently ordered from the Sears-Roebuck catalog and answered her door.
Two U.S. marshals informed her that they had an order for her arrest.
What a way to start the day.
Juanita and her husband Wally, who was out of town that day, had not paid withholding taxes nor filed any forms for , so it was, in one sense, no big surprise that the government wanted to see her.
“But even with the best intentions in the world of going to jail,” she later wrote, “I would have been startled to be awakened at 6:30 a.m. to be told that I was under arrest.”
She explained to the bright-eyed government men that she would be glad to tell the judge why she was resisting taxes if he’d care to come see her.
Then she proceeded to explain why she would not willingly walk out of her door to appear in court.
I am not paying taxes because the overwhelming percentage of the budget goes for war purposes.
I do not wish to participate in any phase of the collection of such taxes.
I do not even want to act as if I think that anyone, including the government, has a right to punish me for an act which I consider honorable.
I cannot come with you.
The government men were not moved.
They called for back-up assistance while Juanita considered her situation.
Should she get dressed?
Would getting dressed be a way of cooperating?
Quickly she called a friend on the phone to let others know what was happening to her, and just as quickly she was surrounded by seven annoyed law enforcement officers.
There was a brief exchange about her still being in her bathrobe, and one uncomfortable officer asked her whether or not she believed in God.
She answered in the negative.
(“He did not go on to explain the connection he had evidently been going to establish between God and dressing for arrest,” Juanita later reported.)
Suddenly, a gruff, no-nonsense officer said, “We’ll just take her the way she is, if that’s the way she wants it.”
He slapped some handcuffs on her and lifted her off the floor.
In maneuvering her into the government car, he apparently tried his best to expose the nakedness under her bathrobe while another officer tried to cover her.
As the car carried her into the heart of Philadelphia, she tried to think.
“My thoughts were like buckshot,” she wrote of her experience, “so scattered they didn’t hit anything or, when they did, made little dent.
The robe was a huge question mark placed starkly after some vexing problems. Why am I going to jail?
Why am I going to jail in a bathrobe?”
The only thing she was sure of at that moment was that, until her head cleared, she would refuse to cooperate with her jailers.
When the car stopped, she was yanked from the back seat, carried into the federal court building, dragged up a flight of stairs, and thrown behind bars.
[S]everal friends stopped by to visit her.
(Her phone call had been a good idea.)
The first visitors were two men, tax-refusing pacifists like herself.
They thought it best, for the sake of appearances, to go to court in the proper clothes.
They offered to get some clothes for her, and she agreed — just in case she decided she’d feel more at ease in them.
After the men left, a woman friend stopped by.
“You look like a female Gandhi in that robe!”
she said.
“You look, well, dignified.”
Juanita grinned.
When they finally came for her, Juanita, still refusing to walk, was wheeled into the courtroom in her bathrobe.
The clothes the men had brought were left behind in a brown paper bag.
The judge gave her until to comply with the court order that she turn over her financial records or be subjected to a possible fine of $1000, a year in jail, or both.
Juanita Nelson went home.
came and went.
Many Fridays came and went.
The charges were dropped and she heard nothing more.
Every now and then, the Internal Revenue Service sends her a bill or tries to confiscate a car, but so far the government has met a wall of nonviolent noncooperation.
They should have known when they saw Juanita in her bathrobe: nothing will make her pay for war.
Most people who take any notice of my position are appalled by my lawbreaking and not at all about the reasons for my not paying taxes.
Instead of trying to make me justify my civil disobedience, why do they not question themselves and the government about a course of action which makes billions available for weapons, but cannot provide decent housing and education for a large segment of the population?
Like the ascetics of old, Eroseanna (Rose or Sis) Robinson was singularly unburdened by material possessions.
She had no bank account, owned no real estate, and when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tried to seize her personal property, they found that all she had was an ironing board, a clock, a quilt, and some clothes.
Robinson took seriously her membership in Peacemakers (an organization founded in to promote radical, nonviolent direct action).
She had been a war tax resister since the early fifties, filing no statements of income and ignoring the various notices and certified letters sent by the IRS.
In , thirty-five years old, single and black, Robinson was a skilled artist and athlete; creative, too, in finding ways to live in the United States without paying for the U.S. military.
She tried to keep her earnings below the taxable level and for a period managed to spend less than $3 per week for food.
She also arranged to earn a withholding-free income from several different work situations.
Even with the little money she made, Robinson regularly sent sums greater than the taxes she owed to groups that worked for peace and social justice.
On , federal marshals descended on Robinson at a community center in Chicago and demanded she come with them.
When she refused, they carried her bodily out of the center and to the district court where she was seated on a bench before a judge.
She refused to accept the services of a lawyer and asked instead that they lay aside their roles as judge and defendant and speak to each other as two people with genuine concerns.
When the judge agreed, Robinson talked.
“I have not filed income taxes,” she said, “because I know that a large part of the tax will be used for militarization.
Much of the money is spent for atom and hydrogen bombs.
These bombs have a deadly fallout that causes human destruction, as it has been proved.
If I pay income tax, I am participating in that course.
We have a duty to contribute constructively to life, and not destructively.”
After making this statement, she was handcuffed, put in a wheelchair because she refused to walk, and taken to jail.
The next day she was wheeled into court again, where she encountered a different judge.
This judge ridiculed her and her supporters who were standing in a vigil in front of the courthouse.
He accused her of having an attitude of “contumacious criminal contempt.”
He committed her to jail until she would agree to file a tax return and show records of her earnings.
Not only would she not agree to file a tax return, she also would not agree to cooperate in any way with the prison system.
She would not walk.
She would not eat.
She did agree to see one visitor one time — her friend Ernest Bromley, a radical pacifist and member of Peacemakers, who had come to see her in Cook County Jail.
He wrote while she dictated a message for all her supporters on the outside:
I see the military system and jail system as one thing.
I don’t want to give up my own will.
I will not compromise by accepting a lawyer or by recognizing the judge as judge.
I would rather that no one try to make an arrangement with the judge on my behalf.
I ask nothing from the court or the jail.
I do not want to pay for war.
That is my main concern.
Love to everyone.
On , Robinson was again wheeled into court.
It was clear that she would not compromise her principles to spare her own discomfort.
The judge sentenced her to jail for a year and added an extra day for “criminal contempt.”
On , she was moved to the federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia.
There she continued her fast, though prison officials began to force-feed her liquids through a tube inserted into her nose.
She refused to cooperate in any way with her own imprisonment nor did she try to send letters through the system of prison censorship.
Ten members of Peacemakers, including long-time activist Marjorie Swann, set up their tents just beyond the gates at Alderson and issued a press release on .
They explained that they were there to show support for Robinson and that most of them intended to fast just as she was fasting.
They invited anyone who wanted to talk to stop by the gate where they were camping.
The pacifists propped up signs along the stretch of dusty road — “No Tax for War,” “Peace Is the Only Defense,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and “Rose Won’t Pay Income Tax.”
After fasting for , Robinson was suddenly and unconditionally discharged from prison on .
The judge who ordered her release said Robinson had become a burden to the prison medical facilities, adding that he felt she had been punished sufficiently.
He didn’t mention the picketers camped outside.
When Robinson was released from prison late afternoon, the first thing she saw was a huge banner held high by her friends — “Bravo Rose!”
A number of women have become war tax resisters in reaction to a specific war.
Mary Bacon Mason, a Massachusetts music teacher, became a war tax resister in after World War Ⅱ.
She told the government she would be willing to pay double her tax if it could be used only for aid to suffering people anywhere, but would accept prison or worse rather than pay for war.
The only possible defense, she said, is friendship and mutual help.
Of World War Ⅱ she said:
I paid a share in that cost and I am guilty of burning people alive in Germany and Japan.
I ask humanity’s forgiveness.
In , Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio, bedridden and elderly, gained national attention and inspired many people to consider war tax resistance when she withheld 34.6 percent of her tax.
She sent an equivalent amount as a donation to four peace organizations and wrote an open letter to President Truman and the IRS
Now that the atomic bomb has reduced to a final criminal absurdity the whole war system, leading quite possibly to the liquidation of human society, and has involved the United States in the shame and guilt of having been the first to exploit its criminal possibilities, I have come to the conclusion that — as a Christian, Quaker, religious and conscientious objector to the whole institution of organized war — I must henceforth refuse to contribute to it in any way I can avoid.
Eighteen years later, and in response to a new war, another woman from Yellow Springs, Ohio, Doris E. Sargent, wrote to the Peacemakers newsletter with a new war tax resistance tactic.
She noted that the government had reintroduced a federal tax attached to telephone bills.
The money was earmarked specifically for U.S. military expenses.
Sargent proposed a radical response — that all those who demanded an end to the fighting in Vietnam ask the phone company to remove their phones in protest.
If everyone who opposed the war were willing to make such an extreme sacrifice, real pressure could be put on the government.
Then Sargent suggested a less extreme idea — that people keep their phones and pay their bills but refuse to pay the federal tax.
Phone tax resisters could send a note with their bills each month, stating that the protest was not directed at the phone company but at the government which was using the phone tax to support war.
The idea caught hold, and phone tax resistance became a popular way to protest the war in Vietnam.
It is still used as a form of war tax resistance.
The war in Vietnam turned many people into war tax resisters.
Pacifist folksinger Joan Baez set an example as a tax resister early in the war years by withholding 60 percent of her income tax.
She was instrumental in persuading countless others to follow her example.
In , she explained:
We talk about democracy and Christianity — and we try out a new fire-bomb.
We talk about peace and we move thousands more men and weapons into Vietnam.
This country has gone mad.
But I will not go mad with it.
I will not pay for organized murder.
I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.
In , life-long Quaker Meg Bowman wrote a letter to the IRS to explain why she had decided once again not to pay her federal income tax.
“Do you carefully maintain our testimony against all preparations for war and against participation in war as inconsistent with the teachings of Christ?”
― Query, Discipline of Pacific Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
The above quotation is from the book that is intended to give guidance to members for daily living.
The book repeatedly stresses peace and individual responsibility.
It is clear to me that I am not only responsible for my voluntary actions, but also for that which is purchased with my income.
If my income is spent for something immoral or if I allow others to buy guns with money I have earned, this is as wrong and offending to “that of God in every man” as if I had used that gun, or planned that bomb strike.
When I worked a five-day week it seemed to me that one-fifth of my income went to taxes.
This would be equivalent to working one full day each week for the U.S. government.
It seemed I worked as follows:
Monday for food.
I felt responsible to buy wholesome, nourishing items that would provide
health and energy, but not too much meat or other luxuries, the world supply of which is limited.
Tuesday for shelter.
We maintain a comfortable, simply furnished home where we may live in
dignity and share with others.
Wednesday for clothing,
health needs and other essentials and for recreation, all carefully
chosen.
Thursday for support of causes.
I select with care those organizations which seem to be acting in such a
way that responsibility to God and my brother is well served.
Friday for death,
bombs, napalm, for My Lai and overkill.
I am asked to support a
government whose main business is war.
Though the above is oversimplified, the point is clear.
I cannot work four days a week for life and joy and sharing, and one day for death.
I cannot pay federal taxes.
I believe this decision is protected by law as a First Amendment right of freedom of religion.
If I am wrong it is still better to have erred on the side of peace and humanity.
Sincerely, Meg Bowman
“The only thing of which I’m guilty is financially supporting the war in Southeast Asia against my better judgment until ,” said Martha Tranquilli when she was charged with the criminal offense of providing false information on her income tax forms.
At , Tranquilli stood on the steps of the state capitol building in Sacramento, California and addressed the 100 supporters who had gathered.
After a short Unitarian service held on her behalf, the aging white woman with a long gray braid told them in her calm, soft voice that she envisioned the day when scientists and workers would join in refusing to pay war taxes or do war work.
I was very much afraid of going to prison, but I think I have overcome that fear.
I plan to read, write letters, and meditate as much as possible.
I’m going to try my best to make an adventure out of this thing.
One after another, friends and strangers attending the rally came up to embrace Tranquilli and offer words of encouragement.
After some spirited singing, they accompanied her to the federal building where she turned herself in to the federal marshals.
Hers was a media image made to order.
“63-Year-Old Tax-Resisting Grandma Goes to Jail” shouted the headlines, and the war tax resistance movement didn’t mind the national publicity Martha Tranquilli generated.
Tranquilli was opposed to the Vietnam War and all the suffering the war was inflicting on the people of Vietnam, the people of the United States, and on the earth itself.
She had therefore decided to withhold the 61 percent of her income taxes (amounting to approximately $1,100) which she believed would go to pay for the war.
It was in Mound Bayou, Mississipi that Martha was tried and sentenced for tax fraud in .
Like other war tax resisters, Tranquilli withheld her taxes by listing unusual dependents.
Tranquilli listed seven peace organizations as dependents, including War Resisters League, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Friends Service Committee.
(Another war tax resister in claimed 3 billion dependents, explaining to the IRS that he felt the population of the earth depended on him and on others to refuse to pay war taxes.
That case went to court and the tax resister was acquitted by a court of appeals of the charge of willfully filing a false and fraudulent W-4 form.)
Tranquilli was found guilty of tax fraud, but the judge was reluctant to send her to jail and indicated he’d give her a suspended sentence if she would only apologize and promise not to do it again.
When Tranquilli refused this offer she was sentenced to nine months in prison and two years probation.
The Mississippi Civil Liberties Union helped her appeal the case and, while the appeal was pending, she moved to California.
Both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her case.
On , after making national headlines and being cheered on by supporters, Tranquilli began her stay at Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, California.
She quickly got involved in the life of the prison community…
After her release, Tranquilli wrote to a friend: “Be sure to say that I did not suffer in prison.
It was a learning experience.”
Tranquilli continued her tax resistance as well as her work for peace and justice until her death in .
For Mason and Urie it was the Second World War.
For Baez, Bowman, and Tranquilli it was the war in Vietnam.
it is the U.S.-backed war against Nicaragua that motivates many new war tax resisters.
In in Brooklyn, New York, tax resister Donna Mehle wrote an open letter to the IRS which was published in the local newspaper.
She cited a religious basis for her tax resistance, protesting the war against Nicaragua.
The decision to come into conflict with the laws of my country is very difficult, but it is a decision rooted in my Christian faith.
As a Christian, I am called to affirm life and reject violence… My commitment to tax resistance deepened in the past year when I travelled to Nicaragua.
There I saw first hand the effect of my tax dollars ($100 million in Contra Aid ).
I vowed to myself and to the Nicaraguan people I met that I would not be complicit in the U.S. backed Contra war, a war which targets innocent civilians and children.
Mehle informed the IRS that she intended to redirect the money she would have owed in taxes to an alternative fund “which supports life-affirming projects in New York City.”
In , some women in the United States proposed a specifically feminist perspective on war tax resistance.
In New York City, the Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance distributed a brochure which read in part:
We can’t keep working for disarmament, for women’s rights, including an end to lesbian oppression, and for racial equality while paying for a male-dominated government which impoverishes and exploits us now and threatens to eliminate the world’s future.
On , this group performed street theater on the steps of Federal Hall.
Some of the women dressed up as pieces of the federal budget “pie” while others, dressed as waitresses, explained the military menu to passersby and handed out leaflets.
In Canada in , sixty-eight-year-old Edith Adamson made headlines with her tax resistance.
A lifelong pacifist and the coordinator of the Peace Tax Fund Committee of Canada, Adamson was one of approximately sixty Canadians who hoped to prevent the government from using their money to make war.
Not that Adamson and the others wanted to keep the money for their own use: they wanted to redirect their dollars into a peace tax fund.
With the adoption of the new Charter of Rights in the Canadian Constitution, there was a guarantee of freedom of conscience.
“This means,” Adamson explained for news reporters, “that the government should provide a legal alternative to war taxes for those who object to killing on religious or ethical grounds.”
Since , Canadian war tax resisters — who call themselves “Peace Trusters” because they trust in peace, not war — have petitioned their government to develop a peace tax fund which would allow citizens the option of directing their money away from the military budget.
They asked for a simple tax form which would allow taxpayers to check whether they want a portion of their taxes to go for warmaking or peacemaking.
In , Edith Adamson explained her involvement:
In a nuclear war, you wouldn’t have a chance to be a conscientious objector.
And, being an old lady, I wouldn’t be drafted, so it seemed the peace tax fund idea was a sound way to get at the root of the problem.
I not only want to exempt myself from the killing, but I want to try to influence the government to look at this problem — and other people as well to examine their consciences.
A nuclear war would involve everybody and mean total destruction and I couldn’t just hide under my little exemption and stay alive.
This peace tax would be an extension of conscientious objector status for the military.
It’s more appropriate today because war now depends more on money than on personnel; it only took twelve men to drop the bomb over Hiroshima, but it took millions, perhaps billions of taxpayers’ dollars in Canada, Britain, and the United States to develop that bomb.
By there were approximately 440 Peace Trusters in Canada who were withholding a portion of their taxes and putting that money into a peace tax fund.
They had agreed to waive the interest on this money in order to pay the court fees involved in taking on a test case to establish the legality of the peace tax fund.
The claimant Jerilynn Prior, a physician and Quaker originally from the United States where she was also a tax resister, now lives in British Columbia.
In a press release, Prior said that paying for war violates her freedom of conscience and religion.
This deep conviction rises from my commitment to work for peace.
I try to live my life that way — as a mother, a physician, a teacher, a woman, a citizen of this world community.
It would be hypocrisy to voluntarily allow my tax contribution to be used for war or the military or pamphlets about bomb shelters…
Each of us can work for peace in our own life, with our own resources, and in our own way.
This tax appeal is the way I must work for peace.
Nigerian women used song in to ridicule, protest, and pressure a man and, by extension, the system he represented.
In , women streamed into Oloko, Nigeria from throughout Owerri Province.
Word had been sent via the Ibo (Igbo) women’s network that it was time to “sit on” Okugo, the arrogant warrant chief of the Oloko Native Court.
“Sitting on a man” was the figurative expression given a traditional process of punishment during which women gathered in front of a man’s home to sing songs which outlined the women’s grievances or insulted the offender.
The women would dance and sing all day and all night, and sometimes, for the most serious and unrepentant offenders, give added impetus to their words by dismantling the roof of the hut until the man promised to cooperate.
On , the women prepared as their mothers and grandmothers before them had prepared for the traditional settling of grievances: they bound their heads with ferns, smeared their faces with ashes, and put on the short loincloths tradition ordained.
Each woman picked up a sacred stick wreathed with young palm fronds.
These sacred sticks were necessary for invoking the spirit and power of their female ancestors.
Thus attired, they massed on the district office to “sit on” Okugo until he got the message.
Just days before, the women had met in the market to discuss the new taxation rumors.
They remembered that , after promises to the contrary, the British had taken a census and begun collecting taxes from the men.
The women were worried that taxes would soon be imposed upon them as well, especially since a district officer had ordered a new census in which they and their property would be counted.
At the marketplace meeting the women had agreed to spread the alarm and act if any of them were approached for information.
And could anyone doubt their cause for alarm now?
Just Warrant Chief Okugo had approached Nwanyeruwa, a married woman.
He had asked to count her goats and sheep.
She had spat back an insult, “Was your mother counted?”
In anger, Okugo had attacked Nwanyeruwa who had immediately set in motion the women’s network.
Now the women were ready to act.
Nwanyeruwa’s name became the watchword, Nwanyeruwa herself the catalyst.
Carrying their sacred sticks high, thousands of women marched on the district office.
They danced.
They sang songs of ridicule and protest, they chanted, and they demanded Okugo’s cap of office, taking from his head the symbol of his authority over them.
A British officer who witnessed the event claimed that the cap, tossed into the crowd of women, “met the same fate as a fox’s carcass thrown to a pack of hounds.”
After several days of such protest, the women secured written assurances that they were not to be taxed.
They also succeeded in having Okugo arrested, tried, and convicted of physical assault and of unnecessarily worrying the population.
When the news of this victory spread through the women’s networks, thousands of other women throughout the region organized to “sit on” their local warrant chiefs.
The protest spread to Aba, a major trading center along the railway.
The women in Aba, like those in Oloko, dressed in their traditional ferns, ashes, and loincloths and carrying the sacred sticks to invoke the mothers, gathered to dance, sing, and demand the cap of the warrant chief.
Special mention must be made of one of the many Suffrage Societies which sprang into existence during the decade before the outbreak of war.
With the Freedom League originated the idea that in view of the dictum that taxation and representation must go together, a logical protest on the part of voteless women would be to decline to pay Imperial taxes until they should have a share in electing Members of the Imperial Parliament.
From onwards, Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard had adopted this form of protest, with notable results.
In the following year, some of her goods were seized, but difficulties occurred, as one auctioneer after another refused to have anything to do with selling them.
When one was finally found, the sale was attended by a large number of Mrs. Despard’s followers, who succeeded in holding up the proceedings until requested by her to desist.
When her piece of plate was at last put up for sale, the bidding was very brisk, and the article was eventually knocked down to a certain Mr. Luxembourg for double its estimated value.
This gentleman insisted on returning it to Mrs. Despard, who accepted it on behalf of the Women’s Freedom League, among whose archives, suitably inscribed in memory of the occasion, it holds an honoured place.
In subsequent years, various devices were adopted with the object of compelling Mrs. Despard’s submission.
Thus she, for whom prison had no terrors, was threatened with imprisonment in default of payment; she was summoned before the High Court, when, in her absence, judgment was pronounced against her.
On only two other occasions, however, was distraint levied.
, a separate society, with the above title, was formed, with Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes as secretary, for experience showed that a special knowledge of the technicalities of the law was necessary, and special machinery had to be set up.
Those who addressed themselves to this business were rewarded by the discovery of curious anomalies and irregularities of the law where women were concerned.
Thus, for instance, it was revealed that whereas married women are not personally liable to taxation (the Income Tax Act of never having been brought into line with the Married Women’s Property Acts), nevertheless payment of taxes was illegally exacted of them whenever possible.
With the assistance of the expert advice of Mrs. [Ethel] Ayres Purdie and others, many cases of injustice and overcharges were exposed and circumvented, Somerset House officials being mercilessly worried.
Imprisonments for Non-Payment of Taxes
It was in , that the first imprisonments in connection with this particular form of protest took place.
Miss [Constance] Andrews of Ipswich was sent to prison for a week for refusing to pay her dog’s tax, and about the same time, Mrs. [Emma] Sproson of Wolverhampton served a similar sentence for the same offence.
The latter was, however, rearrested, and sentenced this time to five weeks’ imprisonment, being placed in the Third Division in Stafford Gaol.
She thereupon entered on the hunger strike, and on the personal responsibility of the Governor, without instructions from the Home Office, she was transferred to the First Division, where she completed her sentence.
Imprisonments in various parts of the country thereafter took place with some frequency, but whenever possible this extreme course appears to have been avoided, and resisters’ goods were seized and sold by public auction, the officials reserving the right of adopting whichever course they deemed most suitable.
By this means, auctioneers’ sale rooms, country market-places, corners of busy thoroughfares, and all manner of unlikely spots, became the scene of protests and demonstrations.
Miss Housman’s Imprisonment
The case which excited the most interest was that of Miss Clemence Housman, sister of the well-known author, who, having stoutly declined to pay the trifling sum of 4s. 6d. (which by dint of writs, High Court Procedure, etc., in due course mounted up to over £6), and not having goods which could be seized, was arrested by the Sheriff’s Officer, and conveyed to Holloway, there to be detained until she paid.
A storm of protest arose, meetings being held at Mr. Housman’s residence in Kensington, outside Holloway Gaol, and in Hyde Park on .
After a week’s incarceration, Miss Housman, who had been singularly well treated in the First Division, was unconditionally released, and on inquiring of the Solicitor of Inland Revenue how she stood in the matter, she was informed that it was closed by her arrest and subsequent release.
By way of celebrating victories such as these, the League held a John Hampden dinner at the Hotel Cecil in , when some 250 guests assembled and listened to speeches from prominent Suffragists of both sexes, when we may be sure that the moral of the story of John Hampden was duly pointed, and many a modern parallel was quoted.
A novel feature of the evening’s proceedings was the appearance of a toast mistress, in the person of Mrs. Arncliffe Sennett.
Mr. Mark Wilks’ Imprisonment
In an incident occurred which illustrated both the anomalous position which married women occupy under the law and also the impossibility of enforcing the law where consent is withheld.
Dr. Elisabeth Wilks, being one of those who held with the Liberal dictum that taxation and representation should go together, had for some years past refused to pay her Imperial taxes, and on two occasions a distraint had been executed on her goods, and they had been sold by public auction.
Then it struck her that her “privileged” position under the law would afford her protection from further annoyance of this kind, and being a married woman, she referred the officials to her husband.
When application was made to the latter for his wife’s income tax return, he told the harassed officials that he did not possess the required information, nor did he know how to procure it.
After some delays and negotiations, the Treasury kindly undertook to make the assessment itself, charging Mr. Wilks at the unearned rate, though Mrs. Wilks was well known to be a medical woman, whose income was derived from her practice.
After over two years of correspondence and threats of imprisonment, since Mr. Wilks sturdily refused to produce the sum demanded, he was arrested on and conveyed to Brixton Gaol, there to be detained until he paid.
Still he remained obdurate, while friends outside busied themselves on his behalf.
Protests poured into the Treasury offices, Members of Parliament were inundated with the like, deputations waited on everybody concerned, and public meetings on the subject were held in great number.
The result was that, at the end of a fortnight, Mr. Wilks was once more a free man.
Other Tax-Resisters
Legislators had recently provided women with additional reasons for refusing to pay taxes.
In the National Insurance Act became the law of the land, and defects in that Act as far as it concerned women, which were pointed out at the time, have become more and more apparent every year that the Act has been in force.
Some few modifications were made in their favour, but they had no effective means of expressing their views.
Again, by means of a Resolution, which occupied a few hours of discussion on , Members of Parliament voted themselves a salary of £400 a year, and only one member, Mr. Walter McLaren, raised his voice to protest against the fresh injustice which this proposal inflicted on women, who were not only subject to legislation in the framing of which they had no voice, but were further called upon to pay those who thus legislated for them…
The Revenue authorities did not repeat the experiment of arresting any women resisters on whom it was not possible to levy distraint, with the result that the Women’s Tax-Resistance League claimed to have a growing list of members who paid no taxes, and who, in spite of repeated threats of imprisonment, were still at large.
Distraint for non-payment was, however, frequent, with the result that up and down the country, and as far north as Arbroath, the gospel of tax-resistance was carried, and secured many adherents, including members of the enfranchised portion of the community, some of whom, in their official capacities, gave public support to the rebels.
Many auctioneers of the better class refused to sell the goods of tax-resisters, and it is on record that one who had done so sent his fee as a donation to the League.
Two members of the League, Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison of St. Leonard’s and Mrs. [Kate] Harvey of Bromley, barricaded themselves in their houses, and succeeded in keeping the officials who came to make the distraint at bay, the former for a period of several weeks, and the latter for a period of no less than eight months.
In both cases, an entry was eventually made by force, but much public sympathy was evinced in both cases, and crowded meetings of protest were held in the largest local halls available.
It is interesting to record that on , a statue was unveiled in the market-place of Aylesbury to the memory of John Hampden, who in the time of Charles Ⅰ. had refused the ship money which that monarch had illegally levied on his subjects.
The sum involved was the trifling one of 20s., but, rather than pay it, John Hampden suffered himself to be imprisoned.
He was subsequently released without a stain upon his character, and a statue to this rebel stands in no less hallowed a spot than the House of Commons, of which assembly he was a Member.
An application on the part of the Women’s Tax-Resistance League of the twentieth century to be officially represented at the unveiling by Lord Rothschild of the statue erected to his memory in Aylesbury was met with a refusal.
That the spirit which animated this seventeenth-century fighter was not, however, dead was evident when, at the conclusion of the official ceremony, a little procession of tax-resisters, supported by men sympathizers, approached the statue and silently laid a wreath at its foot…
Tax Resistance
Throughout tax resisters continued to defy the revenue officials, with varying results.
Among those who resisted paying their taxes for the first time may be mentioned [Mary Russell] the Duchess of Bedford, Miss Beatrice Harraden, Mrs. Flora Annie Steele, and Miss [Ethel] Sargant, the last-named of whom presided over a section of the British Association later in the year, being the first woman to fill such a position.
Mrs. Harvey successfully withstood another siege in connection with her inhabited house duty, and her goods, when eventually seized, failed to realize the sum required by some £8, for the uproar created in the auction-room by sympathizers was so great that the auctioneer abandoned his task.
Mrs. Harvey also refused to take out a licence for her gardener (by name Asquith), or to stamp his Insurance card.
For these two offences she was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment, in default of a fine, but was released at the end of one month, in a very weak condition of health, which was in no way attributable to her own “misconduct.”
There were many other cases of resistance to the Insurance Act, it being an open secret that the Freedom League did not insure its employees.
Captain Gonne, who refused to pay his taxes as a protest against the treatment to which women were being subjected, was also arrested, but was released within a few hours, the reason being, so it was claimed, that in arresting him the revenue officials had been guilty of a serious technical blunder.
Several other resisters besides Mrs. Harvey barricaded their houses against the tax collector, and at Hastings the demonstration arranged in connection with the sale of Mrs. Darent Harrison’s goods led to an organized riot, the result being that the local Suffrage Club brought an action against the Corporation for damage done, which they won.
Undeterred by warnings that it would be impossible to hold a public meeting in Hastings in support of tax resistance, the League nevertheless determined to do so, and, as a matter of fact, everything passed off in a quiet and orderly manner, Lady Brassey being in the chair.
In subsequent years, this policy of open and constitutional rebellion on tax resistance lines has been maintained by Mrs. Darent Harrison.
