Andrew, The Misses Clara, Edith & Mary, 18 Southernhay West, Exeter
Thomas and Sophia Andrew[1] had a large family, three sons and six daughters. During the principal period of suffrage activity three of their daughters, Clara, Edith and Mary, were all living at home, as was their son, Sidney, himself an active supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. Thomas, who was chief clerk and then bailiff to the County Court, and a city councillor, had died in 1902 and Sophia died in 1911. The family moved within Exeter from Salutary Place (1861) to Bartholomew Yard (1871) and then to 18 Southernhay West (1881) where they settled on a permanent basis.[2] Clara and Edith Andrew were both amongst the group of women who took advantage in the 1880s/1890s of the University Extension Lectures arranged by Jessie Montgomery.[3] The family appears to have been reasonably well off: in 1911 they were employing a cook and a housekeeper, and in 1912 they gave a reception at the Rougemont Hotel for about 600 people attending the Red Cross Society Congress in Exeter.[4]
It is not always possible to identify which of the Misses Andrew was participating in any of the suffrage activities in which a ‘Miss Andrew’ or the ‘Misses Andrew’ are mentioned.
Clara Andrew (1862-1939)
Clara is said to have attended the Maynard School (Exeter) and to have studied in Germany.[5] In 1881 she was away from Exeter, a visitor at the Wesleyan College at Trull. She is not shown on the 1911 census. She was appointed as one of the first members of the Exeter National Insurance Committee in 1912 and became involved in the provision of care for tuberculous children.[6] She was one of the founder members of the Devon and Exeter Women’s Equitable Benefit Society, founded as a friendly society with a section approved to administer the National Insurance Act 1911, and became one of its Vice-Presidents. She had persuaded her brother, as a local solicitor, to give a briefing about the Act at a drawing room meeting in their home in 1912 and this seems to have led to the establishment of this society, designed for ‘mistresses, servants and other female employees’ and offering insurance cover to women for as little as 3½d per month.[7]
During the War she was a founder member and first secretary to the Belgian Refugee Committee, later the Devon County War Refugees’ Committee.[8] For this work she received the Belgian Medaille de la Reine Elisabeth.[9] Her drive and self-assurance meant that she was not an easy person to work with, and she was gradually sidelined within the organisation. By 1916 she was working as a supervisor in a munitions factory.[10]
Her experience of child welfare led her after the War to set up the National Children’s Adoption Association (NCAA), first launched in Exeter.[11] She died on 6 July 1939 at Tower Cressy, Campden Hill, London, one of the children’s homes the NCAA had created. The probate register records both this and 18 Southernhay West, Exeter, as her places of residence.
Edith Andrew (1869-1950) was born in April 1869. In 1891 she was described as a ‘Kinder Garden Student’ (sic) and, though not given an occupation on the 1901 census, she was recorded in the 1911 census as a schoolmistress.
Mary Juxon Andrew (1872-1927)
Mary’s absence from the family home on census night in 1911 was not due to any suffrage protest but because she was away visiting her brother Thomas and his family.
By the end of 1909 the Misses Andrew were recorded as acting as stewards at the Exeter branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).[12] A Miss Andrew was present at the tea for Mrs Pankhurst given in the Royal Clarence Hotel before Mrs Pankhurst’s address in the Barnfield Hall in 1910.[13] A Miss Andrew, together with brother Sidney, attended the reception given by Mary Pring (q.v.) for NUWSS branch members and the Countess of Selborne, President of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association.[14] In October 1913 the Misses Andrew hosted an ‘At Home’ and subsequent public meeting in the Barnfield Hall to launch the Devon and Exeter branch of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association.[15] A Miss Andrew was a member of the platform party when the NUWSS and the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Branch held a joint public meeting at which Canon Masterman spoke.[16]
After the war, though Clara was often away in London, Sidney, Edith and Mary remained at 18 Southernhay West. Mary died there on 27 July 1927. Sidney and Edith are recorded there in 1939. Sidney died there in 1947. Edith died on 6 February 1950 at 15 Howell Road, Exeter.
Entry created by Julia Neville, August 2018
[1] Census and family records from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] This is a substantial Georgian terraced house. Although Sidney (who completed the 1911 census form) records it as containing only four rooms, he must have misunderstood the requirements. Adjacent houses in the terrace record ten or thirteen rooms.
[3] For example, they covered Jessie Montgomery’s duties of ticket sales during her absence in 1889 and both passed the examination with distinction after a series of geological lectures in 1891, Western Times, 12 Dec 1889; Devon and Exeter Gazette, 19 Jan 1891, p.19.
[4] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 27 May 1913, p.3; Western Times, 2 Nov 1912, p.2.
[5] J. Keating, A Child for Keeps: the History of Adoption in England, 1918-45, London, 2008, pp.42-3.
[6] Keating, p.43.
[7] Western Times, 22 May 1912, p.2; Devon and Exeter Gazette, 25 Oct 1912, p.9; Second List of Societies Approved by the National Health Insurance Joint Committee, Command Paper 6284 (July 1912), London, HMSO.
[8] For details of Clara Andrew’s work with Belgian refugees, see Richard Batten, Devon and the First World War, PhD thesis , University of Exeter, 2013, available at: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/14600/BattenR.pdf?sequence=1 Accessed 2 Sep 2018.
[9] https://www.maynard.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-word-spring-2016-2.pdf Accessed 21 Aug 2018.
[10] Keating, p.43.
[11] Keating, p.45
[12] Western Times, 1 Dec 1909, p.3.
[13] Western Times, 29 Oct 1910, p.2.
[14] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 1 Nov 1912, p.6.
[15] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 20 & 30 Oct 1913; Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Review, 1 Jan 1914, p,19.
[16] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 13 May 1914, p.4.