Baly, Miss Adelaide, 29 Barnardo Road, Exeter
Adelaide Maria Baly (1851-1941) was the daughter of William and Adelaide Charlotte Baly, born on 5 September 1851 and baptised on 29 September 1851 at West Brompton, Kensington. William Baly, who described himself in the baptismal register as ‘organist’, was a music teacher and minor composer who had studied piano and harmony at the Royal Academy of Music. When he qualified in 1848, he was elected Associate of the Royal Academy and became a teacher, initially at the Harley Street College for Ladies in London. He married pianist Adelaide Byrn in 1849. Adelaide was born in 1851 at 2 Thistle Green, West Brompton.[1] In 1853 the family moved to Exeter where William took over the teaching practice of Kellow Pye, which included appointments as conductor of the Exeter Oratorio Society and the Exeter Madrigal Society.[2] Adelaide had an older brother. William, who became a doctor, three younger brothers, and two younger sisters. The family lived first at 27 Southernhay East, Exeter but by 1881 they had moved to 1 Park Place, and when William died in 1891 the address given was 48 Magdalen Street.[3]
By this time, however, Adelaide had left home. She appears to have trained as a teacher and to have taught in London. The biographer of her uncle, Gerald Massey, states that she was living with the Masseys in London in 1891, described as ‘Assistant High School Mistress’.[4] She is shown on the 1901 census as a teacher, employed by the School Board, living as a boarder in Lambeth. Gerald Massey, who had married Adelaide’s mother’s sister Eva, was a self-educated working-class Christian socialist with an interest in Chartism and Associationism. He earned his living by lecturing and wrote essays and poems. This connection may have helped shape some of the ideas Adelaide later expressed in her campaigning for votes for women.
Adelaide is listed on the 1911 census as living at 29 Barnardo Road, together with her younger sister Frances. Her mother had died at the same address the previous year. Neither Adelaide nor Frances are listed as having an occupation. It seems likely that Adelaide had moved back to Exeter when she retired from her profession and that this was either at or not long before her mother’s death since there are no references to her in the Exeter NUWSS branch until 1911. Little is known of her personal interests, but she did have a life-long interest in the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[5] Though not visibly active in church life, she is referred to as supporting the Exeter Gleaners, a Church Missionary Society organisation that raised funds and provided training for missionaries in Africa.[6] When the Exeter branch of the Historical Association was formed she became a member.[7]
From 1911 onwards Adelaide Baly starts to appear in records of Exeter NUWSS activity. She was a member of the deputation which lobbied Duke, the Exeter MP, in the summer of 1911, together with Mrs Pring and Mrs Fletcher, representing women who would be able to vote if the vote were granted on the same terms as to men.[8] They explained to him that the NUWSS was now pledged not to support candidates unless they supported Women’s Suffrage and, as the notes end, ‘Mr Duke holds the seat by the majority of one, so our position is peculiarly strong’. That summer she also spoke, with Miss Splatt (q.v.) and Mrs Fletcher (q.v.) at an open-air meeting on the Insurance Bill and the history of the suffrage movement, was noted as present at the Spreytonway garden party,[9] became a member of the committee,[10] and took on the role of assistant branch secretary.[11] She spoke at branch meetings on aspects of the movement that particularly interested her, for example, educational opportunities,[12] or the effect that the possession of the vote by a new group of male voters had had on raising their wages[13]. She supported the branch Debating Club, noted as speaking in the debate on ‘Is Co-education beneficial?’.[14]
Baly was particularly involved in the work of the South West Federation of NUWSS societies, whose role was to develop branches in Devon and Cornwall. She went with Mary Wilcocks (q.v.) to the spring Federation meeting in May 1911;[15] and was one of the most generous subscribers to the fund set up to generate local funding to match that offered to Eleanor Rathbone to establish a post of South West Federation organiser.[16] As part of the Federation’s outreach work she spoke at the meeting in Barnstaple in March 1912, filling in at the last minute,[17] at Teignmouth[18] and chaired a meeting in Totnes.[19] She is also referred to as having ‘thoroughly canvassed’ the village of Ide before a NUWSS meeting was held there. Disappointingly the attendance at the meeting was only ‘seven adults and four small boys’.[20] Greater success attended her canvassing in South Molton in August 1914, when there was the real prospect of a branch being formed, though in practice the advent of the war caused all such activity to cease.[21]
She became Press Secretary to the South West Federation in 1912, and thereafter was a regular correspondent to local newspapers and to Common Cause.[22] She wrote on the work done by the movement to improve women’s access to education,[23] on the importance of the vote to raising wages,[24] on the effect of enfranchisement in the USA,[25] and kept local readers informed about the progress, or lack of it, of legislation.[26] In 1913 she took part in the South West NUWSS Federation’s part in the national pilgrimage, walking all the way from Land’s End to Hyde Park, and carried the Exeter banner in Hyde Park.[27]
Baly was committed to demonstrating that women could hold public office. She campaigned for Mrs James’s election to the Exeter Board of Guardians[28], nominated the Progressive (Liberal) candidate in her home ward of St Leonard’s,[29] and in the autumn of 1913 stood herself as a Progressive candidate in the city council elections.[30] She was adopted by local Liberals as their candidate in what was a very safe Conservative ward, St Petrock’s. The NUWSS were criticised for not recognising that this was merely a Liberal ploy to force the sitting Conservative councillor to defend his own seat rather than supporting candidates in more marginal wards, but St Petrock’s might indeed have been a winnable ward, as a relatively high proportion of its voters, 25%, were women.[31] Although she failed to win the seat she took 25% of the vote.[32]
At the end of 1913 and during 1914 Baly conducted a personal crusade to change the environment of the courts so that it became less hostile to women, an issue that had been highlighted within the suffrage movement by, for example, the publication of Laura Maclaren’s The Women’s Charter of Rights and Liberties (1909). Baly related in The Common Cause, how, attending court in Exeter, she had made a protest when the order was given for ‘women and children’ to leave the court. She complained that it should not be for women to withdraw but, where necessary, the general public as a whole.[33] At a National Union of Women Workers’ meeting she explained that she considered it was a ‘shame’ for ‘young girls’ to go through the ordeal of a court appearance without any of their sex being present[34] and she also sought to get the Town Council to appoint a woman doctor to examine children and girls[35]. She compiled evidence about the lenient sentences being awarded in the courts for offences against the person when contrasted with severe ones for those awarded for offences against property.[36] She also was concerned to get the age of consent raised and to rescind the law which makes the marriage of a girl legal at 12.[37]
During the war Baly supported the Exeter NUWSS initiative to set up a collar factory to provide employment for women laid off at the collar factory and at the small tailors’ and dressmakers’ establishments in the city.[38] She gave a patriotic address for Empire Day at the St Thomas Girls’ School.[39] She also contributed to the work of the Red Cross movement in Exeter. She had enrolled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment member of Detachment Devon 52 before the war and taken part in the big Red Cross exercise in May 1914.[40] Although she did not serve as a nurse during the war (she was by that time in her late sixties) she undertook mending for Exeter’s Hospital No 1 and provided a billet for nurses in the war hospitals.[41]
During and after the war Baly continued her interest in women’s issues. She addressed the Exeter branch of the National Federation of Women Teachers in 1917, urging them ‘as women were now nearly enfranchised’ to ‘make a special study of fitting themselves for their new responsibilities’.[42] She nominated Florence Browne as ward councillor in 1921, when Browne became, unopposed, one of the first women on the council.[43] She also supported the Exeter and District Society for Equal Citizenship,[44] but no longer played an active part in the organisation.
By 1939 Adelaide and Frances Baly had moved to 54 Pennsylvania Road, where they occupied one of the two flats. They were caring for Harold Baly, their brother Ernest’s son, described as ‘incapacitated’[45]. Adelaide Maria Baly died on 13 June 1941 at 54 Pennsylvania Road, Exeter. Her effects were valued at £391 19s 7d.
Entry created by Julia Neville, September 2018
[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.co.uk .
[2] http://composers-classical-music.com/b/BalyWilliam.htm Accessed 14 Sep 2018.
[3] WT, 5 June 1891.
[4] http://gerald-massey.org.uk/massey/cbiog_part_08.htm ‘ Accessed 19 Apr 2018.
[5] WT, 6 Oct 1883, p.8; 1 Feb 1929, p.7.
[6] DEG, 8 Mar 1917, p.3.
[7] DEG, 3 Dec 1913, p.5; WT, 7 Dec 1915, p.7.
[8] CC, 1 Jun 1911, p.11.
[9] CC, 25 Aug 1911, p.15.
[10] She is referred to as being ‘re-elected’ in WT, 21 Feb 1913, p.10.
[11] WT, 22 Mar 1912, p.3, notes her as resigning the post to work for the Federation.
[12] DEG, 1 May 1912, p.2; 1 Apr 1914, p.4; 13 Apr 1914, p.3.
[13] WT, 23 Mar 1912, p.2.; WMN, 9 Jun 1914, p.8.
[14] WT, 22 May 1913, p.3
[15] CC, 4 May 1911, p.11.
[16] CC 9 Aug 1911, p.8. Baly gave 10/6.
[17] DEG, 14 Mar 1912, p6; WT, 22 Mar 1912, p.3.
[18] CC, 29 Aug 1912, p.14.
[19] WT, 8 Feb 1913, p.2.
[20] CC, 27 Jun 1912, p.16.
[21] NDJ, 30 Jul 14, p.2; CC, 7 Aug 1914;
[22] WT, 22 Mar 1912, p.3.
[23] DEG, 1 May 1912, p2; 13 Apr 1914, p.2.
[24] The Standard, 9 May 1912, p.12; WMN, 22 Jun 1914, p.3.
[25] DEG, 11 Jun 1912, p.5.
[26] E.g. in DEG, 10 Dec 1912, p.5; 10 May 1913, p.3.
[27] WT, 7 Jul 1913, p.4; 29 Jul 1913, p.6.
[28] WT, 7 Apr 1913, p.4
[29] WT, 25 Oct 1913, p.2.
[30] WT, 18 Oct 1913, p.2.
[31] DEG, 31 Oct 1913, p.7.
[32] WT, 3 Nov 1913, p.2.
[33] CC 21 Nov 1913, p.9.
[34] DEG, 8 Mar 1914, p.8.
[35] CC, 21 Nov 1913, p.9.
[36] DEG, 18 Mar 1914, p.3.
[37] DEG 13 Dec 1913, p.3.
[38] WT, 28 Nov 1914, p.3; DEG, 6 Dec 1915.
[39] WT 25 May 1916, p.2.
[40] DEG, 18 May 1914, p.6.
[41] Red Cross Service card, available at: https://vad.redcross.org.uk/Card?sname=baly&hosp=exeter&id=10175&first=true&last=true Accessed 16 Sep 2018.
[42] WT, 25 Sep 1917, p.3.
[43] WT, 25 Oct 1921, p.5.
[44] DEG, 25 Jan 1923, p.3.
[45] Harold had only recently come to live with them. Earlier in the decade he and his wife Hylda were living in Ealing. He died on 25th April 1941 two months before Adelaide, in the public assistance infirmary on Heavitree Road.