Daymond, Mrs Clara

Daymond, Mrs Clara, 9 Mount Tamar Villas, Victoria Road, St Budeaux, Devonport

 

Clara Daymond pictured in the 1930s by Bardsley for the Western Evening Herald

 

Clara Henrietta Daymond[1] (1873–1957) was born Clara Townshend in Devonport, the daughter of John and Mary Townshend. Although John Townshend was a shipwright, a member of the most prestigious trade in the Dockyard, housing conditions in Devonport were such that the address where they were living at the time of the 1881 census was described as ’11 back of Albert Road’. John died when Clara was only 13, by which time they had moved into slightly more comfortable conditions in Morice Town. He left over £600 in his will.

Clara and her mother have not been traced on the 1891 census, but they remained together. She married George Daymond in 1893, when she was 20 and he was 30. George was a builder-developer in Devonport. He and Clara moved out from Devonport to St Budeaux, once a small village on the banks of the River Tamar, but by the end of the nineteenth century rapidly being developed as a dormitory suburb for workers from the dockyard. St Budeaux was formally amalgamated with Devonport in 1899 and George was elected as an independent councillor to represent St Budeaux on Devonport Borough Council almost immediately after.

It was perhaps through the Salvation Army (SA) that Clara and George met, as, though in later life they both practised as Methodists, George had earlier worked as a Salvation Army organiser. Clara’s involvement with the SA[2] is demonstrated by the address she gave the gathering in Devonport Park in 1912 to commemorate the life of General Bramwell Booth. She paid tribute to Booth’s development of opportunities for women, saying that ‘he had put women in spheres of usefulness, had given them command of companies, and had given them opportunities to work side by side with men to help save the lost.’[3] Clara also belonged to the Devonport Branch of the Women’s Temperance Association, an organisation which, like the Salvation Army, sought to help those perceived as ‘unfortunate’ out of their misery by offering them support. Clara supported the Primitive Methodist Mission Church in Keyham and the Granby Mission in Devonport[4]

Daymond was a member of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, an organisation that was instrumental in changing the lives of many working and middle-class co-operative women by developing their skills and confidence to enable them to represent their views in public[5] and to stand for and serve in public office. The St Budeaux branch of the Women’s Co-operative Guild was formed in 1904 as an offshoot from the Devonport branch, and Daymond was its first secretary and a lifelong member of the branch.[6]

It may be to the Guild that Daymond owed her commitment to women’s suffrage. In April 1907, as the Plymouth delegate to the regional Women’s Co-operative Guild meeting in Gloucester, she moved a motion that ‘This Conference demands the enfranchisement of all co-operative women’. She argued that ‘if [women] had the power to look after the home why should they not be able to exercise the vote’. She also said that ‘She was not a Suffragette, but they, too, must be in earnest if they desired to obtain the great benefit of the vote.’[7] When the Three Towns and District[8] branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) was formed in April 1909 she joined and was elected branch chair, a position she was to hold throughout the branch’s existence.[9] She became a regular advocate for the branch, addressing meetings in Saltash and in Tavistock in the autumn of 1909,[10] and open-air meetings from the door of the shop the NUWSS had rented for the General Election campaign in January 1910.[11] Daymond took an active part in the branch’s activities, remaining chair until 1919, continuing to speak, for example, addressing the rally that greeted the 1913 Lands End to Hyde Park pilgrims in Victoria Park, and supporting the formation of a new branch in Saltash.[12] After her death many years later it was reported that she was at Epsom when Emily Wilding Davison was run over and killed by the King’s horse in the Derby, but this incident was only mentioned by one paper and is unsubstantiated.[13] There is no evidence that the Daymonds were interested in horse racing.

In 1907 Clara was elected to the Devonport Board of Guardians as a representative for Tamerton Ward, joining Mrs Steele as the only other woman Guardian.[14] The Devonport Guardians’ committee papers do not seem to have survived, but it appears that she was appointed first to serve on the Infirmary and Children’s Committees, and later to the Boarding Out Committee (also for children). She was diligent in her attendance at the fortnightly board meetings and on the committees on which she served.[15] The principal business in which she was engaged before the First World War was the development of alternative provision for children who once had been admitted to the main Workhouse.[16] The Devonport Board were slow to place children with foster parents (boarding out) or to develop small-scale establishments away from the workhouse itself (scattered homes). By now the Local Government Board were putting pressure on Boards to ensure that children did not have to live in the workhouse, where Devonport still had 80 children in 1908,[17] and the Children’s and Boarding Out Committees were given the charge of developing new resources.[18] She also pressed for causes dear to her heart: equal treatment for women, arguing for a provision of a verandah for female patients with tuberculosis, as the men had one[19]; and successfully proposing that the Guardians make a subscription to the Devonport Women’s Temperance Association nursing fund.[20]

In 1912 Devonport set up its first National Insurance Committee and Clara became one of the two women on it nominated by the Borough Council.[21] In 1917 when the food shortages of the First World War required drastic action, the borough (by this time the Three Towns had become one borough, called Plymouth) set up a Food Committee, to which Clara Daymond was nominated by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Her reputation became part of the debate in the council when a member objected to over-representation from the Co-operative Society. Councillor Moses, himself a Devonport man, supported her nomination, saying that she had been suggested ‘because of her keen interest in all questions affecting womenkind and her prominent association with women’s organisations’.[22]

The war interrupted active campaigning for votes for women but when the Representation of the People Act became law in 1918, suffragists in Plymouth determined to set up a Plymouth Citizens’ Association. This was to be non-party, but, as a speaker said at the first meeting, intended to ‘persuade all women to use their vote, and record it for the candidate whom they thought would strive to make England a better and cleaner country’.[23] Daymond supported the initiative. She also decided to stand for election to the council.

Although in national politics both George and Clara Daymond worked for the Liberal party, in local politics George had always stood as an independent. It was as an independent, too, that Clara Daymond stood for the borough council elections in 1919, endorsed by the Plymouth Citizens’ Association. Two fellow candidates were also endorsed by the Citizens’ Association. Daymond was elected on 1 November 1919, along with another woman, Louie Simpson (q.v.), who had stood as a Labour Party candidate in Stoke Ward.[24] Less than a fortnight later she spoke in support of Lady Astor’s candidature in the Parliamentary election, saying that Astor ‘believed in women having their own representation on every body, be it municipal, Poor-Law or Parliamentary’.[25]

Daymond’s status as an independent did not last long. She commented after the election that her ‘reception in the Council Chamber was friendly, but not being a Party member I had very little choice of committee’.[26] Both George and Clara decided to become Conservatives in 1922, recognising that the Liberal Party was no longer likely to gain office and to remain as Independents on this large council would always disadvantage them in efforts to be nominated to committees in which they were interested.[27]

She remained a councillor from 1919 until she was elected Alderman after her husband’s death on 16 Mar 1939, taking a particular interest in the Public Health and Public Assistance Committee work. She also remained a member of the Devonport Board of Guardians until the board was abolished in 1930, becoming Chairman in 1922. Her tireless advocacy for improvements to the area which she represented earned her the name of ‘Queen of St Budeaux’. She was a founder member and regular contributor to the Devon Council of Women on Public Authorities. She also became the first woman Right Worshipful Master of Plymouth’s first Masonic Lodge for Women in 1935.[28] George had been a Freemason since their early days in St Budeaux.

Clara died on 11 Feb 1957 at 176 Victoria Road, St Budeaux, leaving over £20,600.

 

 

Entry created by Julia Neville, November 2018


[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.co.uk

[2] Western Daily Mercury, 26 Mar 1912. Mrs Daymond distributing Sunday School prizes at the Gloucester Street Salvation Army hall.

[3] Western Daily Mercury, 2 Sep 1912.

[4] Western Morning News, 28 Mar 1912.

[5] Daymond attended the national conference of the British Women’s Temperance Association in Newcastle in 1912, the only woman to do so from Devon and Cornwall. See Western Daily Mercury, 15 Jun 1912.

[6] Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, 3071/9, Scrapbook St Budeaux Women’s Co-operative Guild, 1904-1968. This contains a transcript of the minutes of the first meeting held on 21 March 1904 at 10 Trelawney Avenue.

[7] Gloucester Journal, 27 Apr 1907.

[8] The three towns were Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse.

[9] Western Morning News, 30 Sep 1909.

[10] Common Cause, 4 Nov & 9 Dec 1909.

[11] Common Cause, 27 Jan 1910, 581.

[12] Common Cause, 4 Jul 1913, 213 & 5 Jun 1914, 196.

[13] Yorkshire Evening Post, 23 Feb 1953.

[14] Western Morning News, 12 Feb 1907; first referred to as speaking Western Morning News, 14 Dec 1907.

[15] Western Daily Mercury 13 Apr 1912, reporting on attendances, mentions that she attended 50 of the 51 Board meetings and had high levels of attendance at committee meetings also.

[16] For details of this work, see Western Daily Mercury, 20 Jan 1912

[17] Western Morning News, 16 May 1908.

[18] Western Morning News, 9 Jul 1910.

[19] Western Morning News, 18 Feb 1911.

[20] Western Morning News, 3 Oct 1918.

[21] Western Daily Mercury, 26 Jun 1912.

[22] Western Morning News, 24 Aug 1917.

[23] Western Morning News, 12 Dec 1918.

[24] Western Morning News, 3 Nov 1919.

[25] Western Morning News, 13 Nov 1919.

[26] Common Cause, 28 Nov 1919, 429.

[27] Western Morning News, 31 Oct 1922.

[28] Western Morning News, 3 Jul 1935.

 

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