Dutton, Miss Annie

Dutton, Miss Annie, Somerdon, Elysian Fields, Sidmouth

Annie Victoria Dutton[1] (1859 = 1933) was baptized on 28 July 1859 at the parish church of Newcastle under Lyme in Staffordshire. Her parents were William and Victoria Dutton, at that point living in Queen Street. Annie had an elder brother Frederick and a younger brother, John. William had followed his father’s profession, qualified as a solicitor and ran a commercial practice in Newcastle.

The family moved to 24 Irongate, Newcastle, where they were living in 1871. William described himself as ‘solicitor and landowner’. He became clerk to the magistrates’ court in Newcastle, an officer in the Volunteer Brigade of the North Staffordshire Regiment, and was elected to the Newcastle School Board when this was established in 1871. There he played a leading part in the foundation of Newcastle High School for Boys, opened in 1874, where he was chairman of governors. His sons were educated at Rugby, but nothing is known of Annie’s education. Her father referred bitterly at a School Board meeting in 1873 to the fact that ‘The experiment of a middle-class girls’ school had been tried, but had proved a failure’, and this perhaps represented the family experience.[2]

Annie herself took an interest in schools and children and joined the Ladies’ Committee in charge of the penny dinner scheme for schools.[3] She was elected to the Newcastle School Board herself in 1891, and was referred to as being known for her interest in ‘educational and philanthropic matters in the town’.[4] She seems to have taken a particular interest in the ‘domestic training of the girls’[5] and was a member of the Needlework Guild. She also began to write and publish novels. By the time Wisdom’s Folly: a study of feminine development was launched in 1896, she had already had two novels published.[6] The Staffordshire Advertiser praised it as being well observed and with good characterisation.[7]

William Dutton had retired in the mid 1890s, and the family moved out to Howcroft, on the edge of the town. He died in February 1896 and his funeral took place at St George’s, Queen Street where he had been involved for many years. Frederick, Annie’s elder brother, had long been a partner in the solicitors’ practice of Dutton and Son: he, Annie and their mother continued to live at Howcroft and Annie continued her work on the School Board.

In June 1899, however, Frederick committed suicide.[8] He had apparently been experiencing health problems for some years. Annie and her mother decided to move away from Newcastle altogether. At the time of the census in 1891 they were living in Fortfield Terrace, Sidmouth and they later moved to Somerdon, a large house on Elysian Fields. Victoria Dutton died there in January 1911.

Once settled in Sidmouth Dutton took up the work she had been familiar with in Newcastle, and became involved in the work of the Ottery School Board, which covered Sidmouth.[9] She was also elected to the Honiton Board of Guardians in 1913[10] where she was a member of the Visiting Committee. She also became involved in the Nursing Association, and she supported Miss Leigh Browne in speaking at the County Council enquiry into whether three more members should be added to the Sidmouth Urban Council.[11] They argued that more places were needed to secure women council members.

She continued to write novels, describing herself on the census in 1911 as an author. The advertisement for her novel Feigning or Folly in 1913 refers the reviews of her last book Love without Wings , as comparing her with Jane Austen and Mrs Gaskell for ‘delicacy of characterisation and brilliancy of dialogue’.[12]

It is interesting that the publicity photograph that Dutton used in The Bookman in April 1913 to promote her book was taken by Lena Connell of St John’s Wood, who was well known for her photographs of suffrage activists. This may be mere coincidence, as no other connections between Dutton and the movement in London have been identified. The first reference to Dutton’s involvement with the Sidmouth branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies is in September 1912 when she chaired a meeting addressed by Mary Willcocks (q.v.).[13] The following summer she hosted an At Home for the branch at Somerdon at the end of June, addressed by Olga Fletcher (q.v.) who described the origins and progress from the pilgrimage.[14] Dutton was also part of the branch meeting in October 1913 that planned a special campaign in the Honiton Division, where the MP, Unionist Clive Morrison-Bell was opposed to women’s suffrage.[15]  Somerdon was again the venue for a branch garden party in July 1914, when the campaign was discussed and volunteers signed up for the ‘Lightning Campaign’ or to assist in cottage meetings in Branscombe.[16]

It appears that Dutton put at the disposal of the movement her skills in the management of meetings, gained on the public bodies she served. Although she also had literary skills, she was not known as a writer or a speaker. The only letter so far identified from her on a suffrage topic was a critical one she wrote to Common Cause, taking the magazine to task for the line they had taken in describing the episode where women at an event where Lloyd George was speaking disrupted the meeting by shouting and provoked violence from members of the crowd. She felt that however much the NUWSS was opposed to the tactics of militancy the magazine should have condemned the brutal treatment of women that had taken place.[17]

During the war the Sidmouth and District WSS branch continued to meet, usually with Dutton in the chair and sometimes at her home at Somerdon.[18] They raised funds for the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Serbia and they hosted Mrs Fawcett on her tour of Devon in 1916 speaking about the position of women after the war. At the end of the war the branch met. They were addressed by Louisa Knight-Bruce (q.v.) on ‘The ideals and responsibilities of enfranchised women’. Dutton was elected secretary, and the branch agreed to support the organisation of a meeting in Sidmouth of representatives from societies and organisations of the town to discuss the prospect of forming a local Citizens’ Association.[19]

Dutton died at Somerdon on 20 June 1933. She left almost £15,000. One-third of her residual estate was to be devoted to Christmas gifts for the poor of St George’s parish, Newcastle under Lyme.[20] When the ‘valuable household furnishings’ at Somerdon were listed for auction in September 1933, a particular feature highlighted was the ‘Library of Books’.[21]

 

 

Entry created by Julia Neville, December 2018


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

[2] Staffordshire Sentinel (SS), 28 Mar 1873.

[3] SS, 6 Feb 1889.

[4] Staffordshire Advertiser (SA), 6 Jun 1891.

[5] SA, 20 Nov 1897.

[6] Pall Mall Gazette, 22 May 1896, 3.

[7] SA, 19 Sep 1896.

[8] SA, 17 Jun 1899.

[9] Devon and Exeter Gazette (DEG), 5 Nov 1909, 27 Sep 1912.

[10] The account of her election has not been traced, but she is first referred to at a meeting in June 1913 (Western Times, 23 Jun 1913) and it is likely that she had been elected at the April 1913 elections.

[11] WT,  26 Jan 1915; DEG, 20 Aug 1914.

[12] DEG, 15 Apr 1913.

[13] DEG, 14 Sep 1912.

[14] DEG, 27 Jun 1913.

[15] WT, 31 Oct 1913.

[16] Common Cause (CC) 3 Jul 1914, 283.

[17] CC, 3 Oct 1912, 450.WT 5 May 1916

[18] WT 5 Jul 1915; CC, 11 Feb 1916; DEG, 14 Jul 1916.

[19] DEG,, 6 Dec 1918; CC, 3 Jan 1919, 457.

[20] https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol8/pp64-75#fnn170 . Accessed 30 Nov 2018.

[21] DEG, 8 Sep 1933.

 

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