Garland, Miss Alison, OBE, 11 Leigham Court, Plymouth
Alison Garland, Illustrated London News, October 1922
Alison Vickers Garland[1] was born on 10 April 1862 in Oxton, then a small village on the edge of Birkenhead. She was the daughter of Alfred Stephens Garland, silversmith, watchmaker and jeweller of 57 Lord Street, Liverpool, and his second wife, Isabella Priestley, whose father John Priestley ran a chemist’s business, also on Lord Street.
Alfred died in New Brighton on 16 November 1871, leaving Isabella with a large family and less than £2000. She and seven of the children (Alison was the second eldest and second daughter) moved to Plymouth and in 1881 were living at 2 Hill Park Crescent, North Hill. Isabella, then aged 47, was listed as a Dealer in Fancy Goods.[2] The eldest daughter, Isabel, had no occupation listed, but Alison, aged 17, was described as a music teacher. Her brother Percy, aged 16, was a solicitor’s clerk.
Alison earned her living as a music teacher for more than a decade. Although her mother described her as a ‘teacher of art and authoress’ in 1891, the music teaching was what earned her a living. She undertook sessional work at schools. In the 1880s she worked at Miss Gatley’s, a boarding school in Tavistock Place that offered her tuition in music, French and drawing in return for her assistance with the juniors.[3] In 1887 she was taken on at The Hoe Grammar School, a private foundation in Lockyer Street.[4] She also taught on her own account, advertising classes at 18 Clarendon Place, stating that pupils were ‘successfully prepared for the local examinations’.[5]
The family had moved to 18 Clarendon Place, off Citadel Road, from their Hill Park Crescent home by the mid 1880s. Five of the seven children were still at home; a boarder brought some additional income to the household. This source of income was augmented when the family moved to 11 Leigham Terrace, a sixteen-room house close to the Hoe, where they were living by 1895,[6] and where they were able to take five boarders. Isabel and Emma were still at 11 Leigham Terrace at the time of the census in 1911, with Isabel listed as proprietor and boarding-house keeper.
As well as her music, Alison Garland was interested in art and in literature. She attended classes at the Plymouth School of Art, and exhibited at the annual student show in 1883 when, of the 350 contributors, two works of hers ‘Wonderland’ and ‘Luff Boy’ were singled out for mention.[7] The School of Art prepared students under a national course of instruction devised at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) and Garland made her way through the seventeen parts of which it was composed so that, although she was already teaching art at The Hoe Grammar School in 1887, she was finally able to advertise herself as holding ‘full certificate, South Kensington’ in 1888.[8] She had also negotiated with Miss Hutchens of the Stoke School for Girls that her classes would be open to pupils not attending the school.
Her literary interests were primarily fictional, and she contributed to the debate in the Sunday School Chronicle on the reading of fiction in 1885.[9] She won second prize in a Doidge’s Annual Competition in 1883 with a story about Sir Francis Drake,[10] and at the end of 1887 published ‘Caught by the Tide’, a ‘tale of Devonshire and brigands’.[11] The 1880s provided new opportunities to study fiction in Plymouth. In 1887 the Plymouth and District Students Association was set up to support students participating in the Cambridge University Extension Scheme of lectures.[12] Garland became a student (she was awarded a Special Distinction for the 1888-9 course, Three Masterpieces of English Literature[13]) and then throughout the autumn of 1889 was a member of the student group reading and discussing the classical Greek tragedies.[14]
It was at this point in her life that Garland started to become actively involved in politics. In 1890 she went on a tour of Ireland with Frances Latimer (q.v.). Latimer was the President of the Plymouth Women’s Liberal Association (PWLA), which had been re-formed in 1888, but there is no evidence that Garland was present at their meetings before 1890 and it is not clear how their joint tour of Ireland came about. In their joint presentation to the PWLA that October Latimer spoke on ‘the general condition of the peasantry’ and Garland on the Irish police system.[15] It was the time when the question of Irish Home Rule dominated British politics, and Garland was asked to speak on Ireland at other meetings too, at the Torquay Women’s Liberal Association and the local Mechanics’ Institute.[16]
Her views on women’s suffrage focused on the need for justice. ‘As human creatures,’ she told the Devonport Working Men’s Liberal Federation, ‘women had a right to decide what was their sphere and to be allowed equal rights with men … Until they were allowed to vote they would not realize the true measure of their responsibilities as citizens and take sufficient interest in political and social questions.’[17] She also urged women workers to form themselves into trades unions for their own protection, and for the development of technical education for girls. She brushed aside the view that if women had the vote they would vote as Conservatives, arguing that ‘If Welsh women had the vote they would not be less keen than Welshmen for Disestablishment. If the Irish women had the vote they would not be less keen for Home Rule than Irishmen were. And so with Englishwomen on such questions as temperance legislation.’[18]
By 1891 she had become secretary to the PWLA and she also spent the summer with Lady Carlisle of the Women’s National Liberal Federation (WNLF), touring the north of England, supporting the programme for the formation of new local Women’s Liberal Associations.[19] As part of that tour she went to the National Liberal Federation Conference as a delegate from Plymouth and, reporting back to the Plymouth branch, she made a special feature of ‘female suffrage and other topics … of special interest to women’. Garland shared with Lady Carlisle strong support for the Temperance Movement, and Carlisle, not an easy woman to please, evidently approved of her as she was later to recommend her to the National Reform Union.[20]
Back in Plymouth Garland took on what she had learned from working with Lady Carlisle and during 1891-2 helped found Women’s Liberal Associations in Devonport, Stonehouse, Tavistock, Brentor and Mary Tavy, Dawlish, Teignmouth, Exmouth, Exeter, Barnstaple, Bideford, Torrington, and also in Cornish towns.[21] The advertisement for her classes at the Stoke School for Girls ceased, with the final one appearing in 1891, and no further advertisements recruiting pupils have been found. It appears that by this time she had given up teaching for work as an organising secretary for the WNLF,[22] and as a lecturer.
Garland described herself as a lecturer on the 1901 census and it was in that capacity that she earned her living. Initially her bookings came from local organisations such as the Devonport Working Men’s Liberal Association[23] and from the Women’s Liberal Associations she had set up in Devon and Cornwall. She used up-to-date technology to illustrate her lectures where feasible, as there is a reference to the ‘limelight views’ that she used for a talk to Stonehouse WLA in 1892.[24] In 1895, however, she secured a post as a speaker for the National Reform Union which was a Liberal organisation dedicated to providing popular lectures on current issues such as, at the time Garland joined its panel, the reform of the House of Lords.[25] She began as a speaker in Devon and Cornwall, on the topics of Parliamentary Reform and on Local Government, but extended her geographical range and her repertoire over the next few years to include bi-metallism and the North West Frontier of India, for example. She also offered talks on a freelance basis. She advertised in the Women’s Signal (the suffrage journal of the British Temperance Association) that she would address meetings on Woman’s Suffrage. The terms given were £1 1s and expenses or 10s 6d for an afternoon meeting in London. Her address was given as 11 Leigham Terrace, Plymouth.[26]
Garland became a regular delegate and speaker at the WNLF Conferences.[27] Garland’s earlier biographers have dealt with her career at national level within the Liberal movement. Mark Pottle, the compiler of her ‘Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’ entry,[28] describes her membership of the Union of Practical Suffragists, a group within the WNLF promoting the cause of women’s suffrage. She was to continue to try to persuade a vacillating Federation wholeheartedly to support women’s suffrage, particularly through arguing for a practical method, offering support to Liberal candidates for election only if they committed themselves for woman suffrage. After the WNLF stepped away from that commitment in 1903 she became a member of its successor organisation, the Forward Suffrage Union, founded in 1907, and represented them in the deputation of women from different societies who met Asquith on 17 November 1911, where she advocated an amendment to the Reform Bill going through Parliament as a means of achieving woman suffrage, a possibility which Asquith did not rule out. The failure of the Conciliation Bill of 1912 was a great disappointment to the movement for women’s suffrage. The WSPU turned to more extreme militancy. Garland wrote a play based on these events instead, reversing the roles of men and women. The Better Half, performed in 1913, initially to entertain the Women’s Liberal Federation Conference by the Actresses’ Franchise League, stood the events of 1912 on their head, with women in power in Parliament and men campaigning for the vote.[29] An earlier play, The Hearthstone Angels, had been performed on the London stage, at the Imperial in 1907.[30]
Crawford also refers to Garland’s appointment as a delegate for the British Committee of the Indian National Congress at Lucknow, and the fact that she was the first woman to address the Indian National Congress.[31] Garland combined this with a tour of India taken over several months during one of the worst famines of the century, and wrote an account of her visit in the journal India, produced for the British Committee. She also made a point of speaking about it and the need for financial help from England at meetings of the PWLA and the Devon Union of WLAs in 1900.[32]
As well as speaking throughout the country, Garland remained in touch with the Liberal movement in Devon. The Devon Liberal Federation rejected a resolution in favour of women’s suffrage in 1897 and in response she led a successful resolution in its favour at the Devon Federation of Women’s Liberal Associations in 1898. Garland was President of the Devon Federation in 1904-5.[33]
In the early years of the twentieth century Garland began to arrange educational-cum-holiday programmes at Dousland Grange, Walkhampton.[34] The first reference to these is that ‘a series of lectures’ was organised there, referring specifically to one given by a local cleric, Rev S. Vincent, who spoke about the life and work of King Alfred.[35] In July a three-month programme of weekly evening meetings was published under the heading of ‘Summer Holidays on Dartmoor organised by Miss Alison Garland at Dousland Grange’, with a programme including W.T. Stead, editor of The Review of Reviews, speaking on ‘Is an Anglo-American Alliance Desirable?’ and Lady Grove (secretary of the Forward Suffrage Union) on ‘The position of women in different countries’. When Grove withdrew due to bereavement Garland stepped in herself with her talk on India, as there was ‘a large house party of nearly 40 people’ to entertain.[36] There is also a reference to a programme at Dousland Grange in April 1905 when, ‘at the invitation of Miss Alison Garland’, in addition to a musical programme a dramatic sketch was performed, arranged by ‘Miss Mary Bateson BA, Fellow of Newnham College’.[37] Mary Bateson was a distinguished constitutional historian, but she was also a suffrage activist, selected as one of the speakers when the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) met Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in May 1906.[38] It is likely that it was their shared interest in the suffrage movement that prompted this event. Garland was increasingly involved with the movement in London: she appeared at the NUWSS demonstration in Trafalgar Square in July 1910 speaking both on the West Steps for the Women’s Liberal Federation and on the East Steps for Temperance Women.[39]
When the NUWSS branch in the Three Towns was formed Garland probably became a member, and certainly supported their work. She went with Dr Mabel Ramsay (q.v.) in 1910 to a meeting in Saltash to propose a resolution calling upon the Government to allow the passage of the Representation of the People Bill 1910.[40] She was listed in residence at 11 Leigham Street on the night of the census in 1911, though, so she did not join the census protestors. In 1912 she and members of the Three Towns branch devised a Suffrage Summer School to be held on Dartmoor, in another boarding house, Heather Tor, also at Dousland. This was advertised in Common Cause with a list of speakers using members of the Three Towns NUWSS and their connections.[41] Sadly no report of the proceedings appears to have been published. In 1912 she also took the opportunity to lecture on a non-party basis on the implications of the new National Insurance Act.[42]
This seems to have been Garland’s final connection with Plymouth. In 1914 when she spoke in support of her usual resolution at the Annual Council of the Women’s Liberal Federation urging Liberal women only to help at elections those Liberal candidates who were pledged to vote for the enfranchisement of women she was named as a delegate from North St Pancras.[43] At the outbreak of the First World War she was in Liverpool with her sister where she initiated the formation of the International Relief Committee.[44]
After the passage of the Representation of the People Act and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act Garland stood for Parliament as a Liberal in the 1918, 1922 and 1929 General Elections, first in Portsmouth, then in Dartford and finally in Warrington. She lost on each occasion, partly at least because her sort of Liberalism was going out of fashion. She did however remain a significant member of the WNLF and was President of the Federation between 1934 and 1936, and was awarded an OBE in 1937 for her political work. By that time, however, her connection with Plymouth had long been severed and she died at 21 Ferndale, Tunbridge Wells, on 27 September 1929. Her funeral, which was conducted in her local Congregational Church, was attended by many Liberal party representatives.[45] She left just under £430.
Entry created by Julia Neville, February 2019.
[1] Census and family references from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] It is possible that Isabella Garland had been involved with Alfred Garland’s business and decided she could make a living at the lower end of the market. There is a Mrs Garland dealing in fancy goods on Union Street in the 1870s, when it was a well-known shopping street in Plymouth, but it is not clear that this is the same Mrs Garland.
[3] Western Morning News, 13 Mar 1884; the successes of her pupils in the International Music College of London examinations are noted in the local papers e.g. Western Morning News, 18 Dec 1884, ‘Senior Division, third class honours, Agnes Lennox Bruce, Piano, teacher, Miss Gatley’s School’.
[4] Her presence was included in the school advertisements from January 1887, Western Morning News, 4 Jan 1887.
[5] e.g. in Western Morning News, 6 May 1885.
[6] Eyre’s Post Office Plymouth and Devonport District Directory, Plymouth, J.G. Hammond & Co., 74.
[7] Western Daily Mercury, 19 Dec 1883.
[8] Western Morning News, 4 Jan 1887, 4 Sep 1888.
[9] Western Morning News, 12 Dec 1886. Garland is known to have run a Bible class, and probably a Baptist one (Western Morning News, 5 Apr 1891.)
[10] Western Daily Mercury, 13 Dec 1883. Advertisement for Doidge’s Western Counties Illustrated Annual 1884, refers to Alison Lily Garland, The Adventures of a Plymouth Lad in Search of His Fortune. Garland appears to have adopted the name of Lily, sometimes Lillie or just L. at this time, preferring it to her given second name of Vickers.
[11] Western Morning News, 17 Dec 1887, 6. The reviewer described it as teaching ‘the virtue of right-doing, the following of duty wherever it leads … designed to purify and elevate the thought and action of the reader’. The British Library Catalogue gives three entries for Garland: Eternity (1887), Caught by the Tide (1888) and The Better Half (1913), discussed below. I am grateful to Robert Sharp for drawing my attention to this summary.
[12] Western Morning News, 28 Jun 1887.
[13] Western Daily Mercury, 20 May 1889. Fellow students in this group, later to become Devon Suffrage Activists, were Annie Ramsay and Mary Willcocks (qqv).
[14] The first class was reported in Western Daily Mercury, 25 Oct 1889.
[15] Western Morning News, 25 Oct 1890.
[16] Western Morning News, 22 Jan & 20 Mar 1891.
[17] Western Morning News, 2 Dec 1895.
[18] Western Daily Mercur, 18 Jan 1895, addressing the WLF Conference.
[19] Western Morning News, 13 May & 21 Nov 1891.
[20] She organised her Bible Class to give an entertainment for the Lower Street Temperance Society reported in Western Morning News, 5 Apr 1891; presided at a meeting of the Plymouth Total Abstinence Society, Western Morning News, 3 Oct 1892; and her work for the Liberal Federation was frequently reported in the Temperance Movement’s journal, Women’s Signal.
[21] Western Morning News, 6 May 1892.
[22] Western Morning News, 26 Feb 1895, mentions Lady Carlisle’s tribute to her as secretary … ‘an enthusiastic and dauntless worker for her party’.
[23] Western Morning News, 2 Dec 1892.
[24] Western Morning News, 12 Nov 1892.
[25] Western Morning News, 26 Feb 1895.
[26] Women’s Signal, 1 Oct 1896, 5.
[27] For example at the Cardiff Conference in 1895 she spoke on the need for simplification of the electoral register, on woman suffrage, and on reform of the House of Lords. Reported in Western Morning News, 18 & 19 Jan 1895.
[28] Mark Pottie, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/56231 (2004).
[29] Elizabeth Crawford, ‘Alison Vickers Garland’, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A reference guide, 1866 to 1928. London: Routledge, 1999, 236. The authorship of the play is given as Alison L. Garland. This seems to have led Pottle into unnecessarily doubting Garland’s authorship of plays and novels. Her early works were published over that style of name, however, and she presumably chose to continue it in her literary life. For a discussion of the plot see Claire Hirshfield, ‘The Suffragist as Playwright’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol IX, 2 (1987), 1-6, 5.
[30] The Stage Year Book. London: Carson & Cornerford, 1908, 163.
[31] Crawford, ‘Alison Vickers Garland’, 236.
[32] Western Morning News, 2 & 6 Jul 1900.
[33] Western Morning News, 26 Jan 1905.
[34] Advertisements for the delights of Dousland Grange appeared in the London Daily News in 1902 (e.g. 27 Jun 1902) where it was described as a ‘superior boarding establishment’ and ‘very bracing’, with terms of two guineas weekly including table d’hôte.
[35] Western Morning News, 4 Jun 1902.
[36] Western Morning News, 30 Jun & 14 Aug 1902.
[37] Western Morning News, 27 Apr 1905.
[38] Mary Dockray-Miller, ‘Mary Bateson (1865-1906), Scholar and Suffragist’, in Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. Jane Chance. Oxbow Books, 2005, 67-78, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6FH57 Accessed 5 Feb 2019.
[39] Common Cause, 14 Jul 1910, 221.
[40] Common Cause, 22 Sep 1910, 391.
[41] Common Cause, 20 Jun, 25 Jul, 1 Aug 1912. The list of speakers included Rev Hattie Baker (q.v.), Dr Rosa Bale (q.v.), Miss Kilgour (of the Devonport Women’s Liberal Association), Dr Mabel Ramsay (q.v.), Alison Garland herself, and Dr Gilbert Slater of Ruskin College, brother of Maud Slater (q.v.).
[42] Western Daily Mercury, 11, 12 & 13 Apr 1912.
[43] Common Cause, 5 Jun 1914, 183.
[44] Common Cause, 6 Nov 1914, 521.
[45] Kent and Sussex Courier, 6 Oct 1939.