Knight-Bruce, Mrs Louisa,10 Howton Road, Highweek, Newton Abbot
Louisa Knight-Bruce née Torr (1854-1939) was the daughter of Mr John Torr, former M.P. for Liverpool, merchant banker and magistrate. In 1878 Louisa married Rev. George Wyndham Hamilton Knight-Bruce, grandson of Lord Justice Bruce.[1] The couple settled in to a poor parish in Wendron, Cornwall where their support of the inhabitants was unstinting. Four years later on leaving the parish, a ceremony was held in their honour. A Mr H. Rogers in his testimonial of the couple stated, ‘Gifted by education and social position; they used these gifts to the advantage of the people generally without regard to sect or party’.[2]
Rev G.W.H. Knight-Bruce travelled to Southern Africa in 1886. Initially, he was appointed Bishop of Bloemfontein and then Bishop of Mashonaland.[3] His wife remained in England where she gathered support for her husband’s Christian mission. Ill health forced the Bishop to return to England and in 1895 he was appointed to the living of Bovey Tracey. The couple moved into The Rectory. Two years later, Mrs Knight-Bruce assisted her husband in his ‘Journals of the Mashonaland Mission, 1888-1892’ by editing the introduction.[4] She became a significant figure in the local civil society. Like many of her peers, her strong religious convictions underpinned her work.
Mrs Knight-Bruce fervently believed in women’s suffrage and the empowerment of women. She was of the opinion that the vote for women would produce a common and equal humanity with men. By gaining a seat on local government boards they could improve the education, health and welfare of girls and women.
Commentators described Mrs Knight-Bruce as a gifted speaker. She had the reputation for giving a stirring address. Such was the case when she attended a meeting on the proposed admission of female Poor Law guardians to the Newton Abbot Union Workhouse. She referred to the necessity of giving children in workhouses a good moral and sanitary training for their future welfare which female guardians were well placed to do.[5]
Following the death of her husband in 1896,[6] Mrs Knight-Bruce moved to 10 Howton Road, Highweek, Newton Abbot and continued to further the cause for women’s rights. Speaking to the Torquay branch of Women Workers, Mrs Knight-Bruce said that girls should be educated to value womanhood. She claimed that womenhood should be equal to manhood but with its separate aims. She later endorsed this view at a prize-giving day at the Exeter Middle School when she advised the girls that women could never be masterful by trying to be poor imitations of men. They were never meant to be thus.[7]
In 1909 Mrs Knight-Bruce was one of the principal speakers at the preliminary meeting of the Exeter branch of the National Women’s Suffrage Society.[8] She also spoke at the Exeter High School prize day where she took the opportunity to promote the idea of votes for women. She was politely challenged by the Rev. Chancellor Edmonds who in effect believed that the place for women was in the home.[9]
During 1910, Mrs Knight-Bruce wrote a column in the Devon and Exeter Gazette. She advised readers of the numbers in Parliament who pledged to vote for women’s suffrage. During the second reading on Mr Shackleton’s Conciliation Bill on women’s suffrage she gave a commentary on the debate in the House of Commons. She reviewed the situation abroad and her response to the argument that women would not use the vote once enfranchised, was to cite cases in Victoria, Australia and Norway where the percentage of women using their vote was very high.[10]
When the suffrage pilgrimage arrived in Newton Abbot on 2nd July 1913, it was met by a band of friends headed by Mrs Knight-Bruce, who was at this time President of the Newton Abbot branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The assembled crowd of two thousand listened to Mrs Knight-Bruce as she gave a convincing speech about the inequalities of women.[11]
At the Exeter Suffrage Society meeting in September 1913, Mrs Knight-Bruce said she deplored the view that it was the male prerogative to rule alone legislatively without any input from women. She identified certain issues which discriminated against women. The married mother was not able, in law to have control of her child after the age of seven. Should a woman and her husband differ on any important point with regard to the child such as religion, education, etc., the husband could legally enforce his choice. She also made the point that whereas men advocated that a woman’s place was in the home, they sometimes neglected to provide decent homes for their wives to stay in.[12]
The Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association organised an exhibition to expose the wretched conditions in which some women worked and to express the need for female franchise. Three woman workers demonstrated their work and gave details of their pay and conditions. Mrs Knight-Bruce then explained that the exhibition was to draw people’s attention to what she described as slave labour. She stressed the need for the power to lift womanhood up to something higher and better than it had ever been before.[13]
For thirty years Mrs Knight-Bruce campaigned tirelessly in support of the franchise for qualified women and for better women’s representation on local councils, on ecclesiastical committees and as Poor Law guardians. She was an advocate for fair wages for women workers, training for girls in farm work, religious education and child welfare. Elizabeth E Provost (‘The Communion of Women’) tells us that Mrs Knight-Bruce was one of the few Mothers Union leaders who openly supported women’s suffrage before 1918, and defined women’s public role in the newly democratic world.[14]
Mrs Knight-Bruce’s concerns were not confined to women’s issues. She was interested in foreign affairs and in March 1921 gave an address to the Torquay branch of the National Women’s Citizens Association on the achievements of the League of Nations.[15]
Louisa Knight-Bruce died on 19th September, 1939 and is interred with her husband in the cemetery at Bovey Tracey.
Entry created by Helen Turnbull, September 2018
[1] Leeds Mercury, 22 Aug 1878, 3.
[2] The Cornishman, 16 Feb 1882, 6.
[3] WT, 17 Dec 1896, 2.
[4] Knight-Bruce, G.W.H., Journals of the Mashonaland Mission 1888-1892, 2nd Edition, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, London, 1893.
[5] EPG, 9 Nov 1894, 6.
[6] The Times, 17 Dec 1896, 6.
[7] EPG, 22 Oct 1908, 4.
[8] WT, 26 Feb1909, 12.
[9] DEG, 28 Dec 1909, 2.
[10] DEG, 12 Apr 1910, 2; 31 May1910, 2; 14 Jul 1910, 4.
[11] WT, 4 Jul 1913, 16.
[12] DEG, 13 Sep 1913, 6.
[13] WT, 21 Feb 1914, 6.
[14] Mothers Union, The Value of the Mothers Union, in The Communion of Women by Elizabeth E Provost, Oxford University Press, 2010, p.279.
[15] WT, 16 Mar 1921, 2.