Radford, the Misses Florence, Ada and Edith, Trenley Villa, Mannamead, Compton Gifford
Florence Radford[1] (1858 – 1905), Ada Radford (1859 – 1934) and Edith Radford (1863 – 1929) were the three youngest of the ten children of George and Catherine Radford. George was a solicitor, and a partner in the well-known Plymouth draper’s and house furnishing business, Messrs Popham, Radford and Co of Bedford Street. He and Catherine had begun their married life on the Saltash Road, then moved to Lipson Terrace and, by 1871, they moved again, just out of the city up to the elegant suburb of Mannamead, developed during the mid nineteenth century for the well-to-do, with large houses set in large gardens.
Brothers Charles and Ernest were sent away to school at Amersham Hall, a well-known and academically rigorous non-conformist school near Reading. The six sisters grew up with no need to consider earning their own living, and just at the time when educational opportunities were opening up to women. The opening of Plymouth High School for Girls not far from their Mannamead home. in 1876, was probably too late for the elder girls, Kate, Phoebe, Clara and Florence, but in time for Ada to take advantage of the formal education it offered, and to go on to study mathematics at Newnham College Cambridge from 1881 to 1883, although she never took the Tripos examinations. Edith is recorded as a ‘scholar’ in the 1881 census, and may also have attended the High School.
Edith’s husband’s biographer, J.R.H. Moorman, describes the sisters Ada and Edith in the 1890s as ‘both completely civilized, interested in all the right things, un-smart in their attire, reading all the best books, knowing a thing or two about art and music, witty and intelligent.’[2] There is no trace of any of them being involved in chapel events (this was a non-conformist family) or in charitable works.
Florence, Ada and Edith were involved, to different degrees, in the early stages of the movement for votes for women in Plymouth. As in other Devon towns, it was the Women’s Liberal Association (WLA) that provided the first local opportunities for women to become collectively involved in the suffrage movement, as opposed to being individual members of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. There were two ‘great meetings’ in Plymouth and in Devonport at the start of 1883 in support of extending the Parliamentary franchise to women, at which the Misses Radford (it is not possible to be certain which) were present.[3] This led the following year to the formation of the Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse Women’s Liberal Association, one of whose objects was explicitly to gain the Parliamentary franchise for qualified women.[4] Florence was one of the secretaries to the Provisional Committee, and, though she did not continue with this role, was present at the inaugural meeting.[5]
This WLA appears to have petered out within a year or so, and in January 1888 steps were taken to set up a new WLA, one for Plymouth alone rather than for the Three Towns. By this time Florence was married and expecting a baby, but three Misses Radford, Edith and Ada, and probably Kate, were all present at the meeting to plan for its inauguration, and Ada took on the role of secretary.[6] In this capacity she attended the Birmingham Conference of the Women’s Liberal Federation, although shortly afterwards she resigned as secretary as she did not ‘have time to attend to the work, which was occasionally heavy.’[7] Edith was elected to the Committee at the first Annual General Meeting.[8]
Although in 1889 the Council of the national Federation of Women’s Liberal Associations was less than whole-hearted about making women’ suffrage a priority, the Plymouth WLA determined to affiliate to the National Society for Women’s Suffrage and continued their promotional activities.[9] Ada attended the Conference of Women’s Liberal Associations in 1890 as one of the WLA delegates. This time, when a resolution calling for the enfranchisement of qualified women and the inclusion of this commitment in the Liberal programme was carried ‘almost unanimously.’[10]
It is not clear precisely why Ada resigned her post as secretary in 1889, and why there are no references to either Ada or Edith in the WLA or at suffrage events after 1890, although Ada is known to have been living in London by 1893. It may be linked to their home circumstances. Their sister Clara died in 1890 and their mother in 1893; meanwhile their brother Ernest was suffering from continuing mental health problems, and his wife Dollie needed support. Ada and Edith were also involved at least part-time in running a home for their brother Charles.. They are both registered on the 1891 census living with Charles at West Axtown Farm, Horrabridge, on the edge Dartmoor, while their widowed mother and older sisters remained at Trenley Villa. This may simply have been a summer holiday home to provide greater opportunities for sporting pastimes, as their brother Ernest, who stayed with them in the summer of 1888, wrote to his wife of ‘riding, sailing, billiards, tennis, visits to friends and a champagne and lobster supper’.[11]
Charles, later to become Sir Charles Radford and a mayor of Plymouth, himself regularly attended events promoting women’s suffrage, for example the Plymouth Working Men’s Association meeting in 1884 where Mrs Stanford Blatch was the principal speaker. Charles, supporting the motion in favour of the enfranchisement of women, said that ‘he had no sympathy with those people who were very glad to get ladies to canvass for them and yet refused to agree to their being granted the Suffrage’.[12] Their elder sister Kate also appears at pro-suffrage events, but does not seem to have held office or spoken on the topic; she did, however, become a member of the Plymouth School Board in 1892.[13]
Florence married her cousin Arthur Frederick Popham in 1887, and by 1891 was the mother of two small children. Though Arthur is recorded in 1891 as an architect’s articled clerk, he never practised as an architect and in 1891 was back working in the family business as a store furnisher. Shortly after that the Pophams moved away to Kent, where they were living by 1901, on private means. Florence began to write: she had a novel, The Housewives of Edenrise, published by Heinemann in 1902.[14] She died in 1904, leaving over £7000.
Ada taught for a brief period in the 1880s and in the 1890s became Superintendent at the College for Newom Women in Bloomsbury. She married Graham Wallas (uncle to Devon Suffrage Activists, Christine and Helen Wodehouse) in 1897 and they had one daughter, May Graham Wallas, born in 1898. Wallas was a founder member of and professor at the London School of Economics and Ada herself wrote essays published in The Yellow Book and a number of reminiscences in Before the Bluestockings (1929).[15] Graham died in 1932 and Ada herself in London in 1934, leaving over £15000.[16]
Edith remained in Plymouth until she married Arthur James Grant (Jim). Grant had been an early peripatetic lecturer on the Cambridge University extension scheme and had taught in Plymouth in the 1890s where he had, according to his biographer, J.R.H. Moorman, become friends with the Popham and Radford families.[17] In 1897 he was appointed Professor of Modern History and English Language at the Yorkshire College branch of the federal Victoria University which, in 1903 became the University of Leeds. Such an appointment enabled Jim and Edith to marry in 1901, and Edith spent the rest of her life in Leeds, where she died in 1901. Moorman, son of a fellow Leeds professor, remembered Edith and Jim from a child’s perspective: ‘Edith … was inclined to be critical and censorious just because children like us never managed to be quite as nice and intelligent as she though we ought to be. On arriving at their house Jim would welcome us with open arms, while Edith would send us back to wipe our shoes properly on the mat.’[18] Edith died in Leeds in 1929, leaving effects of over £13,500.
Entry created by Anne Corry and Julia Neville, January 2019
[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] John R.H. Moorman (1988), ‘Arthur James Grant (Professor of History, University of Leeds, 1897-1927): A Biographical Essay’, Northern History, 24:1, 172-191, 180. Available on line at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/nhi.1988.24.1.172?needAccess=true&instName=University+of+Exeter . Accessed 18 Jan 2019.
[3] Women’s Suffrage Review (WSR), Jan 1883, 8. 10.
[4] Western Morning News (WMN), 4 Apr 1884; WSR, May 1884, 109.
[5] WMN, 9 Feb & 4 Apr 1884.
[6] WMN, 20 & 28 Jan 1888.
[7] Western Daily Mercury (WDM), 25 Mar 1889.
[8] WDM, 25 Mar 1888.
[9] WSR Jun 1889, 79; Sep 1889, 11, payment of the subscription of 5 shillings.
[10] WSR, Apr 1890, 44; WMN, 26 Jul 1890.
[11] Ann Macewen, ‘Ernest Radford and the First Arts and Crafts Exhibition, I888’, Journal of William Morris Studies, Winter 2006, 31, available on line at: http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/17.1Winter2006/17.1.MacEwan.pdf accessed 18 Jan 2019.
[12]Western Daily Mercury, 11 Nov 1889.
[13] Western Morning News, 12 Jan 1893.
[14] Daily Mail, Advertisement for Mr Heinemann’s New Books. This includes The Housewives of Ednerise, by Florence Popham, advertised with a quotation from The Sketch: ‘The author is more than a polished writer, she is a clever observer and, above all, a real humorist’.
[15] Ada Radford Wallas (1929), Before the Bluestockings, London, G. Allen & Unwin.
[16] For more information about Ada in later life, see Gillian Sutherland, ‘Wallas [née Radford], Ada (1859-1934)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online 2016, at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/71037 . Accessed 18 Jan 2019.
[17] Moorman, 180.
[18] Moorman, 181.