Tyerman, Miss Hilda, 2 Carlisle Terrace, The Hoe, Plymouth
Hilda Florence Tyerman[1] (1886 – 1978) was born on 6 January 1886 in Plymouth, the second daughter of Daniel Tyerman and Hannah (Anna) Louisa, née Wotton. Daniel and Anna were married in Hammersmith, Middlesex, in 1873 when Daniel was listed as a draper of Plymouth, and son of George Tyerman, draper. Anna’s father, John, was a coal merchant.
In 1881, when Hilda’s elder sister Alice had just been born, the family were living at Charles Street. Daniel was described a draper’s buyer. He had signed a contract of employment in 1880 with the prestige firm of Spooners, drapers and carpet warehousemen of Bedford Street and Old Town Street.[2] By 1891, when Hilda was five, Daniel had been promoted to Draper Manager and the family, including Anna’s widowed mother Louisa, were living at 5 Lisson Grove.
By 1901 Daniel had retired and he, Anna (now known as Louise) and the girls Alice (aged 20) and Hilda (aged 15) were living at South Brent. Neither of the girls was shown with any occupation. The move appears not to have been a success. The family returned to Plymouth, to 2 Carlisle Terrace, The Hoe, a 13-room house which Daniel fitted out as a high class boarding house.[3] Alice was married in Plymouth in 1908 to Arthur Jacques, who was also employed in the furnishings business.
When the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) determined to start a branch in Plymouth in 1908-9 Miss Tyerman was reported as one of the speakers at an early At Home.[4] She also made contributions for the Women’s Exhibition in Knightsbridge and to the Fighting Fund.[5] One of the women with whom Tyerman became associated through the WSPU was Gwyneth Keys (q.v.), who was her fellow speaker at the At Home in January 1909. Hilda is recorded as having attended the same Plymouth Education Committee course in typewriting for the Royal Society of Arts examination in 1910.[6]
Hilda Tyerman does not appear on the 1911 census, indicating that she was one of those protesting against being ‘counted’ by a government for whom she did not ‘count’. In 1912, when Irish suffrage activists Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans were both sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for hatchet-throwing and attempted arson during Prime Minister Asquith’s visit to Dublin, Tyerman entered the Western Daily Mercury’s Topical Prize competition. She did not win, but her entry was reproduced. It ran:
Five years’ penal servitude! This heavy sentence shows us with hideous plainness how heavy a toll is to be demanded from women for their emancipation, and we can only feel profound pity for those politicians who could not, or would not, read the signs of the times, and who, by their contemptuous attitude towards the women’s movement practically invite acts of lawlessness
Conquer we shall, but we must first contend
Tis not the fight that crowns us, but the end.
There is no further report of Hilda’s suffrage activism.
The Tyermans moved out of 2 Carlisle Terrace in October 1917[7] and Hilda’s mother died in June the following year. Daniel died in 1922 at 19 Argyle Terrace.[8] In 1939 Hilda was living at 52 Dale Gardens, on private means. She died in 1978 in Welwyn Garden City, leaving over £40,000.
Entry created by Julia Neville, January 2019
[1] Census and family information from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] Plymouth and West Devon Record office, 917/85.
[3] An indication of the lavish style of the furnishing is given by the items offered for sale when he and the family left in 1917, see Western Morning News, (WMN), 4 Oct 1917.
[4] Votes for Women (VfW), 11 Feb 1909, 338.
[5] VfW, 23 Apr 09, 581.
[6] WMN, 1 Aug 1910.
[7] WMN, 4 Oct 1917.
[8] WMN, 1 Sep 1922.