In Coalbrookdale

Today we drove down to the Shropshire village of Coalbrookdale and The Museum of Iron to see the new installation there.

Across the green outside the Museum of Iron are thirty seven silhouette figures of the women who worked in the industries in and around Coalbrookdale and who, on 6th February 1918, became eligible to vote in parliamentary elections for the first time.

Just thirty seven out of the one hundred and sixty women working in the ceramic and iron industries in the region were granted the right to vote.  Of those thirty seven only thirteen had the right to vote in their own right the others were allowed a vote because their husband's status qualified him to vote.

Women could only vote if they were over thirty years old or if they or their husband owned a certain amount of property.  The right of all men and women aged twenty one and over to vote took another ten years and was finally achieved when the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 was passed.

The silhouettes looked wonderful spread out across the green in front of the Museum of Iron.  Each one has the name of a woman worker and their job description.

It was quite sobering to walk amongst them and think about how hard they would have worked.  Some of the job descriptions of the women were many and varied, encaustic tile maker, mosaicist, pipe maker, tobacco pipe packer, gold burnisher and china print transferer to name but a few sound like skilled and repetitive work.  The women's ages ranged from thirty years old to the eldest, Emma Glaze who was 77 and a ground layer at the Coalport factory, this is a part of the decorating process by which an application of one overall colour is added to an object before decoration, it was usually done for the better class of wares.

In 1918 Emma Austin was sixty two years old and a paintress at the Coalport China Factory.  She could vote because of her husband's status and yet painting fine china and ceramics is very skilled work. In 1911 Emma was fifty five and living at 49 High Street, Coalport with her husband Henry a carter at the pottery factory and her daughter Florrie who was an apprentice paintress.  Emma and Henry had eight children four of whom had survived.

Here is a link to more information about the installation and  the thirty seven women who could vote and also about the one hundred and thirty+  who still didn't have the right to a vote. I think I heard mention on the local news that the exhibition is on view until the end of summer.