Image from Wikimedia – Used under Creative Commons

Now it is time to meet the third of the suffragettes who appears in Barefoot on the Cobbles, Elsie Howie. Elsie’s full name was Rose Elsie Neville Howie and she was born on 1 December 1884 in Finningley, Nottinghamshire. She was the daughter of Thomas and Emily Gertrude Howey née Oldfield. Her father, the parish rector, died when Elsie was a toddler and the family moved to Malvern. She studied languages at the University of St Andrew and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1907. The following year, along with her sister Mary, she was arrested for the first time. She was renowned as one of the most  militant activists and targeted the Prime Minister, Asquith, on several occasions. The incident in the novel was not the only time that Elsie worked with Vera Wentworth and Jessie Kenney to promote the cause of women’s suffrage. She gained notoriety by dressing as Joan of Arc and leading a WSPU rally on horseback, wearing armour. She reprised the role of Joan of Arc at the funeral of Emily Wilding Davison.

Elsie frequently went on hunger strike during her spells in prison and force feeding damaged her health. She worked for the cause in Plymouth and Torquay but never resumed her militant activities after they were suspended during World War One. She spent the rest of her life in retirement in Malvern, dying there in 1963.

 ‘ ‘Elsie Howey, now,’ muttered another. ‘Baint she the one that was in all the papers last month? Dressed as Joan of Arc on some great white ’orse outside a prison up London way she was.’ ’

Barefoot on the Cobbles will be published on 17 November 2018. More information about the novel can be found here. Copies will be available at various events in the weeks following the launch or can be pre-ordered from Blue Poppy Publishing or the author.