Hannah Mitchell

Hannah Mitchell (born Hannah Maria Webster; 1872–1956) was an English suffragette and socialist. Born into a poor farming family in Derbyshire, Mitchell left home at a young age to work as a seamstress in Bolton, where she became involved in the socialist movement. She worked for many years in organisations related to socialism, women's suffrage and pacifism. After the First World War she was elected to Manchester City Council and worked as a magistrate, before later working for Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie.

Biography

Early life

Hannah Webster was born on 11 February 1872 in a farmhouse named after and just below below Alport Castles in Hope Woodlands, in the Derbyshire Peak District. The daughter of a farmer, she was the fourth of six children. She was not permitted a formal education, although her father taught her to read. She stayed at home performing domestic duties with her mother, with whom she did not get on. She was expected to look after her father and brothers, which she resented. Early on she became acutely aware of gender inequality in the domestic sphere. She also observed the seemingly inevitable early marriages of girls around her to "farm lads", in order to avoid having children out of wedlock, and was keen to avoid the same fate. She later said in her autobiography that her mother was a bad-tempered and violent woman who sometimes made her children sleep in the barn. When she was 13 she became an apprentice dressmaker, to earn extra money for her impoverished family. At the age of 14, after an argument with her mother, she left home and went to live in Bolton, Lancashire, where she found work as a dressmaker and in domestic service.