Vanishing for the Vote: diverse suffragettes boycott the 1911 census

Vanishing for the Vote tells the story of what happened on census night, 2 April 1911. Despite decades of campaigning, no woman had won the right to vote. Suffragettes urged women to boycott the census, proclaiming 'No vote, no census!'. This talk is based on the family census schedules which illustrate the wide diversity of suffrage campaigners - those who complied with the census and those who daringly boycotted.

Jill Liddington is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her first book, One Hand Tied Behind Us (Virago, 1978), soon became a suffrage classic. Her most recent history, Vanishing for the Vote (MUP, 2014), is based on the The Natioanl Archives' census schedules released in 2009.

This event is part of The National Archives' Diversity Week, a week designed to highlight the on going work across the organisation surrounding the representation of diverse histories.