Charlotte Blacklock (1857–1931) was a British suffragette, given a Hunger Strike Medal for her going on a hunger strike in the cause of women's right to vote.
Blacklock was born in 1857 in Brighton, Sussex as the youngest child of Joseph Davidson (or Davison) Blacklock and Emma Walton Blacklock[1] who ran two pharmacist shops at 32 Old Stiene and 109 Kings Road, Brighton[1] (the contemporary term was a chemist, druggist and soda water manufacturer).[2] She had a half brother, Arthur Woolsey Blacklock, (born 1840,who qualified as a Doctor in Aberdeen, later an astronomer) from her father's first marriage[1] and had two older brothers Philip Walton, born 1853,[1] who helped their mother continue the business when their father died in 1876,[2] and William born 1855,[1] and a sister Anne Maria, born 1854.[1]
She was described as a governess in the 1881 census.[2]
Blacklock was close to her cousin, an artist Amy Sawyers, who later painted her portrait.[2]
She was based in London and then moved to Ditchling, Sussex in 1918.[2]
Blacklock joined the London Chelsea branch of the Women's Social and Political Union before November 1908, when she wrote in Votes for Women about the parades wearing 'placards of purple, green, and white....acting the part of sandwich men'[2] and speakers Mrs Penn Gaskell, Miss Naylor and (coming soon) Miss Canning being used to attract a 'fashionable audience' in Sloane Square.[3]
Blacklock was also among the first of seeking what would now be called 'crowdfunders' to help pay the rent for a local shop for merchandising materials for the WSPU in Chelsea[4]
Blacklock was arrested on 11 March 1912, for breaking windows of Charles Lynton in Picadilly, London which were valued at £6 15shillings, a point disputed by her defence at the trial.[2] Altogether one hundred and twenty-six (or two hundred and twenty women took part but not all were charged , depending on source) and the estimate of damage worth an estimated £4000 or even as much as £6000. The violence and arrests were described in the press as far away as Australia.[5][6] Australian women had achieved the vote before the British women.[7]
She signed an autograph book 1 May 1912, along with other prisoners at Birmingham Prison, auctioned in 2012.[9]
Blacklock was awarded one of the one hundred Hunger Strike Medals'for Valour' with the date 1 March 1912 on the bar, in recognition of her suffering for the cause by the WSPU.[10]
↑ Lysack, Krista (2008). Come buy, come buy: shopping and the culture of consumption in Victorian women's writing. Athens: Ohio University Press. p.212. ISBN9780821442920. OCLC471133656.
↑ "THE WINDOW SMASHERS". Register (Adelaide, SA: 1901 - 1929). 8 April 1912. p.6. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
1 2 corporatename:Old Parliament House, Executive Agency within the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio. "Suffragette hunger strike medal". Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
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