Vera Wentworth (1890-1957)

Vera Wentworth was the adopted name of militant suffragette Jessie Alice Spink who was born in London in 1890. She joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1906 and formally changed her name the following year after pressure from her father who believed she was bringing the family name into disrepute. Vera frequently organised in Bristol for the WSPU though she never lived there permanently, was heavily involved in militant suffragette activity in the city, and was imprisoned in Horfield Gaol.

Vera visited Bristol in January 1909 to drum up support for a public meeting at the Colston Hall (now Bristol Beacon) on February 12^th. She and Minnie Baldock toured the city holding impromptu street corner meetings at the Horsefair, Broadmead, Durdham Downs, Horfield Common, and outside factories; she organised pavement chalking parties to advertise these meetings. She also visited the WSPU shop at 37 Queen’s Road. Vera joined a secret group within the WSPU called the Young Hot Bloods, which pledged single women under 30 to undertake “danger duty”. The widespread story that Vera Wentworth and Elsie Howey hid in the organ loft of the Colston Hall to interrupt a meeting where the Bristol Liberal MP Augustine Birrell spoke on May 1 1909 is incorrect; it is now established that Vera Holme and Elsie Howey carried out this action (see footnote).

When Birrell arrived in Bristol on the weekend of March 6-7 1909, Wentworth and Elsie Howey confronted him at Temple Meads station, one of nearly a dozen verbal exchanges with Suffragettes that weekend, but he refused to reply beyond a non-committal “Tut tut.” Birrell was not in fact anti-women’s suffrage. He believed that “spinsters, widows, and working women” should have the vote, though he was not sure about married women. Further, he stated that “women have exercised the municipal franchise in large towns with great sense and propriety” (Western Daily Press, 29 January 1908).

Vera organised at Weston-Super-Mare from February 6 to April 2, 1909, fundraising and arranging public meetings at Taunton, Glastonbury, Clevedon etc. There was uproar from an anti-suffrage audience when Annie Kenney spoke at Weston-Super-Mare on March 8. Vera left Weston-Super-Mare on April 2, 1909 returning to London until late July. At her release from seven days in Exeter gaol on August 7^th, she moved to Plymouth as organiser, while Elsie Howey organised at Torquay. By 1910 she was primarily living in Wimbledon, with occasional visits to Bristol.

Vera had been a regular visitor to Eagle House, Batheaston, home from 1882-1961 of the Suffragette-sympathizing Blathwayt family. (The house was converted to flats in the 1960s.) Vera had an intimate relationship with Mary Blathwayt but this cooled as Mary was shocked by Vera’s increasing militant action.

In September 1909 the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone stayed at Lympne Castle, Kent. Vera, Elsie Howey and Jessie Kenney accosted them after church and at the golf course, with blows struck on both sides, and stoned the castle windows that evening during dinner. Fellow suffragette and writer Rebecca West described Vera as “a little terror, rather a handsome girl”. After these attacks, Mary made it clear Vera was no longer welcome at Eagle House.

On 12^th November 1909 when Winston Churchill was visiting Bristol, Vera smashed windows at the Bristol Liberal Club, 38 Corn Street. She threw a fossil with a note reading “Women send a fossil to remind Liberal Ministers that they are fossilising, as they are out of touch with present conditions and surroundings.” She was arrested and imprisoned at Horfield Gaol for 14 days, along with Mary Sophia Allen and Jessie Lawes. Theresa Garnett and Ellen Wines Pitman received longer sentences. All went on hunger strike. Vera was forcibly fed twice daily for about five days, and was later awarded the Hunger Strike Medal by the WPSU.

After her release Vera recuperated at Henley Grove, Westbury-on-Trym, a 15-bedroom mansion run as a ladies’ domestic science college and later a hotel from c.1904-1910 by suffrage supporter Violet Bland. Henley Grove was demolished in the 1960s.

Vera was arrested at the notorious ‘Black Friday’ demonstration meeting in London on November 18^th 1910 when Suffragettes were physically and sexually abused by the police and male bystanders. 115 women and four men were arrested.

In March 1912 Vera took part in a West End window smashing campaign and was imprisoned in Holloway, during which her play An Allegory was performed by fellow suffragette prisoners, directed by Bristol-born Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. After her release Vera wrote pamphlets Three Months in Holloway and Should Christian Women Demand The Vote.

In 1913 Vera travelled to the USA to support women’s national suffrage there (this was finally achieved in 1920). During the First World War she enrolled in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps as an Assistant Administrator and was awarded the Victory Medal for her service. Votes for women over 30 who were householders was achieved in 1918. Following the dissolution of the WSPU in 1917 Vera became a member of the London Society for Women’s Service, an organisation with two aims: to preserve the history of the women’s suffrage movement and to provide a resource for newly-enfranchised women to take their part in public life.

Vera met Daisy Ethel Carden (1896-1992), a former pupil of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, in the 1920s through the Christian pacifist Peace Pledge Union. They remained partners for life. Briefly Vera worked as a secretary and, working freelance, wrote factual articles under her own name and fictional short stories under her nom de plume, Peter Wentworth. Some were read on the BBC radio’s Children’s Hour. She was also a script reader for the Fox Film Corporation in Wembley. At the 1939 National Identity register they were living in St Pancras, London, with Vera described as ‘Authoress’ and Daisy as ‘Hospital Clerk’.

Vera died in 1957 aged 67, leaving all her assets to Daisy who outlived her by 35 years.

Jonathan Rowe, 2024; Bernard Glossop, Lucienne Boyce and Andrew Foyle, 2025.

Acknowledgement: With thanks to Bernard Glossop, Vera’s great-nephew, and to writer and historian Lucienne Boyce for their generous help and corrections. References to Wikipedia and other online sources have been removed as they are inaccurate and tend to recycle misinformation. This account has been checked as far as possible against contemporary archives and information held by Vera’s family.

Footnote: The story of the 1909 Colston Hall protest has been corrected by Lucienne Boyce. Her blog cites an article by David Stone, 2014, and a newspaper article in Votes For Women May 7 1909, carrying a humorous verse description of the event by Vera Holme, a parody of the lyrics to Sir Arthur Sullivan’s The Lost Chord.
https://lucienneboyce.com/the-suffragettes-were-in-the-organ/

The Bristol Suffragettes, Lucienne Boyce (2013) https://lucienneboyce.com/book/the-bristol-suffragettes/