It is less frequent than one might think to find really meticulous research in original sources; it is equally rare to find authors who write well, so that their research is readily assimilated by a wide variety of audiences. To find the two – a meticulous researcher, and a person who writes well - combined in a single person is very rare indeed. It is therefore with considerable delight that your reviewer can thoroughly recommend Gaynor Haliday and her book ‘Struggle and Suffrage in Wakefield’ to WHS members as a triumphant combination of the two.
It has to be said that your reviewer first opened this book with a slight feeling of dread – sadly, many of the works on the topic of women’s struggles and attempts to gain the vote fall into the category of ‘extremely worthy but equally extremely dull’ despite the fact that the subject itself is one of the highest importance and deserves the full attention of the very best researchers and writers. Gaynor has completely avoided these traps! She has made a careful selection and ordering of her chapters – from Education through Working Lives to Professions, Health and Well-being, Active Citizens and Progress - while carefully creating a series of richly detailed Appendixes on specific area – Prison Female Staff, Nurseries Staff, the Voluntary Aid Detachments, Babies Welcome Team and Healthcare Staff – which another author might have inserted into the text, and thus bogged down the reader in detail which, while important, would lose the thread of the story. There is a useful bibliography and an excellent index by name, and the notes identify leads to the original material which Gaynor has used so well.
I was especially delighted to see women’s healthcare and maternity provision explored, as for some reason this critical subject never seems to gain the attention it deserves in works on women’s struggle and suffrage; and likewise the fact that Gaynor has made use of the documents relating to the St John’s Community Home in its various phases shines a light onto a subject which deserves to be much better known. Most pleasing also is the chapter relating to ‘Working Lives’, covering in particular Double Two and Sugden’s as well as the more frequently covered area of the munitionettes of Green’s Economiser in the First World War; your interviewer is tempted to say “at last”, since many recent researchers have focused on the achievements of the better educated and better-off, which, while important, were not the lives lived by the majority of Wakefield’s women.
Five stars: An excellent book, covering many neglected subjects in an engrossing and highly readable way. Many congratulations to Gaynor for writing it.
Phil Judkins Wakefield Historical Society
