Biography, Women's History

Alice Suter – A Woman We Forgot

Gone Missing? Alice Suter, Jennie Baines and Adela Pankhurst

 

The year? 1916.

 

The country? Australia.

 

The issue? Wheat shipped to Europe to feed the troops. Bread prices rising. Workers and the unemployed forced to pay rising prices, despite government controls. Agitation. Demonstrations. Street protests. Marches on Parliament.

 

The women? Alice Suter, Jennie Baines and Adela Pankhurst at the heart of the revolt.

 

 

Alice Suter, Jennie Baines and Adele Pankhurst in the Australian High Court

 

In 1917, the Australian High Court heard appeals against convictions of these three women. The appeals were upheld in a substantive win against federal defence laws. This was the first time the laws had been tested in their application to demonstrators, for it was the first time demonstrators had been prosecuted under them. The High Court said that their prosecution and conviction for having engaged in action ‘on the pretext of making known their grievances …’ was bad: no evidence before the Magistrates Court had showed their conduct as otherwise than engaged in to make known their grievances (and those of their audience assembled at Treasury Gardens, whom they led towards Spring Street and Parliament House) on the cost of bread. These cases have never been analysed until now (Scutt, 2011). The High Court report shows Alice Suter most clearly there, joint partner in the struggle. Her defiance of police, prosecutors, defence laws and the political system which sent men away to war was equal to that of the others, at least insofar as police, prosecutors and courts saw it. Yet in Baines’ ADB entry, Alice Suter is referred to as merely ‘another’:

 

For a month from 23 August 1917 [Jennie Baines] and Adela Pankhurst led marches organized by the militant Women’s Peace League to protest to the Federal government against profiteering and the prohibitive cost of living. On 30 August she, Adela Pankhurst and another were arrested; 

 

Alice Suter warrants no name, and is left out of leadership of marches all together, although nature of the women’s arrest and prosecution shows police must have seen her in that light. In Pankhurst’s ADB entry, she rates no mention at all – although neither does Jennie Baines, the High Court win is absent, and Pankhurst shares her entry with husband Tom Walsh. Consistently, despite entries for Pankhurst and Baines in The Australian Women’s Register, Alice Suter is absent. In a list of feminists and women activists on Women’s Web, she appears. The source is a passing reference to her in For Love or Money. She is named fleetingly, too, in a 1986 article by Smart.

 

Adela Pankhurst died at 76 years in Sydney in 1961. Jennie Baines died at 85 in Melbourne in 1951. Twenty-one when arrested and tried, Alice Suter may have lived until 1978: Victoria’s BDM records show an Alice Suter marrying Alfred Ford in 1939 and Alice Mary Ford, born to William Suter and Annie Skehen, dying in 1978 in Heidelberg, Victoria, aged 80. Did youth render her invisible or quench her activism? This still does not explain the feminist record’s almost total oversight of Alice Suter. Contemporary records are kinder: named as an appellant in the High Court, she features in newspaper articles recording the arrests, court hearings and outcomes. She will appear, too, in Australia security records. Her loss to herstory requires explanation – the patriarchal record remembers her.

 

Only now is the opportunity made to recover Alice Suter as she ought to have been recovered in the earlier affirmation of the importance of intrepid women who fought the system, refusing to give in. The Women’s Movement of the 20th century engaged in this task of recovery – choosing to recover some, whilst leaving by the wayside others who could and should be remembered.

 

Why Forgetting?

 

Alice Suter’s disappearance is difficult to remedy. With Adela Pankhurst, her history, her family, her agitation in England preceding her antipodean rebellions, the notoriety surrounding her through her own actions, her mother’s views and the Prime Minister’s assertions of possible deportation … All this made Adela Pankhurst the more prominent, as with her marriage to Walsh, a marriage that, when known, surprised friends, foes, detractors and devotees. Her prominence in the patriarchal record leaves her open to feminist recovery: ironically, what the dominant culture sees as prominent brings her to the fore. Does it explain Alice Suter’s absence?

 

Like Adela Pankhurst, Jennie Baines had a past in England. She, too, was a £20/0/0 immigrant. Was this a factor? That an overseas history should influence the local record, and lack of it detract from the significance of a fellow-in-struggle’s existence, confirms a prominent Australian convention. The ‘cultural cringe’ meant all things existing in, or coming from, ‘home’ (England) or ‘over there’ (England) had far greater currency than any local production – including people. Gaining standing at home (Australia) necessitated going abroad – ‘back’ to Britain or to Europe, preferably London. Expatriates made a mark: recognised as ‘important’, acclaim was their reward in Australia’s (perceived) cultural desert.

 

Alice Suter may have been an immigrant herself. However, her name is missing from Freedoms Cause, with a contents listing of many from the British suffragettes’ struggle for the vote, albeit Jennie (as ‘Jenny’) Baines and Adela Pankhurst both appear – along with Vida Goldstein, that inclusion resting in her travelling to join the suffragettes, hence gaining UK status. If Alice Suter were born in England, youth may have stood in the way of gaining a profile in British suffragette circles. This would affirm a bias in giving weight, again, to the overseas over local: no profile ‘over there’ detracts from importance ‘here’. 

 

So, perhaps Englishness wins out over local colour. English origins and activist past trumps home-grown rebel. For Adela Pankhurst, Jennie Baines and Alice Suter, notions of importance infused with dominant cultural perceptions, assertions and demands dictate what is ‘true’, what truly memorable, important and worthy of record. Alice Suter lost.

 

Yet with social media possibilities, it may be now that Alice Suter’s story can be told. Her history cannot be allowed to remain uncovered, her herstory should not lie without the public record it deserves. At least for her, the time has come for ousting patriarchal colonisation of the brain.

 

@alicesuter exists to recover information about ‘lost’ women such as Alice Suter. All and any contributions are welcome.

 

This article contains extracts from ‘The Woman Who Wasn’t There – Alice Suter, Mary Lamb and Shakespeare’s Sister’ by Jocelynne A. Scutt, published in The Rationalist, 2011.

 

The Hon. Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt is a barrister & human rights lawyer, filmmaker and historian. Her books include ‘The Sexual Gerrymander – Women and the Economics of Power’, ‘The Incredible Woman – Power and Sexual Politics’ (2 vols), ‘For Richer, For Poorer – Money, Marriage and Property Rights’. Her films include the DVD installation ‘Covered’ – http://theburqahdebates.com/

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