First woman ever to vote revealed in the pin sharp headlines

This weekend, this fabulous picture of the D&S Times’ Yarm office revealed itself when we were looking for something else.

The large sign proclaims that the D&S Times was the “largest circulated newspaper” in Yarm, Stockton, Cleveland and North Yorkshire, with a circulation of more than 25,000. The Yarm office of the paper could have been on the first floor behind the net curtains, accessed through Wright’s Yard on the left, although we suspect it was part of William Metcalfe’s business as a newsagent and tobacconist. He would have accepted adverts – priced, as the board says, at “16 words for sixpence” – and passed them on to the Darlington head office for publication.

This postcard picture holds so many stories. We presume that that is Mr Metcalfe and his wife and their young daughter outside the shop, but who is the young boy standing half out of shot by the drainpipe on the left? Was he meant to be there or is this an early example of photobombing?

Directly behind the Metcalfes is a wide range of children’s comics with titles like Funny Cuts, Lot-o’-Fun, Girls Reader and ½D Smiles. Lot-o’-Fun ran from 1906 to 1929 and had cartoons featuring The Adventures of Winkle and Binkle Minor, Chu, Chin and his Chow, and Dreamy Daniel, while Funny Cuts, which ran from 1890 to 1920, once featured a strip called The Three Beery Bounders.

Along the floor are the bills advertising six daily regional newspapers, and the picture is so sharp, we can read the headlines, and attach a date to them: probably May 6, 1908.

The Yorkshire Herald is telling of a “Shocking tragedy: Scarbro’ inquest” and “York sensation: Dr Gramshaw committed”. We don’t know what had happened in Scarborough, but in York, Dr Gramshaw, a respected family GP, was implicated in the mysterious death of a young governess, Margaret Brown, who had died in the Glynn Hotel at Easter.

The Yorkshire Post also has an enticing headline: “Woman killed on the roadside by a maniac.”

The other papers – The Northern Echo, the North Mail, the Leeds Mercury and the North Star – are all talking about a strike at North East shipyards – “Shipyard lockout: Men’s leaders to confer with Board of Trade”, said the Mail – and what the Herald calls a “curious result” in the Wolverhampton by-election.

The other headlines give a further clue to this story: “Safe seat saved by eight”, says the Post, and “Fright for Thorne”, says the Star.

But all of them seem to have missed the real story.

A by-election was held at Wolverhampton East on May 5, 1908, and the Liberal candidate, George Thorne, had polled eight votes more than the Liberal Unionist candidate, Leo Amery: 4,514 votes to 4,506. This was because the suffragists, who were demanding the vote for women, stationed female protestors at many polling stations urging voters to vote for the Unionist candidate and against Mr Thorne. Mr Thorne supported votes for women but the suffragists and suffragettes wanted to send a message to the new Liberal government headed by HH Asquith which was not doing to give women the vote.

Even more interestingly, this by-election is the first time a woman voted in a Parliamentary election. She was Mrs Lois Dawson, of Red Hill Street, who by accident appeared on the electoral register as “Louis Dawson”. As officials believed her to be a man, she was sent a polling card – she was voter number 1218 – and so she went along to her local polling station.

This presented the presiding officer with a problem as Mrs Dawson, a widow in her sixties, was clearly not male, but because she had a card, he allowed her to vote.

As she emerged from the station, she was embraced and hugged by the suffragists.

If there had been a legal challenge, her vote would have been discounted, but there wasn’t and so Mrs Dawson voted ten years before other women were allowed to participate in a Parliamentary election.

Anyway, Mr Metcalfe’s shop at 85, High Street in Yarm is now a restaurant called Cena (above, as seen on Google StreetView). Wright’s Yard has been closed up, and the quoins above the small photobomber are part of Merritt & Co’s grand solicitors’ office.