Florence Canning: The Forgotten Suffragette

By Clare Wichbold – Herefordshire based community historian and suffrage researcher.

On Christmas Eve 1914, Florence Canning died peacefully from cardiac failure at 23 Lower Rock Gardens, Brighton. She had also been suffering from breast cancer for four years, thought by her friends and colleagues to have been caused by violent abuse sustained at hands of the London police during the Black Friday protests on 18th November 1910. In the summer of 1914, Florence had moved to Brighton from London for radiotherapy treatment by her suffrage colleague, Dr Louisa Martindale, surgeon at the Lady Chichester Hospital (later the New Sussex Hospital for Women). Despite Louisa’s best efforts, the cancer quickly spread through Florence’s body, and Louisa had the sad task of certifying her friend’s death only a few months later at the age of 51.

There is no memorial to Florence in Brighton, indeed, there is nothing to remember Florence anywhere, apart from her grave in the churchyard of St Paul’s Church, Tupsley, Hereford, and even that was in need of restoration prior to a successful Crowdfunder in spring 2023.

Image – Florence Canning’s Grave (credit Clare Wichbold

She does not appear in Rise Up, Women! ‒ Diane Atkinson’s 2018 seminal biographical book on suffrage campaigners. Yet Florence was a significant figure in the women’s movement, her life and death overshadowed by the First World War, leaving her forgotten until she came to light during the research for my book on the Herefordshire suffrage campaign.  

Born in 1863, Florence was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Thomas Canning, Vicar of St Paul’s in Hereford. She went on to be an artist, exhibiting in Hereford and London, but gave up a successful career to campaign for the vote. Florence was an early member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), joining in 1906, and she was soon travelling across the country, attending meeting, making speeches and participating in demonstrations.

Florence was imprisoned for a month in July 1908; further short spells in prison followed, but as her imprisonments were early in the suffrage campaign she never went on hunger strike and was not force fed. A tall, striking woman, she was described as a ‘sinuous fashion plate’ in one newspaper report about a meeting in Horsham in October 1908. However, this description belied her strength of character and determination. Florence was an inspiring orator. She offered public speaking training to other women through the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association and was renowned for bringing humour to meetings even in difficult situations.

The injuries she sustained at Parliament on Black Friday 1910 led to her suffrage activities being curtailed for six months, but she joined the Anglican Church League for Women’s Suffrage (CLWS) as well as maintaining her WSPU membership. Florence supported the Women’s Tax Resistance League and was one of the women who boycotted the 1911 Census. The entry for her home at 9 Bedford Gardens in London has Annie Hubbard, Florence’s housekeeper, and Annie’s husband, John, but Florence is nowhere to be found.

Florence was soon on the national committee of the CLWS and became chair in 1912, then when she became too ill to continue taking an active role, she became an honorary vice-president. A supporter of the ordination of women priests in the Church of England, Florence wrote to Ursula Roberts in support of her national campaign in 1913. This campaign foundered with the First World War, and the first Anglican women weren’t ordained until 1994. Florence worked with other denominations, and organised ecumenical demonstrations in London bringing together the Roman Catholic and Free Church Leagues with the CLWS.

She attended the CLWS General Congress in Brighton in July 1913, with the delegates congregating in Old Steine Gardens for an iconic moment recorded by the Suffragette photographer Muriel Darton. Florence is in the middle, tall and hatless; she is surrounded by clergymen and women from across the country. Brighton is well represented in the image, including Minnie Turner, easy to spot with the iconic feather boa (she has a blue plaque at 13 Victoria Road) and Louisa Martindale wearing her distinctive pince-nez glasses. The two women of colour on the right are Susila Bonnerjee and most likely her sister Nolini, who came from an Indian Christian family; both studied at the London School of Medicine for women and became GPs in Ealing and Liverpool respectively.

Florence’s final act of public protest was at Buckingham Palace in May 1914, when she was arrested alongside Mrs Pankhurst and around 60 other suffragettes. In court, Florence made an impassioned speech for women’s franchise and was spared prison because of her state of health. Her funeral in January 1915 was attended by close friends and colleagues from the WSPU and CLWS when she was brought home from Brighton to Hereford, but as the First World War ground on and the losses mounted, Florence faded into obscurity.

To find out more about Florence, you can read the chapter in my book Hard Work – But Glorious, available from Ledbury Books and Maps, an independent bookshop in Herefordshire run by Lindsay Jackson.

Image CLWS meeting, Brighton - credit LSE Women’s Library