Letter from Constance Lytton to Annie Kenney, 22 September 1909
Political activists
[Transcript is available below] Letter from Lady Constance Lytton (1869-1923) to Annie Kenney written on 22 September 1909. Constance Lytton describes her busy schedule as a Women Social and Political Union's public speaker and references a number of speaking engagements, including Birmingham and Liverpool. She is responding to Annie’s invitation for speaking at an event and offers her some available dates in December 1909 and January 1910. She also refers to her experience of speaking at suffragette meetings in Scotland and her hopes to be an improved speaker for Annie, as well as to an upcoming meeting with Christabel Pankhurst.
Constance Lytton was a prominent suffragette, women's rights activist, and campaigner for prison reform. She was imprisoned on a number of occasions, but felt she was not given the same treatment as other suffragette inmates due to her aristocratic background. To test her theory, she gave a fake name - Jane Warton - after being taken to Walton Gaol, Liverpool. As Jane Warton, she adopted the hunger strike and was force-fed - an experience which disturbed her health for the rest of her life. She documented the experience in her 1914 memoir Prisons and Prisoners.
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
22 September 1909
Copyright: Owned by Knebworth Estates – www.knebworthhouse.com. All rights are reserved.
Source: UEA Archives. Transcript: Zoe Kelly
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English (United Kingdom)
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KP/AK/2/Lytton/9
Letter from Constance Lytton to Annie Kenney, 1909
Political activists
Political participation
[Transcript of letter is available below] Dated 24 May 1909, this is a letter from Lady Constance Lytton (1869-1923) to Annie Kenney. In it she confirms an upcoming meeting with Annie and Mrs Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (one of WSPU's leaders together with her husband Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst) and shares her anxiety about public speaking in an atmosphere charged with disagreement. Constance Lytton was a prominent suffragette, women's rights activist, and campaigner for prison reform. She was imprisoned on a number of occasions, but felt she was not given the same treatment as other suffragette inmates due to her aristocratic background. To test her theory, she gave a fake name - Jane Warton - after being taken to Walton Gaol, Liverpool. As Jane Warton, she adopted the hunger strike and was force-fed - an experience which disturbed her health for the rest of her life. She documented the experience in her 1914 memoir Prisons and Prisoners.
Lytton, Lady Constance
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
24th May 1909
Copyright: Owned by Knebworth Estates – www.knebworthhouse.com. All rights are reserved.
Source: UEA Archives: Transcript: Stanislava Dikova
Creative Commons: This image is also available within Creative Commons BY-NC and all copyright and the source must be attributed. The image must not be used for commercial purposes.
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KP/AK/2/Lytton/7
Excerpt from <em>The Price of Liberty</em>, 1966
Direct action
“The Price of Liberty” is the manuscript version of Jessie Kenney’s Russian Diary, a journal she kept during her visit to Russia with Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst in 1917 to convince women to support the war effort. The manuscript remained unpublished. The Introduction recalls the historical shift in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) when they turned from militant suffragettes fighting for women’s emancipation and voting rights in Britain to supporters of the war effort and the British government.
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
1966
Copyright: Estate of Jessie Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of Warwick Kenney-Taylor (son of Annie Kenney) and later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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KP/JK/4/1/6/3
Excerpt from <em>The Price of Liberty</em>, 1966
War
“The Price of Liberty” is a version of Jessie Kenney’s Russian Diary, a journal she kept during her visit to Russia with Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst in 1917 to convince women to support the war effort. The Introduction recalls the historical shift in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) when they turned from militant suffragettes fighting for women’s emancipation and voting rights in Britain to supporters of the war effort and the British government.
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
1966
Copyright: Estate of Jessie Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of Warwick Kenney-Taylor (son of Annie Kenney) and later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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KP/JK/4/1/6/3
"For Freedom!": Appeal to Russian women by the Committee for Spiritual Re-Armament, 1917
War
“For Freedom” an Appeal to Russian women to support the war effort, in Russian and in English translation.
The Appeal asks women to think how best they can help the war effort through their relationships with the soldiers on the battlefield, their sons and husbands. The leaflet refers to news of Russian soldiers fraternising with the Germans, who made them “drink vodka, extorting military secrets from them”. The final paragraph reads. “Citizens, mothers and wives of soldiers, tell your sons and husbands that Russia is put to shame because of them and send them these leaflets quickly. Write to them that any disorder in our army strengthens the enemy, prolonging war. Let them think it over, pull themselves together and form an iron-strong regiment, ready to go forth at the first command.”
Committee for Spiritual Re-Armament
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
1917
Copyright: Believed to be expired. Please notify archives@uea.ac.uk if you have reason to believe this is not the case.
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English (United Kingdom)
Russian
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KP/JK/4/1/5
Excerpt from Jessie Kenney's unpublished autobiography #4
Family
Excerpt from Jessie Kenney’s unpublished autobiography, “The Flame and the Flood”.
In this excerpt, Jessie recollects the peaceful family Sundays of her childhood. Discussions ranged from articles in the latest issue of The Clarion to opera and reincarnation. The afternoons would be passed in conversation until the church bells announced the Evening Service, which the family would attend. After church, the older siblings would go out for the evening whereas the youngest would stay home and play board games with their mother. Their father would usually be near by reading a newspaper or an herbal book, as he was fond of botany. Jessie fondly recalls being taught to play a good game of draughts by her mother. “Little did I realise then,” she writes, “that it would be a symbol of a broad arrowhead that would become one day not only a badge of shame and ridicule stamped on the clothes of prisoners in the gaols of our country but would evolve into a symbol of the pioneer which have to pierce through ignorance on one side, prejudice on the other and with its point cut through apathy and inertia”. She refers here to the famous arrowhead pikes suffragettes carried during marches and demonstrations to signal that they had been imprisoned for the Cause.
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
19??
Copyright: Estate of Jessie Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of Warwick Kenney-Taylor (son of Annie Kenney) and later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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KP/JK/4/2/2/3
Letter from Jessie Kenney to the Rosicrucian Order, 1966
Religion
Rosicrucians
Letter from Jessie Kenney (1887-1985) to the Rosicrucean Order written on 2 December 1966 from her London address. She writes to explain her recent absence from the Order’s activities, attributing it to ill health and severe loss of weight. She also mentions her project to write the Francis Bacon Chapter’s history, which she managed to complete with the assistance of various Chapter members. Jessie belonged to this chapter for a number of years, even serving as its Deputy Master in 1957-58. Jessie announces her intention to go into a ‘retreat’ to dedicate herself to writing a history of the suffragette movement. She felt it was her duty to dedicate herself to this task as the only surviving Kenney sister who was involved in the Women’s Social and Political Union’s (WSPU) leadership, having lost Annie in 1953.
She ends the letter with a statement that she was behind with her ‘Chapter dues’ as the Order’s new membership rates had had a bad impact on low income members. ‘The people of the lower incomes have to pay as much for food, clothes and warmth as those with higher incomes.’ Jessie was an active Rosicrucian Order member for over 30 years, but was drawn towards Catholicism in her last years at a nursing home in Braintree. She was received into the Roman Catholic Church on Christmas Day 1973.
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
2 December 1966
Copyright: Estate of Jessie Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of Warwick Kenney-Taylor (son of Annie Kenney) and later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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"Clapham has an air", <em>The Evening News</em>, 1954
Work
Jessie Kenney article “Clapham has an Air,” published in the Evening News.
Jessie Kenney knew Clapham well from her time living in London. “There is a place in London where you can live among the philosophers. It is not in Soho, Chelsea, Hampstead, or in the precincts of the British Museum. It is in Clapham.” She comments on its unusual street names - “Aristotle-road,” “Voltaire-road,” “Plato-road,” and the like. She suggests that Clapham’s connection to philosophy may be due to the “Clapham Sect” - “four of whom have busts and monuments in Westminster Abbey.” She mentions William Wilberforce (1759-1833), leader of the abolitionist movement, and Samuel Pepys (1655-1669), the Elizabethan politician and diarist. She ends the article by looking at the daily habits of Clapham residents, including “the little grocer” who always finds time to talk to his customers. “There are many others [. . .]. Many of them may not have heard of Epictetus and might smile at the thought of anyone being called by the name of Pythagoras. But they are philosophers all the same.”
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
<em>The Evening News</em>
10 July 1954
Copyright: Estate of Jessie Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of Warwick Kenney-Taylor (son of Annie Kenney) and later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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KP/JK/4/3/2
<em>Suffragette Fellowship Newsletter</em>, 1957
Work
Jessie Kenney’s tribute to Vera Wentworth of September 1957 recalls the life and achievements of her suffragette friend and colleague. “Vera was one of the early members of the WSPU [Women’s Social and Political Union] and a great worker for the Suffragette Movement,” Jessie writes. “From the moment that she volunteered to help there was nothing that she would not do. She gave out handball, chalked pavements, sold the paper at street corners, spoke at outdoor meetings, went to prison and was forcibly fed.” Jessie recalls their stay at Holloway Prison, where they played “follow my leader” and got in trouble. She also writes about Vera’s life outside the Movement, particularly her war work and writing.
The Suffragette Fellowship
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
The Suffragette Fellowship
September 1957
Kenney, Jessie and Pearson, B.M
Copyright: Estate of Jessie Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of Warwick Kenney-Taylor (son of Annie Kenney) and later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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KP/JK/4/3
Reference letter from David Lloyd George's Office for Jessie Kenney, 1919
Work
Reference letter from David Lloyd George’s Office for Jessie Kenney, 1919
Sent from No 10 Downing Street, this is a letter of recommendation for Jessie Kenney for a “responsible secretarial post”. F. L. Stevenson, Secretary to the Prime Minister, who signed the letter applauds Jessie’s “great gift of organisation” as well as her “keenness and ability”.
The letter is a mimeograph copy on the back of the first leaf of chapter 1 of 'The Romance of Madame Curie'.
Stevenson, Frances
Unknown
September 1919
Copyright: Believed to be expired. Please notify archives@uea.ac.uk if you have reason to believe this is not the case.
Source: UEA Archives. Transcript: Pam Sayle
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KP/JK/4/3 and a copy at KP/JK/3/STE/1
Programme for Reginald Kenney's Folk Recital Concert, 1912
Family
This is a Programme for old song and folk speech recital concert featuring Reginald ‘Reg’ Kenney (1873-1954), held on 17 October 1912. Singing was a talent that distinguished him among the variously gifted Kenney siblings. He was the eldest child of Horatio Nelson Kenney and Ann Wood and Annie and Jessie’s oldest brother. He started his life working in the cotton mills, like his sisters, and became a representative for a firm of wholesale booksellers later on. He had a profound influence on his younger brothers and sisters and influenced their political sensibilities and interest in social welfare.
Kenney, Reginald
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
17 October 1912
Copyright: Estate of Reginald Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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KP/RK
"Letter to the Editor: Memories of the Kenneys", <em>The Oldham Chronicle</em>, 1966
Family
Jessie Kenney article in the Oldham Chronicle: “Letter to the Editor: Memories of the Kenneys”
Published on 17 September 1966, Jessie’s letter addresses some inconsistencies in a previously printed article about the Kenney family in the same newspaper. These “grave mistakes” as she refers to them convey misinformation about her siblings. Her brother Rowland, for example, “was not the youngest son, he never emigrated to America, and never became editor of the New York dailies.” She also makes a point of objecting to the article’s representation of Annie. Instead of being educated by Mrs Pankhurst, as the article claimed, “my sister Annie got most of her education [. . .] at Whams House with her brothers and sisters,” writes Jessie. She also includes an account of Annie’s life and importance for the suffragette movement.
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
The Oldham Chronicle
17 September 1966
Copyright: Estate of Jessie Kenney. All rights reserved. Included here by kind permission of Warwick Kenney-Taylor (son of Annie Kenney) and later generations of the Kenney and Taylor families.
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English (United Kingdom)
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KP/SWH/4