<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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"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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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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Letter from Clifton Moreton (the Penman Club) to Jessie Kenney, 1957
Work
Penman Club review of Jessie Kenney’s short essays “The Moorland Mystery,” “a Librarian at Sea,” and “What We Can Learn from Biographies” by Clifton Moreton, returned on 12 July 1957.
Mr Moreton finds “The Moorland Mystery” “very good” in style although lacking in the nature of the subject matter. He lists Tit Bits, Weekend Mail, and Bolton Evening News as suitable publications for the material. “A Librarian at Sea” is praised as not requiring “any alteration of any kind” and judged suitable for The Trident and Everybody’s. Both essays have been digitised and are available in the “Work” Collection.
Moreton, Clifton
The Penman Club
12 July 1957
Copyright: Licensed under UK orphan works scheme. Licence number: OWLS000158.
Source: UEA Archives. Transcript: Jules Robbins
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"A Moorland Mystery", 1957
Work
“A Moorland Mystery”, unpublished story by Jessie Kenney
Story about an unsolved murder mystery that took place in a moorland parish in Lancashire. The innkeepers at the parish, a father William and his son Thomas, are brutally murdered and their murderer goes free. The story makes reference to the epitaph on their gravestone, which grounds them in communal memory. Part of it reads:
“Those who now talk of far-famed Greenfield hills
Will think of Bill o’Jacks and Tom o’Bills.”
Kenney, Jessie
Unknown
1957
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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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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Letter from Jessie Kenney to Warwick Kenney-Taylor, 1950
Reputation
Jessie Kenney writes to her nephew, Warwick Kenney-Taylor, to give him her account of her role in the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). This becomes necessary through the course of correspondence between Jill Craigie, a scriptwriter interested in capturing the story of the suffragette movement. Jessie worries that she will brushed off as “Christabel’s Secretary” and not given full recognition for the importance and variety of her contribution to the Cause. “I was then as much an organiser as Mother [Annie Kenney] and Mrs Drummond [Flora ’the General’ Drummond] although I was only 21, but as I worked behind the scenes I was never known so much only in the organisation. London members were devoted to me and my name counted for much behind the scenes.”
Kenney, Jessie
Unknown
April 1950
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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Letter from Jessie Kenney to Charlotte Marsh, 1951
Reputation
In this letter, written on 22 March 1951, Jessie Kenney replies to a note from Charlotte Marsh about the representation of the suffragette movement in the 1951 BBC radio play “The Women’s Rebellion”, scripted by Jill Craigie. Jessie reports her own and the Kenney family’s displeasure with the way the piece captured Annie and her role in the militant struggle. “To me,” Jessie writes, “it was a caricature, somewhat vulgarised, and a belittling of the part she played in the Suffragette Movement”. She compares the respectful treatment her brother, Rowland Kenney (1882-1961), the head of the Foreign Office’s Norwegian department at the time, receives for his work and writings with Annie’s, who is always portrayed as a “mill girl” and “left to languish in that perpetual shade”. Following the broadcast of “The Women’s Rebellion”, the Kenneys registered their protest at Annie’s treatment and lack of consultation with the family during the production process and the programme was never aired again.
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
University of East Anglia
22 March 1951
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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Excerpt from Jessie Kenney's unpublished autobiography #2
Childhood and youth
World War, 1914-1918
Excerpt from Jessie Kenney’s unpublished autobiography, “The Flame and the Flood”.
In this excerpt Jessie shares memories from her childhood. She remembers her family procuring a piano which brought them great joy. Jessie writes that music was one of the “greatest delights” of her life. “We loved the Scottish ballads, the Irish songs, and Welsh ballads and sang them.” The Kenney family would go to Hey church, where they had a pew, and join in hymn singing often. She recalls singing Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide hymns which brought her great joy. “Little did we realise then,” she writes, “in the great simplicity of our lives, in its yearnings, its hard work, its passionate love of justice and … and its love of the Natural beauty which we adored in the moors of the future battles we should be engaged in.” Here she thinks of her brother Bert, was “blocked, for nearly four years on the Western front [during WWI], with only fifteen days spent with his wife and three boys.”
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
1964-66
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
Excerpt from Jessie Kenney's unpublished autobiography #1
Family
Excerpt from Jessie Kenney’s unpublished autobiography, “The Flame and the Flood”.
In this excerpt, Jessie shares memories and anecdotes about Annie. This includes Annie’s “heart trouble”, which meant that she would very quickly cry or sob when she felt hurt or troubled. Annie’s easily shed tears went against the Lancashire custom to cry only when someone dies.
Annie was also a rebel in the fashion department, as she “could not bear a thing tight around her wrists, her head, or her waist", which meant that she hardly ever wore her “stays”, a type of corset. She would say that she preferred “to be comfortable to being beautiful”. Jessie writes: “However m[y] sister Molly need not have troubled about her figure for many years to come, as the Suffragette Movement in its early days would strip the fat and flesh from her bones.” Despite this, Annie “loved fun and made friends wherever she went.”
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
1964-66
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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Letter from Jessie Kenney to Christabel Pankhurst, 1935
Reputation
Jessie writes to Christabel Pankhurst about issues with Annie’s representation as a working-class suffragette. Christabel at this point is planning to write a book on the suffragette movement and Jessie thinks it can help dissolve previous representations of Annie as a simple ‘cotton operative’. She fears that prejudice against Annie’s working-class background would diminish her legacy. Only “men [like Mussolini, Ramsay Macdonald, Lloyd George and J. H. Thomas] who have always worked for ambition and power and have not cared overmuch how they attained it” are forgiven their humble origins. She also writes that herself and Annie were “too unsophisticated” and “babes in wordly wisdom” after they left the movement but have had to learn much about how the world operates since. “The world is too materialistic as yet to appreciate the full dignity of selfless service at the price of wealth, circumstances and appearances.”
Kenney, Jessie
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
17 October 1935
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.
Source: UEA Archives. Transcript: Pam Sayle
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Annie and Jessie Kenney
Family
A photograph of Annie Kenney (right) and Jessie Kenney, her younger sister (left). Reverse of photo reads in manuscript: 'sweet little sisters'.
Unknown
Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives
Unknown
Undated
Copyright: Estate of Annie 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.
Available under Creative Commons for non commercial use. Licence: CC BY NC
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