CAROLINE PHILLIPS (1870-1956)
Caroline Phillips was born in 1870 in the small Aberdeenshire town of Kintore, the daughter of Jane Watt and James Phillips, both schoolteachers. The family moved to Aberdeen when Caroline was a young child on the appointment of her father as head of the boys’ department at St Paul Street School in the city. He later became head of Northfield School, Rosemount. Caroline’s brother James worked as a journalist at the Aberdeen Daily Journal, and this connection may have led to Caroline’s employment at the same newspaper. In 1901, an article in the newspaper refers to her as lady superintendent of the Registry Department of the Journal. She then moved on to journalistic work for the Journal, the more conservative of the two newspapers in Aberdeen.
The Watt Collection, held in Aberdeen Art Gallery, is a collection of correspondence and other materials relating to Phillips’ time as honorary secretary of the Aberdeen Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). It offers a fascinating insight into the organisation of a suffragette branch in the early years of the WSPU campaign in Scotland and the pressures that might be brought to bear on officers of such a branch, from local politicians, employers and the London leadership of the WSPU. Because of her notoriety as a suffragette, Phillips was sometimes blocked from entrance to political events in the city, making it difficult to complete her work as a reporter, and was threatened with dismissal by her employer. She was also torn between the demands for increasing militancy from the WSPU leadership and her own instinct for a more conciliatory approach, in particular in relation to the Liberal Women’s Association in Aberdeen.
In October 1907, Phillips organised the Aberdeen contingent of a National Scottish Women’s Suffrage Procession held in Edinburgh, including a special train from Aberdeen. Over a thousand women processed through Edinburgh to a meeting at Synod Hall, where Phillips was invited to sit on the platform. The early section of the archive contains several such marks of favour, and Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, the leaders of the WSPU, visited Aberdeen several times to organise and address members of the city’s branch. However, it is clear that Phillips also flirted with the possibility of joining the break-away Women’s Freedom League in late 1907, corresponding with leaders such as Teresa Billington-Greig.
A turning point in Caroline Phillips’ relations with the London leadership came in December 1907 when she disagreed with WSPU tactics relating to a Liberal Association meeting at the Music Hall in Aberdeen to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Henry Asquith. Phillips tried to work with the Aberdeen Women’s Liberal Association to secure women’s entry to the meeting by guaranteeing no disruption from the suffragettes. However, she was over-ruled by Emmeline Pankhurst, who travelled to Aberdeen herself to lead the protest.
It is clear that, like her great friend the Glaswegian Helen Fraser, who resigned from the WSPU over the adoption of window smashing, Phillips was not happy about the increasing militancy of the WSPU campaign. Correspondence from the latter half of the archive demonstrates a growing distrust and a cooling of the relationship between Phillips and the London leadership, with her invitations to visit the city turned down on several occasions. In January 1909 Phillips received an abrupt telegram from Christabel Pankhurst stating that Sylvia Pankhurst was being sent to Aberdeen to take charge of the WSPU branch and that Phillips was no longer required.
Caroline Phillips played no further part in the suffrage campaign. Unlike Helen Fraser she did not join the NUWSS. In December 1913 an article in the Aberdeen Daily Journal noted that a presentation had been made to Miss Phillips on the occasion of her leaving the employment of the newspaper. Her aunt had recently died and bequeathed her the Station Hotel in nearby Banchory and Phillips was to run the hotel for some years. At a ceremony attended by a large number of staff, the newspaper presented her with a pair of silver-plate entrée dishes while the editor, William Maxwell, made a speech. In a somewhat back-handed compliment, he acknowledged Phillips’ suffrage campaigning by ‘remarking that if she had decided to devote her whole time to newspaper work she would have proved one of the foremost of lady journalists’.
Caroline Phillips died at the age of 85 in 1956 and is buried in the churchyard of Kintore parish church. Her gravestone describes her as ‘journalist’. In November 2018, as part of the Rise Up Quines! Festival in Aberdeen, a plaque was unveiled to the memory of Caroline Phillips on Union Street. In addition, a mural depicting inspirational women in the history of Aberdeen was created by the ceramicist-activist Carrie Reichardt in St Nicolas Lane as part of Aberdeen’s 2018 NuArt Festival. At the centre of the mural is a portrait of Caroline Phillips.
Further Reading
McCall, A. T. Kintore Historical Notes http://www.kintore.org.uk/history/phillips/#.XD8DoqrA_X4
Pedersen, S. (2020) Balancing life as a journalist and a suffragette in a Scottish city. Women’s History Review 29(6), 940-954.
Entry written by Sarah Pedersen
The Watt Collection, held in Aberdeen Art Gallery, is a collection of correspondence and other materials relating to Phillips’ time as honorary secretary of the Aberdeen Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). It offers a fascinating insight into the organisation of a suffragette branch in the early years of the WSPU campaign in Scotland and the pressures that might be brought to bear on officers of such a branch, from local politicians, employers and the London leadership of the WSPU. Because of her notoriety as a suffragette, Phillips was sometimes blocked from entrance to political events in the city, making it difficult to complete her work as a reporter, and was threatened with dismissal by her employer. She was also torn between the demands for increasing militancy from the WSPU leadership and her own instinct for a more conciliatory approach, in particular in relation to the Liberal Women’s Association in Aberdeen.
In October 1907, Phillips organised the Aberdeen contingent of a National Scottish Women’s Suffrage Procession held in Edinburgh, including a special train from Aberdeen. Over a thousand women processed through Edinburgh to a meeting at Synod Hall, where Phillips was invited to sit on the platform. The early section of the archive contains several such marks of favour, and Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, the leaders of the WSPU, visited Aberdeen several times to organise and address members of the city’s branch. However, it is clear that Phillips also flirted with the possibility of joining the break-away Women’s Freedom League in late 1907, corresponding with leaders such as Teresa Billington-Greig.
A turning point in Caroline Phillips’ relations with the London leadership came in December 1907 when she disagreed with WSPU tactics relating to a Liberal Association meeting at the Music Hall in Aberdeen to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Henry Asquith. Phillips tried to work with the Aberdeen Women’s Liberal Association to secure women’s entry to the meeting by guaranteeing no disruption from the suffragettes. However, she was over-ruled by Emmeline Pankhurst, who travelled to Aberdeen herself to lead the protest.
It is clear that, like her great friend the Glaswegian Helen Fraser, who resigned from the WSPU over the adoption of window smashing, Phillips was not happy about the increasing militancy of the WSPU campaign. Correspondence from the latter half of the archive demonstrates a growing distrust and a cooling of the relationship between Phillips and the London leadership, with her invitations to visit the city turned down on several occasions. In January 1909 Phillips received an abrupt telegram from Christabel Pankhurst stating that Sylvia Pankhurst was being sent to Aberdeen to take charge of the WSPU branch and that Phillips was no longer required.
Caroline Phillips played no further part in the suffrage campaign. Unlike Helen Fraser she did not join the NUWSS. In December 1913 an article in the Aberdeen Daily Journal noted that a presentation had been made to Miss Phillips on the occasion of her leaving the employment of the newspaper. Her aunt had recently died and bequeathed her the Station Hotel in nearby Banchory and Phillips was to run the hotel for some years. At a ceremony attended by a large number of staff, the newspaper presented her with a pair of silver-plate entrée dishes while the editor, William Maxwell, made a speech. In a somewhat back-handed compliment, he acknowledged Phillips’ suffrage campaigning by ‘remarking that if she had decided to devote her whole time to newspaper work she would have proved one of the foremost of lady journalists’.
Caroline Phillips died at the age of 85 in 1956 and is buried in the churchyard of Kintore parish church. Her gravestone describes her as ‘journalist’. In November 2018, as part of the Rise Up Quines! Festival in Aberdeen, a plaque was unveiled to the memory of Caroline Phillips on Union Street. In addition, a mural depicting inspirational women in the history of Aberdeen was created by the ceramicist-activist Carrie Reichardt in St Nicolas Lane as part of Aberdeen’s 2018 NuArt Festival. At the centre of the mural is a portrait of Caroline Phillips.
Further Reading
McCall, A. T. Kintore Historical Notes http://www.kintore.org.uk/history/phillips/#.XD8DoqrA_X4
Pedersen, S. (2020) Balancing life as a journalist and a suffragette in a Scottish city. Women’s History Review 29(6), 940-954.
Entry written by Sarah Pedersen
