Knowing from her birth certificate that she had been born in Brighton on 8th July 1876, Morton ran a search for her under her maiden name in the 1881 census. The only result to match his enquiry was at the top of the list: Grace Emmerson, inmate, born 1876, Brighton. He clicked to see the original image and a long list of children’s names appeared onscreen—residents of the Brighton Union Workhouse.
Could it be her? he wondered, returning to the search results. After some time of scouring, amending his parameters and checking the results, he came to the sad conclusion that yes, it was Juliette’s great grandmother who had been living in the workhouse quite alone among strangers, aged four.
He switched his focus to the 1891 census. Despite not knowing the circumstances of her time there, Morton was saddened to see that Grace—now aged 14—continued to be an inmate there. He printed the document and jumped forward another decade.
He was relieved to see that by 1901 Grace had escaped the confines of the workhouse, being listed as a twenty-four-year-old unmarried domestic servant, employed by a large farming family by the name of Smith outside of Brighton. As Morton ran his eyes down the household, he spotted another familiar name among the servants: Cecil Barwise—the man who would later become Grace’s husband. Now Morton knew the likely place at which Juliette’s great grandparents had met. He smiled, printed the sheet out and moved on to the final census available to him: 1911.
He found her easily, living in Brighton with three other women at Sea View, 13-14 Victoria Road. At least, once again, he thought that it was her. Her age was given as zero. Her birth place and her marital status, written in a different colour by a different person, were stated to be ‘unknown’. Her occupation—just like the other three women residing there—was ‘Militant Suffragette.’
‘Well,’ Morton said, grinning at the screen. Juliette and her mother weren’t the only headstrong women in their family after all, then. ‘How interesting.’ He wondered if being a militant suffragette might mean that she had been arrested for her protestations. He typed Grace’s name into Ancestry’s Suffragettes Arrested register—a document created in August 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War, when more than one thousand suffrage prisoners were granted amnesty in response to a suspension of militant activities. The search yielded one result, which Morton clicked. A scanned, ochre-coloured copy of the original record loaded onscreen. Grace’s name appeared with no identifying information.
Emmerson, Grace
Brighton 1/8/10 – 177.568
Brighton 29/12/10– 183.189
Bow Street 22/2/11 – 200.455
Morton looked at the sheet, slightly baffled. This woman had evidently been arrested three times within six months. Even though there was no age, address or occupation given, he felt sure that the two references to Brighton indicated that the woman’s record in front of him probably was Juliette’s great grandmother—he just needed to prove it. The seemingly random collection of numbers at the end of each line was going to be the key.
Logging on at The National Archives website, Morton entered the first of the three numbers, preceded by the letters HO. He made a note of a new reference number, which pointed to a Home Office document. Entering the other two numbers, he received similar references, the documents for which, he was disappointed to read, could only be seen by paying for a search to be conducted, or by visiting the archives in person. Now was not a good time to be scuttling off to The National Archives, he thought.
He printed out the page and stuck it to the wall, then typed Grace’s name into FindmyPast’s newspaper collection. He grinned at the first result, headed Suffragette’s Violent Speeches. He clicked to read the report and, just as it loaded onscreen, his daughter, with impeccable timing, began to wail downstairs.
Morton bounded down to the lounge. Juliette, her hair strung in every direction, was cradling the baby, trying to soothe her. Morton leant over and looked at her tiny pink face, screwed up and contorted through her screams. ‘Poor little Albert,’ Morton said, ‘maybe he’s hungry.’
Juliette scowled at him.
Chapter Three
26th June 1910, Brighton, East Sussex
Grace Emmerson gazed at the languid white smudges that blotted an otherwise perfect duck-egg-blue sky. Under her nightdress her stomach tingled with a tremor of nervousness that had been immediately present upon waking this morning. As she gazed out of her bedroom window, high on the fourth floor of the chunky Victorian house, she half-hoped that those flossy clouds might miraculously turn leaden and render today’s proposed meeting rained-off. But the day was ripening to be exactly as they had wished: bright and warm. Anyway, it was time for her to conquer the fear within. Otherwise, what would she be? The precise embodiment of the view that they were opposing: a weaker, diffident, second-class citizen.
‘Grace, we shall be leaving in thirty minutes,’ a voice called from the hallway. It was Minnie Turner.
‘I’ll be ready,’ Grace shouted through the closed door. Her lodgings here at Sea View on Victoria Road were small and simple. The floor was bare boards and on the walls was hung a plain green paper. Her rent, which provided her with a single bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers, was the lowest of all the guests. The best bedrooms were reserved for visiting holidaymakers—mostly fellow suffragettes. Of the two remaining bedrooms, one was occupied by her friend Olivia and the other by Minnie, the owner of the house and a prominent figure of the Brighton branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
She needed to stop dithering. Pulling her nightdress over her
