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Bolton Election Result

Women's Suffrage campaigners make their mark in a key by-election

Non-Fiction 1912 1 mins Silent

Overview

Was the PathΓ© newsreel unusually sympathetic to the women's suffrage campaign? It's certainly intriguing that it chose to highlight suffragettes' contribution to the Liberal Party's success in this 1912 by-election - something most newspapers overlooked. Polling day was on 23rd of November, and Liberal candidate Thomas Taylor took the seat on a 90 percent turnout, much to the annoyance of the Conservatives.

Contemporary reports attributed Taylor's victory to a progressive alliance of liberals and workers (and suffragettes). It was certainly a welcome boost to Herbert Asquith's Liberal government. Taylor would be the second of Bolton's two MPs at this time, the other being Labour's Alfred Henry Gill.