Rediscovering a suffragette grave: Mary Jane Clarke

Just days before she left for America for the first time, Sylvia Pankhurst was hit by a devastating tragedy. Today, I set out with my partner Morgan Daniels, like me a historian who likes to walk through the past, to retrace the story – and made an important rediscovery of suffragette history.

Sylvia Pankhurst did not join her family for Christmas in 1910, instead she spent the day alone trying to finish her book The Suffragette ahead of her tour of America.  Her mother, suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, was spending Christmas at the home of her brother, Herbert Brownridge Goulden.  Brownridge was their grandmother’s maiden name – Mary Goulden née Brownridge had been a member of the Anti-Corn Law League and Sylvia later recalled that young Emmeline had been enraptured by her stories of the “Hungry Forties”. 

Herbert Goulden was a longstanding support for the Pankhurst family.  He had moved into their home in Nelson Street (now the Pankhurst Centre) after Emmeline’s husband Richard Pankhurst died to help share expenses.  At Christmas 1910 we find him at his home, 6 Radcliffe Road, Winchmore Hill in Southgate, having dinner with his sisters Emmeline Pankhurst and Mary Jane Clarke.

Sylvia adored her aunt Mary and both were artistic.  It seems that Mary escaped an unhappy marriage and became involved in the suffragette movement – she was an organiser for the WSPU in Brighton.  By Christmas 1910, Mary had just been released from prison after being convicted for throwing stones in protest at the police brutality meted out to suffragette protesters on what became known as ‘Black Friday’. 

At some point on Christmas Day, Mary left the dinner table and was found unconscious by Emmeline.  She had died of a burst blood vessel on the brain; her family believed that this had been caused by her recent imprisonment. 

Today we followed the route from Radcliffe Road to Southgate cemetery where she was buried.  Much of the area is now a very prosperous North London suburb with enormous detached houses with multiple expensive cars parked outside.  Stories of inequality, of people facing starvation had impassioned the young Emmeline Pankhurst.  Today inequality is on the rise again and increasing numbers of people – many of them in work – are going to food banks.

We did not know exactly where Mary Clarke was buried, and I believe that no one has known for a long time now.  There were a few queries about it on Twitter but no answers.  Morgan and I endeavoured to find out – by looking at every grave.  It was a daunting task, many of the graves are completely covered with ivy, some of the gravestones have fallen face down, others are illegible.  If Mary Clarke’s grave had been forgotten, wasn’t it likely that one of these might be her anonymous resting place?  And then I saw her name.  Her grave is not far into the cemetery: it is in the second section on the right as you enter from Waterfall Road and it faces the path.  It is on the crest of a hill overlooking North London. 

Beneath a Celtic cross (like her sister Emmeline’s grave this is probably in reference to their mother’s Manx heritage) is inscribed “Mary J. Clarke died December 25^th 1910”.  And then these words from the Gospel of St John: “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends”. 

The grave of suffragette Mary Jane Clarke, sister of Emmeline Pankhurst

Two and a half years after the death of Mary Clarke, the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison stepped out in front of the king’s horse during the Epsom Derby race, was knocked down and killed.  She was carrying the suffragette colours.  Emily Wilding Davison, and not Mary Clarke, would be commemorated as the suffragette martyr.  And yet, the front page of The Suffragette and the funeral service would carry the same words etched onto Mary Clarke’s grave.  They are words that pay tribute to the sacrifice that so many suffragettes were prepared to make in their activism.  This is one reason why the rediscovery of this grave is so important.  It tells the story of what women sacrificed to win their political rights. 

Commemoration of Emily Wilding Davison using the same words from the Gospel of St. John as on Mary Clarke's grave

Sylvia Pankhurst was told about her aunt’s death by her mother on Boxing Day.  The hugely painful and personal cost of this struggle was on her mind as she travelled to America to explain to audiences why women were militant.

And what of Herbert Goulden?  Walk to nearby Palmers Green and you will find at the Triangle on Green Lanes a tribute to his part in the suffragette struggle.  A plaque marks the place where, at a suffragette meeting, he was recognised as Emmeline Pankhurst’s brother and attacked by a mob.  You can read about this incident and his contribution to the suffragette movement in a post by the late Ruby Galili.

The plaque in Palmers Green paying tribute to Herbert Goulden.

Herbert Goulden is buried alongside his two children in the same grave as his sister Mary Clarke.