Well Problems

Information

1630/31: Children were a problem around Peterborough's wells. Every well had a winch and bucket, which were often misused. There are many references to the carpenter being paid to do repairs or inserting a pin to prevent them being overwound. Today's record says: 'To Clarke the carpenter for takeing out of the Towne Well the 2 buckettes and for making of pins to stay the wheel that the boys may not turn yt and so break the roape...6d'. (Tebbs, H.F., Peterborough, Oleander Press, 1979)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

'Welcome' to the Suffragettes!

1912

Information

The Great Pilgrimage was a march in Britain by suffragists campaigning non-violently for women's suffrage, organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). The march finished at Hyde Park in London and women (50 000 of them) came from all around England and Wales.

When the Great Pilgrimage reached Peterborough in November 1912 their welcome was not very warm! The suffragettes had planned a meeting in the Stanley Recreation Ground, even though the Chief Constable of the City had advised them to hire a hall; his advice proved wise as the meeting was stormed by young men who threw eggs and did not allow anyone to speak. The suffragettes were chased back to their headquarters at the Bedford Hotel.

Mrs Fordham of Fletton Avenue, the honorary secretary of the Peterborough Branch of the Women's Social and Political Union was quoted in the Peterborough Advertiser of 16 November 2012 saying,

" I am thoroughly ashamed of Peterborough boys. It was not full grown and sensible citizens who rushed our meeting, threw rotten eggs and endangered life; it was not the college boys either, but two or three hundred schoolboys of about fourteen years of age. And these are the young hopefuls who are to be given a voice in the government of their imperial motherland, so soon as they reach the mature age of twenty one, while women, however educated, sensible, wise, sedate, however wealthy in property, however hard they have to work for their living in factory, shop and home, are denied that elemental right of citizenship".