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Duval, Elsie Diederichs, Wandsworth, Jan Quarter 1893
DUVAL, ELSIE (1892-1919) (later Mrs Franklin)
Daughter of Ernest and Emily Diederichs DUVAL, one of six children, brought up in a household ardent for the cause of women's suffrage. She joined the WOMEN'S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION in 1907, but was too young to take part in any militant activity. Instead, she worked for three years in the offices of the Max's POLITICAL UNION. She was arrested for the first time on 23 November 1911 on a charge of obstructing the police. She was discharged and immediately volunteered and was accepted by the WSPU for the next militant protest.
If she took part in the March 1912 window-smashing campaign she was not arrested, but in July, after breaking a window in Clapham post office was sentenced to a month's imprisonment, having been remanded in custody for her "state of mind to be inquired into". During this sentence, spent in Holloway, she was forcibly fed nine times, by two doctors and nine warden on each occasion.
She was released on 3 August 1912. On 3 April 1913 she was arrested for "loitering with intent" with "Phyllis Brady" (Olive BEAMISH), was remanded for a week and then sentenced to one month's imprisonment. She was forcibly fed while on remand and then during her sentence. She recorded in her diary the heart pains she felt after the feeding, which she strenuously resisted, and which took place with her lying on the floor, her bed having been dismantled.
Under the "Cat and Mouse" Act, on 28 April 1913 she was the first suffragette prisoner to be released from Holloway. During this term of imprisonment a charge was being prepared, apparently quite justifiably, against her for burning Lady White's house at Egham. Olive Beamish was actually so charged and received a sentence of five years' penal servitude. Before her arrest Elsie Duval had also, with Olive Beamish, been responsible for burning Sanderstead station and other, unnamed, targets. In March 1913 Elsie Duval had become engaged to Hugh FRANKLIN but "the Cat and Mouse Act rendered our plans too unsettled to marry".
After her release, and that of Hugh Franklin, under the "Cat and Mouse" Act in April 1913 they escaped to the Continent. Her licence of release from Holloway was only for 14 days but she did not return. Elsie Duval took the alias "Eveline Dukes" and received character references to assist her in obtaining work, from Eveline HAVERFIELD and from Frank RUTTER, who said that he had known her for six years, and her parents even longer, and that for a year in London she had assisted him with secretarial work. Another reference came from her brother Victor DUVAL, saying that in 1912-13 she had been in the employ of Valite Ltd, of which he was managing director. Armed with these testimonials, Elsie Duval spent ten months in Germany as a governess, three months in Brussels learning French and doing office work, and two months in Switzerland.
In March 1914 she received a letter from Jessie Renney, writing as "C. Burrows" to say that "Miss Pankhurst thinks it would be better for you to stay where you are for the time being and until you get stronger." While in Dresden in May 1914 Elsie Duval spent some time in hospital. It was obviously a very lonely exile. She and Hugh Franklin had thought that they might travel together, but Winifred Mayo who had been consulted, advised that it would be too difficult for them both to find work. It was only the outbreak of war, and the amnesty for suffragettes, that allowed Elsie Duval to return to Britain.
At Christmas 1914 Elsie Duval gave Sylvia PANKHURST a blue velvet cap. She was, however, still committed to the other Pankhurst camp, keen to join the WSPU war effort campaign. In January 1915 she offered her services to the hospital in France run by Louisa Garrett ANDERSON and Flora MURRAY. She was apparently not accepted because in July 1915 she sold papers in London during the WSPU's Women's War Work Procession.
In June 1915 she wrote to Mrs Pankhurst asking if she would be a witness at her wedding; in fact she and Hugh Franklin were prepared to time the date of the wedding to fit in with Mrs Pankhurst's plans. Mrs Pankhurst replied that she was going to be away at the end of July and all of August, giving the impression she was not enthusiastic and, certainly, when the wedding did take place at the West London Synagogue on 28 September 1915, she was not one of the two main witnesses. She may, of course, have been present at the wedding. Elsie Franklin loyally joined Mrs Pankhurst's Women's Party in 1917.
Her brief though eventful life ended during the influenza epidemic on 1 January 1919 when she died from heart failure caused by septic pneumonia. It would seem only too likely that her heart had been weakened by the treatment she received in prison. The two illuminated scrolls that she received to commemorate her imprisonments are still in existence, in a private collection.
Address: (1907) 37 Park Road, Wandsworth Common, London SW; (1915) Chartridge Lodge, Chesham, Buckinghamshire.
Archival source: Duval Papers, Fawcett Library; Suffragette Fellowship Collection, Museum of London.
- April 1913: Elsie Duval, alias "Millicent Dean", arrested in Croydon and sentenced to six week's imprisonment. See here.
Elsie's death:
Elsie Duval Franklin
Death Place: 35 Porchester Terrace, Paddington [NOT " Pennsylvaniaddington" as in Ancestry record!]
Age at Death: 25
Burial Date: 3 Jan 1919
Burial Plot: Row 21 No 20
Burial Place: London, England, United Kingdom
Other Comments: West London Synagogue
Cemetery: Hoop Lane Cemetery
Cemetery Address: Hoop Lane, Golders Green, London NW11
Cemetery Comments: West London Synagogue of British Jews, Register of Burials, Original.
Elsie married Hugh Franklin. It is said that was he (not her) that was the first to be released under the Cat & Mouse Act, and Elsie, his future wife, was the second.
[Source: CHECK: The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR)? https://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=JG_BurialRegistry&h=212388&indiv=try&o_vc=Record:OtherRecord&rhSource=8912]
Hugh Franklin [Elsie Duval's husband]
Hugh was one of the people present at the rally on Parliament on 18 November 1910 - the rally that was later to be known as Black Friday. [1] When the Conciliation Bill, which would have granted limited suffrage to female property owners, failed to pass, around 300 suffragettes descended on the Palace of Westminster. The protesters were driven back by police, and many reported being victims of police brutality. [8]
Winston Churchill was at that point Home Secretary, and he was widely blamed for the police excesses on display. Hugh Franklin, who was angered by what he had seen, began to follow Churchill to heckle him at public meetings. On the train back from a meeting in Bristol, Hugh met Churchill and set on him with a dog whip, shouting "Take this, you cur, for the treatment of the suffragists!" [1]
The attack was widely reported, even reaching the headlines of The Times, and for the Franklin family, it was a great embarrassment.[6] Hugh was imprisoned for six weeks and dismissed as Sir Nathan's secretary. In March 1911, he was sentenced for another month for throwing rocks at Churchill's house. Hugh took part in the hunger strikes that were then being waged by the suffragettes, and was force fed repeatedly during his imprisonment. The force feeding turned him into an activist for penal reform - not long after he was released, he began petitioning his uncle to investigate the case of William Ball, a prisoner supposedly driven insane by force feeding. [1][9]
[Wikipedia: Link.]
Rosalind Franklin
Hugh was the uncle of the X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, "the Dark Lady of DNA" (the title of Brenda Maddox's biography).
Rosalind's middle name was "Elsie" in memory of her uncle's wife, nee Elsie Duval, who had died the year before RF's birth in 1920.
[Wikipedia: Rosalind Franklin.]