Women and the Orange Order: Female activism, diaspora and empire in the British world, 1850–1940 9781526113559

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Women and the Orange Order

Women and the Orange Order

Female activism, diaspora and empire in the British world, 1850–1940

D. A. J. MacPherson

Manchester University Press

Copyright © D. A. J. MacPherson 2016

The right of D. A. J. MacPherson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 8731 8 hardback First published 2016

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents List of figures List of tables

vi

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

1 England

19

Introduction

1

2 Scotland

100

Conclusion

203

3 Canada

149

Bibliography208 Index

225

Figures 0.1 Warrant for Female Orange Lodge No. 8 (Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Archives at the Museum of Orange Heritage; reproduced by permission of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland) 1.1 Female Orange lodge warrants in England, 1877–1939 1.2 Lady Bruce outside the Ulster Hut, Trent Bridge, Nottingham, 1917 (The Orange Standard, February 1917) 3.1 Members of the LOBA at the Twelfth of July celebrations in Belfast, 1926 (The Sentinel, 27 July 1926) 3.2 Delegates at the Triennial Council in Belfast, 1932 (Belfast Weekly News, 21 July 1932)

4 29

70

172

173

Tables 1.1 Female Orange Lodge warrants in England by Province, 1877–193930 2.1 Membership figures for the male and female Orange Order in Scotland, 1911–2001 106 2.2 Changes in female and male membership, 1920–31 107 2.3 Occupations of applicants to Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, Glasgow108 2.4 Migration of Orangewomen and overall Scottish migration, 1921–37122 2.5 Destinations of female Orange migrants 123 3.1 LOBA lodges by Province, 1927 152

Acknowledgements Many individuals and institutions have helped in the writing of this book. Source material has come from a range of libraries and archives across Britain, Ireland and Canada and I am grateful, in particular, for all the help and assistance given to me by staff at the Linenhall Library, Belfast; the National Library of Ireland; the British Newspaper Library (formerly at Colindale); the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Board Archive; the Archives of Ontario; Toronto Reference Library and the University of Western Ontario Archives. In gaining access to invaluable Orange Order archival material, I am indebted to the generosity of a number of individuals. At Schomberg House in Belfast, Jonathan Mattison, David Hume and David Scott assisted me greatly and provided access to the Grand Lodge of Ireland’s records. Olive Whitten, the Grand Mistress of the Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland, was exceptionally kind in allowing me to use the records of her organisation and in showing me around a number of key Orange sites in Northern Ireland, including a splendid day out at Dan Winter’s cottage (following in the footsteps of Canadian Orangewomen, discussed in Chapter 3). At Olympia House in Glasgow, David Bryce was an expert guide to the Grand Lodge of Scotland’s archive, while all the staff at Grand Lodge made me feel very welcome during my time there. The Grand Mistress of the Ladies’ Orange Association of Scotland, Rhona Gibson, was very helpful in providing contacts and arranging interviews with current members. In England, the Grand Secretary of the Loyal Institution of Orange Ladies of England, Gillian Rimmer, was equally helpful in organising interviews with members in Liverpool and Corby. Michael Phelan, historian of the Grand Lodge of England, has been a constant source of vital information about the Orange Order. In Canada, the secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Canada, John Chalmers, kindly provided access to the Grand Lodge archive at Sheppard Avenue West in Toronto, while John Wells was a constant source of information and advice, as well as providing a wonderful guided tour of ‘Orange Toronto’. I would like to thank all the Orangewomen in

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ix

Ireland, Scotland, England and Canada whom I interviewed for sharing their thoughts and memories with me. The research for this book was funded by a number of sources and I am very grateful for the generous support of the International Council for Canadian Studies in allowing me to spend time working in Toronto. Much of the research for this book was carried out during my time at University College Dublin’s John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies, where Brian Jackson was a constant source of encouragement and provided generous support for archival trips abroad. The final stages of writing this book were supported by a University of the Highlands and Islands Research Office sabbatical, and I am grateful to Michael Rayner for arranging this. I have completed this book in the convivial and supportive surroundings of the University of the Highlands and Islands’ Centre for History, and I thank Iain MacInnes, Alison MacWilliam, Elizabeth Ritchie, David Worthington and Kathrin Zickermann for tea, chats and walks by the beach in Dornoch. Earlier versions of this research were aired at events hosted by the University of Melbourne; the University of Salford; University College Dublin; Leeds Trinity University; the University of Bristol; the University of St Andrews; NUI Galway and the United Nations, New York. Some of this research has also appeared in part in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Women’s History Review, and Immigrants and Minorities – I am grateful to the editors of these journals and the publisher, Taylor & Francis, for permission to reuse this material. As before, the publication team at Manchester University Press have been unceasingly supportive. This book began life as a dimly plausible idea following a conversation with Don MacRaild about the archival sources that he had discovered at the Orange Hall in Hebburn, Co. Durham. I am exceptionally grateful for Don’s generosity in sharing these sources, which started me on my Orange Order research and led to our joint article on women’s lodges in the north-east of England, published in Irish Historical Studies (again, thank you to the editors and publisher, Cambridge University Press, for permission to use some of this material). This book ended with the supreme editing and sound advice of Kristin Lindfield-Ott, to whom I am enormously indebted, in so many ways. Finally, I’d like to thank all the members of the Oak Cottage menagerie (Penny, Archie, Daisy, George, Clarice, Lucy, Henrietta, Harriet and Hillary), who have provided constant entertainment and diversion. In particular, Archie’s puppyish exuberance and unflagging enthusiasm for everything kept me going during the final stages of writing this book and his companionship on many a head-clearing beach walk, or snoozing at my feet, was always welcome.

Introduction

‘Long live the lassies, O!’ (Belfast Weekly News, 23 June 1938)

By the 1930s, the songs of the Orange Order reflected women’s prominence and visibility in an organisation often portrayed as thoroughly male-dominated. Sung to the tune of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns’s ‘Green Grow the Rushes, O!’, this ditty featured in the songbooks of Orangewomen (and men) across the British world.1 While focusing on women’s great success in the Scottish institution, this song highlights many of the key themes explored throughout this book. Female Orangeism came to play a key role in the Orange Order and tens of thousands of women became ‘Orange sisters’ because they wanted to help maintain a British world founded on the Empire and Protestantism. Exploring the experience of Orangewomen in England, Scotland and Canada tells us far more than just how and why they became members of the Orange Order in these different locations. Instead, this book demonstrates how largely ordinary, working-class women engaged in conservative associational life and political activism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, subverting various gender norms in their public work. Through

2

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

migration and diasporic networks, these women were connected to their Orange sisters throughout the world and played a central role in upholding a British imperial identity well into the twentieth century. From their origins in 1850s Lancashire through to their remarkable success in Scotland and Canada during the interwar period, this book tells, for the first time, the story of women’s participation in the Orange Order up to the Second World War. The Orange Order is often characterised as a thoroughly masculinist brotherhood, associated with Irish sectarian violence. Women played a key role, however, in the development of Orangeism in the British world, and by the 1930s were numerically the most significant section of the Orange Order in Scotland. This book provides an important contribution to our understanding of Irish women within the diasporic contexts of Britain and Canada and addresses broader questions within migration history about the gendered nature of ethnic associational activity. It examines the growth and activism of Orangewomen in England, Scotland and Canada since the mid-nineteenth century and argues that they were central to the development of Orange associational culture up to the Second World War. Women and the Orange Order also explores how women were crucial participants in the formation of diasporic connections throughout the British world, building on links created by migration and the Empire. It reveals that the ordinary – and largely working-class – women who joined the Orange Order eagerly engaged in the public lives of their communities, in conservative politics and in upholding the ideologies of the British Empire.2 The Orange Order began as an Irish Protestant society in rural Co. Armagh, following the Battle of the Diamond against the Catholic ‘Defenders’ on 21 September 1795. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the organisation had consolidated its position as a Loyalist, anti-Catholic bulwark against revolution in Ireland and had begun to spread across the rest of the British Isles.3 Following the suppression of the United Irishmen rebellion in 1798, returning militiamen swiftly brought Orangeism to both Scotland and England. A year after the Irish rising, Orange lodges were formed in Maybole, Ayrshire, and spread quickly to Glasgow and Argyll.4 Further south, Manchester and Salford volunteers returned from Ireland to establish an Orange bridgehead in Lancashire, with lodges soon appearing in many of the textile towns of the north-west.5 In our final case-study country, Canada, a military lodge was most likely formed in Halifax as early as 1799, developing as Irish migrants settled across the frontiers of the new society.6 From this transatlantic cultural transfer, the Orange Order soon spread to all corners of the British world (not simply limited to the boundaries of the Empire), establishing, as Don MacRaild has shown, ‘a palpable ­institutional

INTRODUCTION3

f­ ramework for diverse loyalists: from soldiers manning colonial frontiers to migrants in Britain, Canada, the USA and Australasia’.7 As this book demonstrates, while female Orange lodges did not quite follow the same straightforward trajectory of Irish origins and spread, women were involved in the Irish Orange Order within a few years of its foundation. The first evidence we have of women’s participation in the Orange Order is intriguing in its detail and uniqueness. Held at Schomberg House, the Orange Order’s current worldwide headquarters in Belfast, a warrant from May 1801 for the formation of a ‘Female Orange Lodge’ in Bray, Co. Wicklow, indicates that there were at least eight women’s lodges in Ireland just six years after the Orange Order had been founded (see Figure 0.1). Meeting at a house in Cuffe Street, Dublin, the Mistress of the Woodburn lodge, Ann Smith, granted warrant No. 8 to Mrs Letitia Saunders from Bray, giving her permission to ‘administer the female Orange & Purple System in all its Proper forms’.8 Evidence such as this indicates that the Orange Order has never been as straightforwardly male-dominated as many historians and commentators have assumed. Despite the military and masculinist origins of the Orange Order, then, women were part of the organisation in Ireland from its earliest days. Frustratingly, however, there is very little evidence to suggest that women continued to play a part in the Order much beyond this early fevered period of Irish Orangeism. The next we hear of the women’s Orange Order in Ireland comes in the late 1880s. Following the first Home Rule Bill crisis, an Association of Loyal Orangewomen was established in Ireland by the Hon. Helena de Moleyns, wife of the leading Unionist MP, Colonel Edward Saunderson, in December 1887. As we shall see in Chapter 1, though, this organisation had its roots in the extensive Orange activism of women in London, as part of the English Orange Order, and little came of this second, rather brief flowering of female Orangeism in Ireland.9 The next manifestation of female Orangeism in Ireland came during the third and final Home Rule Bill crisis. Following a meeting at the Orange Order’s then headquarters in Dublin in December 1911, it was decided that the ‘dormant’ Association of Loyal Orangewomen should be ‘revived’, under the leadership of Mary E. Johnstone, a member of the original organisation in the 1880s and wife of the Senior Deputy Grand Master of Ireland.10 Formed partly as a response to the Ne Temere controversy regarding mixed marriages, the Association became part of Ulster Unionist women’s political and public activism during the Home Rule crisis and grew steadily during the interwar years.11 The Association continued to have a strong presence in Northern Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century, although it struggled to establish more

4

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

Figure 0.1  Warrant for Female Orange Lodge No. 8, Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Archives at the Museum of Orange Heritage (reproduced by permission of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland)

INTRODUCTION5

than a foothold in the pervasive and dominant Orange culture of the Protestant community. Indeed, the Association’s subordinate status in Ireland is confirmed every Twelfth of July. At this most important date in the Orange calendar, female lodges are still required to seek an invitation from the men to join them in marching, reflecting women’s inferior position in the Irish Orange Order.12 While the rather more conservative gender regime of Protestant Ulster has limited the role of women in the Orange Order in Ireland, the Irish diaspora and the British world have provided far more fertile conditions for the growth of female Orangeism.13 A number of female lodges were formed in the north-west of England during the mid-nineteenth century and the organisation grew successfully, with Liverpool emerging as a particular stronghold of female Orangeism.14 Although most historians identify 1909 as the inaugural year for the women’s Order in Scotland,15 some female lodges were actually formed there as early as the 1870s. Following their reorganisation in November 1909, women’s lodges spread rapidly across the west-central belt of Scotland, and by the early 1930s the female Order in Scotland could boast more members than their male counterparts.16 The female Orange Order in Canada, while not matching its Scottish sisters in terms of numerical superiority over men, grew from its origins in the late 1880s to become an organisation of tens of thousands of women. The first ladies’ Orange association in Canada was formed in December 1888 in Hamilton, Ontario, by Mary Tulk, the wife of a wheel moulder and local leading Orangeman, and by 1892 the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association (LOBA) had been founded. Historians’ attention to women’s involvement in the Orange Order has, however, been limited. This book, then, fills a large gap in the historiographical treatment of female Orangeism. In the early 1990s, a number of important and pioneering studies of the Orange Order began to acknowledge that women played a role in the organisation. Writing in 1992, Graham Walker was the first historian to begin exploring the significance of female Orangeism in Scotland, building on Elaine McFarland’s brief mention of women in her theoretically nuanced study of the Scottish Order during the nineteenth century.17 Since around 2005, historians and other scholars have mentioned women’s presence in the organisation, without engaging in sustained analysis of their activism.18 Most recently, research has begun to appear specifically on the women’s Order in Scotland and further afield, and this book is the first full-length study of female Orangeism in Britain and Canada.19 Women and the Orange Order builds on this research, yet offers a much broader analysis of female Orangeism. This book is not simply an examination of women’s role in this sectarian, anti-Catholic ­organisation.

6

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

Instead, it is about how these women – from largely ordinary, ­working-class ­backgrounds – used their involvement in the Orange Order to become involved in public life. This book demonstrates the diversity of women’s associational culture in England, Scotland and Canada, indicating how public life was not just the preserve of women connected to feminist or socialist political organisations and how working-class women could participate in conservative politics.20 Moreover, building on Megan Smitley’s research on middle-class women’s involvement with temperance and suffrage campaigns in Scotland and her notion of a ‘feminine public sphere’,21 this book is an important contribution to the emerging debate about whether women have been able to shape an ethnic feminine public sphere.22 Furthermore, it also problematises recent research on female participation in migrant associations which has suggested that women have been largely excluded from formal ethnic organisations.23 In exploring Orangewomen’s awareness of their ‘diasporic transnationalism’24 in England, Scotland and Canada, this book engages with a number of important aspects of the historiographies of migration, diaspora and empire. Given the fundamentally working-class nature of the female Orange Order’s membership, it demonstrates that women’s work ‘to promote British imperialism’ ‘at home’ in Britain or Canada was not just the preserve of the elite women discussed in the work of, among others, Katie Pickles, Julia Bush and Eliza Riedi.25 Building on John MacKenzie’s research on the extent of imperial culture in Scotland, this book suggests that the British Empire was significant to some working-class women’s sense of identity and adds to our understanding of how the Empire shaped the lives of ordinary British and Canadian people.26 A key aspect of Orangewomen’s engagement with and maintenance of multilayered British, ethnic and Orange identities lies in the performative nature of their Orangeism: more obviously in parades and rituals, but also, importantly, in their performance of gender roles. Echoing the work of Judith Butler, in this book we see that Orangewomen perform certain gender roles that conform to conservative notions of femininity and domesticity while being publicly and politically active.27 Historians such as Matt Houlbrook have deftly interwoven Butler’s work into their analyses of queer sexualities, in order to make sense of how, for example, the figure of the guardsman could constitute ‘the gendered body of the nation itself’ in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain.28 Recently historians have begun to use Butler’s work to understand how women perform identities and selfhoods. A conference of the Women’s History Network in 2010 focused on these notions of gender identity, with many participants using Butler’s concept of ‘performativity’ to examine how the gendered self is created, both individually and

INTRODUCTION7

collectively, through the performance of behaviours, language and gestures. A number of papers subsequently published in Women’s History Review focused on how women resisted social and cultural gender norms in the making of their selfhoods.29 What this book argues, centrally, is that women such as those who joined the Orange Order could conform to many aspects of these norms while also, fundamentally (and often unwittingly) undermining them. So, members of female Orange lodges in Liverpool, Glasgow or Toronto could portray and perform the role of good Orange and Protestant wives and mothers, nurturing future generations and ensuring that their menfolk and children thrived in an environment of idyllic domesticity. Yet, at the same time, they were negotiating with and subverting these notions of gender by becoming involved in the public life of their community and beyond.30 Indeed, by parading with their Orange brethren on the Twelfth of July, the Orangewomen of England, Scotland and Canada were engaging in a particularly public performance of gender identity that did exactly that, portraying themselves as ‘respectable’ and ‘feminine’ while claiming the public space of the streets as theirs. In addition to theoretical considerations of gender, this book has been informed by recent interdisciplinary work in diaspora studies.31 In 2003, Kevin Kenny outlined some of the problems with the adoption of the term ‘diaspora’ in Irish ethnic and migration history.32 Surveying the broadening out of its definition from classical dispersion and exile from homeland to encompass any type of migration or ethnic identity, Kenny called for a more precise usage of the term that focused on exploring the transnational connections between migrants and the ‘home’ country and placing this in a comparative framework with other ethnic groups.33 Kenny attached particular analytical value to exploring the notion of an Irish ‘diasporic sensibility’, in which the Irish abroad considered themselves to be connected through some measure of common shared identity, providing examples of Irish nationalist political and trade union activity which demonstrated such a relationship between migrant community and home.34 Recently, though, historians have defined the term ‘diaspora’ with sufficient clarity for it to now carry significant analytical value. Kevin Kenny’s recent book on diaspora defines how the term should be used as an explanatory tool in migration history. He argues that ‘Diaspora is best approached not as a social entity that can be measured but as an idea that helps explain the world migration creates.’35 So, the concept of diaspora helps us to understand the social world of the migrant that has roots in multiple locations – where the migrant is from, and both where the migrant ends up and where others from the migrant’s point of departure

8

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

settle, and the connections that then form between all of these ‘nodes’. In this book, we examine examples of how Irish Protestant women used the associational culture of the Orange Order in this kind of way – so, how the organisation created diasporic connections between women from the same ethnic group in different locations. In this way, diasporic connections are part of a continuum, where the social world of the migrant is shaped not only by the ‘homeland’ but also by the active connections that those migrants create with home. Perhaps most intriguingly, the Orangewomen studied in this book demonstrate how the homeland itself, and those who do not become migrants, are shaped by diaspora and are part of this diasporic continuum. Avtar Brah’s concept of ‘diaspora space’ captures the hybrid nature of diasporic identity that connects these multiple locations. Brah suggests that in the process of the encounter and mixing of different migrant identities with those of the long-term settled, a place of settlement such as Britain becomes a diaspora space in which ‘the genealogies of dispersion’ are intertwined with ‘those of “staying put”’.36 This book modifies Brah’s notion of diaspora space to include those who do not become migrants. In cities such as Toronto and Glasgow, Orangewomen who did not travel were connected to their Orange sisters and brethren across the globe, making ‘diaspora spaces’, not because of the mixing of different migrant identities, but through the physical and imaginative connections created by the Orange Order. The Orange Order held a distinct diasporic function and mentality, which was reflected in the organisation’s role in the migration process and its members’ awareness that they were part of a global networked Orange world.37 MacRaild’s work is important for demonstrating that Orangemen had a ‘diaspora consciousness’ from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, which was articulated through the Order’s international Triennial Conference (established in 1865), the pages of the Belfast Weekly News, and through the migration process itself.38 In particular, MacRaild notes the important role played by the Belfast Weekly News in creating transnational diasporic networks that connected Orangemen across the globe. The Belfast Weekly News was the weekly edition of the Belfast News-letter and contained reports of meetings in Orange outposts throughout the world. MacRaild describes how the paper functioned as ‘some kind of chatroom’39 for Orangemen overseas during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, providing ‘a vital conduit of communication between diasporic lodges and the homeland of Ireland’.40 Jessica Harland-Jacobs has argued that the roots of this Orange diaspora lie in the Atlantic world of the first half of the nineteenth century, connecting men ‘institutionally, ideologically, and even emotionally, to a community that spanned the vast ocean’.41

INTRODUCTION9

This book demonstrates that Orangewomen also thought diasporically and that this gendered diasporic consciousness extended well into the twentieth century and beyond the Atlantic world. While during the earlier Victorian period examined by MacRaild it is clear that Orange diasporic thinking was largely a male preserve, this book demonstrates that during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries women also shared this diasporic consciousness with their Orange brethren. Orangewomen were also keen networkers, playing a role in the migration process and in the maintenance of connections between Orange outposts. While women were not as prominent as Orangemen in the organisation’s formal and public diasporic networks through such events as the Triennial Conference, Orangewomen in England, Scotland and Canada were equally adept as men in utilising the Belfast Weekly News to communicate with their Orange sisters across the globe.42 Moreover, by focusing on Orangewomen’s experiences during the interwar period, this book indicates the durability of an Orange diasporic consciousness well into the twentieth century. Shifting our attention to the Orange Order’s experience of diaspora during the twentieth century also raises the complex issue of identities. What exactly was the diasporic identification of Orangewomen in England, Scotland and Canada (and throughout the rest of the British world), which was then articulated largely through the pages of a Belfast newspaper? As Graham Walker argues, building on Elaine McFarland’s work on the nineteenth century Orange Order, during the interwar period in Scotland the organisation remained largely dominated by Irish Protestant immigrants and their descendants.43 The women examined in this book, however, demonstrate that Orange identity had become rather more complex by the interwar period. Given fears about Home Rule and then the emergence of an independent Ireland, many Irish Protestants in England, Scotland or Canada began to identify more directly with an Ulster identity.44 This shift in ethnic identification away from Irishness became more pronounced during the 1920s and 1930s, when the Orange Order began to embrace a more explicitly Scottish or Canadian identity. Orangewomen were thoroughly engaged with this process of ‘mutating’ ethnic identity and the various stages of migration, from Ireland to Scotland, England and Canada and on to locations throughout the British world, suggest that Orangewomen’s sense of diasporic homeland was overlapping, combining their more proximate attachment ‘back home’ with an overarching connection to an Irish Protestant identity.45 The diasporic consciousness of the women examined in this book, then, was anchored to a number of places and was experienced through the migration process, return visits, letters home and the pages of a weekly Belfast

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WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

newspaper. Moreover, the British Empire provided the key ideological thread that connected Orangewomen across the globe, echoing recent research that has emphasised how associational culture in the Scottish diaspora was shaped by empire.46 This book analyses the role women members of the Orange Order played in the migratory and diasporic aspects of Orange life. Taking England, Scotland and Canada as case studies, the book explores the role of women’s lodges in the migration process and how networks were facilitated by letters and return visits ‘home’ by Orangewomen. These webs were bolstered by a strong ‘diasporic imagination’,47 which was shaped as much by Orangewomen ‘at home’ in Scotland, England or Canada as it was by those who had moved abroad. Orangewomen in Glasgow, Toronto or Liverpool, then, thought of themselves diasporically because of their sense of material and imaginative connection to their Orange sisters across the British world. Using Brah’s concept of ‘diaspora space’, this book considers the social space of the lodge room, where letters were read from members who had migrated and returning members were entertained, and the imagined space of the Belfast Weekly News, where ‘each Thursday night’ Orangewomen would read about their sisters in Canada, the United States, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.48 Orangewomen’s ‘spatial imagination’ fostered a networked sense of empire, from which this Irish Protestant diaspora emerged.49 Furthermore, by considering the global consciousness of Orangewomen, this book develops our understanding of the British Empire as an interconnected transnational network, the ‘software of empire’ that sustained an imperial ideology among women in England, Scotland and Canada through personal and associational connection with their sisters abroad well into the twentieth century.50 This book examines the lives of Orangewomen through a combination of rare archival records and newspaper reports. Sources held by the Orange Headquarters in Scotland (Olympia House, Glasgow), Canada (Sheppard Avenue, Toronto), and in Northern Ireland (Schomberg House, Belfast) have provided invaluable insights into the internal workings of the organisation. Historians have largely been unable to consult these records, given the Orange Order’s generally protective attitude towards its past and its wariness of outside interest in and scrutiny of the organisation. However, in recent years – and partly as a result of the end of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland – there has been something of an Orange ‘thaw’, enabling scholars to consult material more freely than in the past. The records of Grand Lodge meetings (the highest governing body in each of the Orange jurisdictions) detail the often complex process by which women’s lodges were founded and how the relationship with the brethren evolved over time. Female lodge minute books, roll books

INTRODUCTION11

and attendance books allow us a more intimate glimpse of the everyday lives of Orangewomen. While these sources are invaluable in quantifying women’s participation in the Orange Order, much useful information about the activities and mentalities of Orangewomen comes from the extensive coverage given to the Order in the pages of the Orange press, specifically the Belfast Weekly News and the Toronto Sentinel.51 The book is structured along geographical lines, with a chapter each dedicated to Orangewomen in England, Scotland and Canada. Within these chapters, we examine a number of common themes: the emergence and growth of female lodges within the different Orange jurisdictions; Orangewomen’s public and political activism; the role of charity within female Orangeism; the function of women’s lodges in the migration process; how the female Orange Order fostered a sense of diasporic identity; how this diasporic identity was shaped by Irish Protestant and British Empire identities; and how Scottish, English or Canadian identities became important to Orangewomen in each of these countries, and how they articulated these identities through the Orange Order. The first chapter examines the experience of Orangewomen in England. From the formation of the first women’s lodges during the 1850s, this chapter begins our story by focusing on the central role played by popular religiosity in the development of female Orangeism. In England, the Orange Order was not the cultural product of Irish Protestant migration to the same extent as it was in Scotland or Canada. This did not mean, however, that an Irish Protestant identity and a concern for Irish politics were not important to the Orangewomen of England. Instead, these issues were interpreted as part of a broader, largely British Empire framework. In England, we find that the growth of female Orangeism was determined by local contexts. So, while it is no surprise that Liverpool emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as a stronghold of female Orangeism (just as it did for the men), precisely when and where women’s lodges were established can be explained by key local characters (such as particularly active ministers and their congregations) and heightened issues in popular Protestant politics, such as the debate over Ritualism in the Anglican Church, which motivated much female Orange activity in Liverpool from the late 1880s onwards. Equally, while Irish Protestant migration and the diasporic connections that came with it were less important to English Orangewomen compared to their Scottish and Canadian sisters, much female Orange activism in England was motivated by a desire to support and uphold the British Empire. Through their charitable efforts, especially during the war, and through their political support for the Union, the Orangewomen of England have much to tell us about the nature of working-class women’s activism during the nineteenth and early

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WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

t­ wentieth centuries and how a popular Toryism, centred on the British Empire, was profoundly gendered. Chapter 2 shifts our attention northwards, to the Orangewomen of Scotland. Here, we find that migration and the diasporic connections forged by the women’s Orange Order take centre stage. The chapter begins by telling the story of the extraordinary rise of women’s lodges in Scotland. Of all the case studies examined in this book, the women of Scotland were the last to formally organise, with lodges being finally founded in 1909.52 Yet, the Scottish female Order grew by far the most rapidly, so that within just two decades of its formation, there were more Orangewomen than Orangemen in Scotland. The period of fastest growth – the early 1920s – also coincided with an unprecedented era of emigration from Scotland. This was the decade when two-thirds of all those who left Britain came from Scotland.53 Between 1921 and 1938, over 400,000 people left Scotland, with the bulk moving to North America or Australasia. Women’s Orange lodges in Scotland were a notable part of this migratory process, providing a social world in which information about opportunities abroad could be shared, financial and emotional support for travel could be provided by the lodge, and enabling migrant women to retain a diasporic connection with old friends through the global network of Orangeism. The final chapter examines one of the key destinations for migrant Orangewomen from the British Isles – Canada. Here, we find both local and imperial contexts shaping the nature of female Orangeism. Founded at the end of the nineteenth century, the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association became a significant section of Canadian Orangeism, comprising almost 25,000 members by the end of the 1920s.54 Given the philanthropic focus of their name, it is no surprise to find the Orangewomen of Canada using their impressive numbers to raise money on a significant scale, funding large projects such as the building of orphanages. Providing and caring for Orange children allowed members of the LOBA to present their public activism as conforming neatly to prevailing gender norms and practices and underlined their position as good Protestant moral leaders of the Orange community. The LOBA drew its membership largely from migrants and their descendants from across the British world. While Smyth and Houston have portrayed the Canadian Orange Order as evolving into a broad pan-ethnic organisation by the end of the nineteenth century in terms of the background of its members, this chapter argues that an Irish Protestantism remained important to the ideology of the LOBA well into the twentieth century. Canadian Orangewomen were interested in, and motivated in their activism by, Irish politics and a concern to retain Ireland (and, later, Northern Ireland) within the

INTRODUCTION13

British Empire. Equally, while Canadian politics and identity became increasingly important to the LOBA, their concern with issues such as the nation’s language, flag and schools connected these local political and religious concerns to the much broader framework of the British Empire. For many Orangewomen during the interwar period, a devotion to Britain and its Empire was entirely compatible with a developing sense of proud Canadian identity, as we see in the post-war period in the career of John Diefenbaker and others.55 This is a book, then, about ordinary women’s public and political activism in an Orange cause. The Orangewomen of England, Scotland and Canada were not defined purely by their gendered charitable activities in the more intimate, domestic public sphere of their local communities. The practices and ideologies of female Orangeism connected these women with their Orange sisters across the globe; their migratory movement, identities and beliefs guided and shaped by the British Empire. We begin this story of women, migration and empire in England, with the involvement of Orangewomen in a rather intriguing wartime philanthropic scheme at the unlikely setting of the home of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, Trent Bridge. Notes

 1 See Chapter 3 for this song’s reappearance in a Canadian context.  2 Both Orangemen and Orangewomen were largely conservative in their political outlook, but this did not translate into a straightforward support for Conservative political parties in England, Scotland or Canada. See G. Walker, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland between the wars’, International Review of Social History, 37 (1992), 177–206.  3 D. M. MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting: The Orange Order and Irish Migrants in Northern England, c. 1850–1920 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), pp. 1–3.  4 E. McFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), p. 49; MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 37.  5 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 37–9.  6 C. J. Houston and W. J. Smyth, The Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Orange Order in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), p. 16.  7 D. M. MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, 1750–1939 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 210.  8 Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, Warrant for Female Orange Lodge No. 8, Bray, Co. Wicklow. This warrant is mentioned briefly in ‘An Ulsterman’s Letter’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 January 1933. The ‘Orange and Purple System’ refers to the different forms and hierarchies of ritual adopted by the Orange

14

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

Order. Given how contested access to the more elevated ‘Purple Degree’ (or Second Degree) was for later Orangewomen, it is remarkable to see the women of Dublin and Bray enjoying such privileges in the very earliest days of the Orange Order. For more on the different Degrees of Orangeism, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 82–3.  9 See D. Urquhart, Women in Ulster Politics, 1890–1940: A History Not Yet Told (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000), pp. 59–61. 10 Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, Minute Book, Grand Loyal Orange Lodge (GLOL), Women’s Association, 19 December 1912; Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland, 100th Anniversary, 1912–2012 (Belfast, 2012), p. 10. 11 Urquhart, Women in Ulster Politics, p. 60. For the Ne Temere controversy, see D. A. J. MacPherson, ‘“Exploited with fury on a thousand platforms”: Women, Unionism and the Ne Temere decree in Ireland, 1908–1913’, in J. Allen and R. C. Allen (eds), Faith of Our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in PostReformation England, Ireland and Wales (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), pp. 157–75. 12 Pasted into the front of the first minute book of the Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland is a note, reminding members of this regulation: ‘No lodge belonging to the Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland is permitted to join in the Procession of the Brethren during the 12th July Celebrations. The Women’s Lodges may meet the Brethren on the Field and march with them on the Field, on receiving a written invitation from the District Master to do so. By order of the Grand Lodge (Women’s Association), December 4th, 1914’. Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, Minute Book, GLOL, Women’s Association. 13 For the conservatism of gender ideologies in the north of Ireland, see Jane McGaughey’s study of Ulster masculinities, Ulster’s Men: Protestant Unionist Masculinities and Militarization in the North of Ireland, 1912–1923 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012). For a later period in Northern Ireland, see also S. Brady, ‘Why examine men, masculinities and religion in Northern Ireland?’, in L. Delap and S. Morgan (eds), Men, Masculinities and Religious Changes in Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 218–51. 14 See MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, pp. 106–8. The early success of female Orangeism in northern England was recognised by members of LOBA No. 714, in Creemore, Ontario, at a meeting in May 1927. One of the members, Sister Best, had returned from a trip to England, where she had visited the first women’s lodge to be formed in Preston and received a ‘beautiful cup’. See ‘Creemore, Ont., Ladies are highly honored’, Sentinel, 19 May 1927. 15 McFarland, Protestants First, p. 112; Walker, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland between the wars’, 203. 16 E. Kaufmann, Orange Order Membership Data with a Focus on Ireland, Canada and Scotland, 1852–2002, SN: 4916 (Colchester: UK Data Archive, 2002). 17 Walker, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland between the wars’. Elaine McFarland’s

INTRODUCTION15

work briefly mentions the founding of women’s lodges in 1909, together with references to women’s presence on Orange marches during the nineteenth century. See Protestants First, p. 112, note 7, and E. McFarland, ‘Marching from the margins: twelfth July parades in Scotland, 1820–1914’, in T. G. Fraser (ed.), The Irish Parading Tradition: Following the Drum (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), p. 68. Sue Innes and Jane Rendall acknowledge the position of Orangewomen in a broader field of female activism in Scotland in a more recent study. See S. Innes and J. Rendall, ‘Women, gender and politics’, in L. Abrams, E. Gordon, D. Simonton and E. Yeo (eds), Gender in Scottish History Since 1700 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p. 63. 18 See, for example, MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 109, 130– 41; D. Fitzpatrick, ‘Exporting brotherhood: Orangeism in South Australia’, Immigrants & Minorities, 23:2 (2005), 277–310; E. Kaufmann, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland since 1860: a social analysis’, in M. Mitchell (ed.), New Perspectives on the Irish in Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2008), pp. 159–90. The first academic work to focus exclusively on the role of women in the Orange Order was D. A. J. MacPherson and D. M. MacRaild, ‘Sisters of the brotherhood: female Orangeism on Tyneside in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, Irish Historical Studies, 35:137 (2006), 40–60. 19 See D. Butcher, ‘Ladies of the Lodge: A History of Scottish Orangewomen, c. 1909–2013’, unpublished PhD thesis (London Metropolitan University, 2014); D. A. J. MacPherson, ‘Migration and the female Orange Order: Irish Protestant identity, diaspora and Empire in Scotland, 1909–40’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40:4 (2012), 619–42; D. A. J. MacPherson, ‘The emergence of Women’s Orange Lodges in Scotland: gender, ethnicity and women’s activism, 1909–1940’, Women’s History Review, 22:1 (2013), 90–114. Revealingly, the most recent full-length study of the Orange Order in Toronto, one of the heartlands of Canadian Orangeism, makes no reference to the involvement of women in the organisation. See W. J. Smyth, Toronto, the Belfast of Canada: The Orange Order and the Shaping of Municipal Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). A very valuable survey of the transnational character of female Orangeism by Patrick Coleman appeared as this book was going to press. See P. Coleman, ‘“In harmony”: a comparative view of female Orangeism, 1887–2000’, in A. McCarthy (ed.), Ireland in the World: Comparative, Transnational, and Personal Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 110–36. 20 For recent research on working-class women’s feminist and socialist activism in interwar Scotland, see A. Hughes, ‘Fragmented feminists? The influence of class and political identity in relations between the Glasgow and West of Scotland Suffrage Society and the Independent Labour Party in the West of Scotland, c. 1919–1932’, Women’s History Review, 14:1 (2005), 7–32, and A. Hughes, Gender and Political Identities in Scotland, 1919–1939 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010). For recent work on non-radical Canadian women’s public activism, see M. Kechnie, Organizing Rural Women: The Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario, 1897–1919 (Montreal and Kingston:

16

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McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003); C. J. Dennison, ‘Housekeepers of the community: the British Columbia Women’s Institutes, 1909–1946’, in M. R. Welton (ed.), Knowledge for the People: The Struggle for Adult Learning in English-Speaking Canada, 1828–1973 (Toronto: OISE Press, 1987); L. M. Ambrose and M. Kechnie, ‘Social control or social feminism? Two views of the Ontario Women’s Institutes’, Agricultural History 73 (1999), 222–37; J. Fingard and J. Guildford (eds), Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); L. M. Ambrose, ‘Our last frontier: imperialism and northern Canadian rural women’s organizations’, Canadian Historical Review, 82 (2005), 257– 84; P. G. Mackintosh, ‘Scrutiny in the city: the domestic public culture and the Toronto local Council of Women at the turn of the twentieth century’, Gender, Place and Culture, 12 (2005), 29–48. 21 M. Smitley, The Feminine Public Sphere: Middle-Class Women and Civic Life in Scotland, c. 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). Lynn Abrams’ research on women’s material and representational lives on Shetland offers a counter narrative to the dominant identification of middle-class women with a feminine public sphere. See L. Abrams, Myth and Materiality in a Woman’s World: Shetland 1800–2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). 22 M. Schrover and E. Yeo (eds), Gender, Migration and the Public Sphere, 1850– 2005 (London: Routledge, 2009). 23 M. Schrover and F. Vermeulen, ‘Immigrant organisations’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31:5 (2005), 827. 24 D. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2000). 25 K. Pickles, ‘A link in “the great chain of Empire friendship”: the Victoria League in New Zealand’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33:1 (2005), 29; K. Pickles, Female Imperialism and National Identity: Imperial Order Daughters of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); J. Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2000); E. Riedi, ‘Women, gender, and the promotion of Empire: the Victoria League, 1901–1914’, Historical Journal, 45:3 (2002), 569–99. 26 J. M. MacKenzie, ‘Empire and national identities: the case of Scotland’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 8 (1998), 215–31; J. M. MacKenzie, ‘“The Second City of Empire”: Glasgow – imperial municipality’, in F. Driver and D. Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 215–38. For the contested historiographical debate about the impact of the British Empire on domestic British life, see C. Hall and S. Rose (eds), At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 1–31. 27 For the clearest statement of Butler’s notion of ‘performativity’, see J. Butler, ‘Performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory’, Theatre Journal, 40:4 (1988), 519–31. See also J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge,

INTRODUCTION17

1990). 28 M. Houlbrook, ‘Soldier heroes and rent boys: homosex, masculinities, and Britishness in the Brigade of Guards, circa 1900–1960’, Journal of British Studies, 42:3 (2003), 380. See also M. Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005). 29 K. Barclay and S. Richardson, ‘Introduction: performing the self: women’s lives in historical perspective’, Women’s History Review, 22:2 (2013), 179. 30 This echoes Kathryn Gleadle’s notion of the ‘community sphere’ in which middle-class women in early nineteenth-century Britain could engage with public life at a local level. See K. Gleadle, Borderline Citizens: Women, Gender and Political Culture in Britain, 1815–1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 31 For an overview of interdisciplinary studies of diaspora, see D. A. J. MacPherson and M. J. Hickman, ‘Introduction: Irish diaspora studies and women: theories, concepts and new perspectives’, in D. A. J. MacPherson and M. J. Hickman (eds), Women and Irish Diaspora Identities: Theories, Concepts and New Perspectives (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 1–16. 32 K. Kenny, ‘Diaspora and comparison: the global Irish as a case study’, Journal of American History, 90 (2003), 134–62. Ibid., 150. For a useful overview of different definitions and typologies of 33  diaspora, see R. Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2008), especially pp. 159–74, where Cohen discusses the complex and multiple ‘strands’ that constitute a diaspora. 34 Kenny, ‘Diaspora and comparison’, 143. See also D. M. MacRaild, ‘“Diaspora” and “transnationalism”: theory and evidence in explanation of the Irish worldwide’, Irish Economic and Social History, 33 (2006), 51–8, and E.  Delaney, ‘The Irish diaspora’, Irish Economic and Social History, 33 (2006), 45. 35 K. Kenny, Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 1. 36 A. Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 209. 37 D. M. MacRaild, ‘Networks, communication and the Irish Protestant diaspora in Northern England, c. 1860–1914’, Immigrants & Minorities, 23 (2005), 311–37; J. Harland-Jacobs, ‘“Maintaining the connexion”: Orangeism in the British North Atlantic World, 1795–1844’, Atlantic Studies, 5 (2008), 27–49. 38 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 296. 39 Ibid., p. 308. 40 MacRaild, ‘“Diaspora” and “transnationalism”’, 57. 41 Harland-Jacobs, ‘“Maintaining the connexion”’, 28. 42 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 308. 43 Walker, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland between the wars’, 178. 44 For this process more broadly, see I. McBride, ‘Ulster and the British problem’, in R. English and G. Walker (eds), Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp.

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7–11, and J. Loughlin, ‘Creating “a social and geographical fact”: regional identity and the Ulster Question 1880–1920’, Past and Present, 195 (2007), 159–96. 45 For an important article on how Irish ethnic identity can mutate according to local conditions, see A. O’Day, ‘A conundrum of Irish diasporic identity: mutative ethnicity’, Immigrants & Minorities, 27:2–3 (2009), 317–39. 46 See G. Morton, ‘Ethnic identity in the civic world of Scottish associational culture’, in T. Bueltmann, A. Hinson and G. Morton (eds), Ties of Bluid, Kin and Countrie: Scottish Associational Culture in the Diaspora (Guelph: Centre for Scottish Studies, 2009), pp. 33–50. 47 M. F. Jacobsen, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). 48 Brah argues that the concept of ‘diaspora space foregrounds the entanglement of genealogies of dispersion with those of “staying put”.’ Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora, p. 16. For a useful discussion of the different social spaces and networks inhabited physically and imaginatively by Irish migrants in Buffalo and Toronto, see W. Jenkins, ‘Deconstructing diaspora: networks and identities among the Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1870–1910’, Immigrants & Minorities, 23:2–3 (2005), 359–98. 49 G. B. Magee and A. S. Thompson, Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c. 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 15. Ibid., pp. 16, 46. While Magee and Thompson’s work on the networks of 50  empire concentrates on the British world’s dominance of the ‘first wave of modern globalisation’ up to 1914, this book suggests that the networked aspects of this world continued to function through the extensive migration of the interwar period. For the ‘transnational turn’ in studies of the British Empire, see T. Ballantyne, ‘The changing shape of the modern British Empire and its historiography’, Historical Journal, 53:2 (2010), 429–52. 51 For the usefulness of the Belfast Weekly News to historians of the Orange Order, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 12. 52 As Chapter 2 explains, some women’s lodges were formed in Scotland at the beginning of the 1870s. These, however, were founded as auxiliaries to the women’s organisation in England. 53 E. Richards, Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (London: Hambledon, 2004), p. 236. 54 ‘Remarkable Progress of the Ladies’ Order’, Sentinel, 14 July 1927. 55 For the longevity of British imperial sentiment in Canada during the twentieth century, see P. Buckner, ‘Canada and the end of Empire, 1939–1982’, in P. Buckner (ed.), Canada and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 107–25. John Diefenbaker was Prime Minister of Canada between 1957 and 1963.

1

England During the First World War, Trent Bridge cricket ground was transformed from being the home of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, accustomed to the gentle sound of leather on willow, to serving as a hospital for wounded soldiers returning from the Western Front. While the hospital was initially established by the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) in 1915, its expansion was overseen by Lady Bruce, a doyenne of Ulster Unionist politics who had strong family connections with Nottingham. Bruce was responsible for turning the new facility in the west wing of the pavilion into an ‘Orange Ward’, attending (although not exclusively) to the needs of Orangemen injured in the fighting, and for building an ‘Ulster Hut’, for the recovering soldiers’ recreation.1 Inside the ‘Hut’, soldiers were able to play billiards, read Orange newspapers and listen to morale-boosting evening concerts, overlooked by pictures of leading Unionists such as Sir Edward Carson, while outside, over the front entrance, loomed the red hand of Ulster, symbol of the recent Ulster Unionist struggle against Home Rule in Ireland. This quintessentially English space became, for the last couple of years of the war, an environment in which Orangewomen demonstrated their wartime activism, their connection with the wider community and their commitment to the politics of Ulster Unionism and the British Empire. The English Orangewomen’s war effort, for this hospital, was visible and public, indicating how support for Ulster was still an acceptable part of popular politics and how the Irish Question continued to be important. The First World War was frequently portrayed by the Orange Order in England as an imperial event, and in the pavilion of Trent Bridge, Orangewomen demonstrated their commitment to the Orange soldiers who were fighting for Ulster and for the British Empire. The Orangewomen of England were rather different from their Scottish and Canadian sisters. They organised themselves into female lodges not because, by and large, they were Irish Protestant migrants or their descendants. Instead, while many Orangewomen in Lancashire, London or Portsmouth (to name but three significant sites of English

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female Orangeism) felt strongly about Irish politics and the importance of defending the Union of Britain and Ireland against the threat of Home Rule, the primary concern of these women in joining the Orange Order was to uphold the Protestant faith and support the British Empire. Their Orangeism was, then, arguably more purely Williamite in ideology and belief, reflecting William III’s famous proclamation on landing at Brixham in 1688, ‘the liberties of England and the Protestant religion I will ­maintain’ – the foundational slogan of the Orange Order.2 By turning our attention to female Orangeism in England and focusing on these different ideological aspects, our story becomes one of popular Protestantism and imperialism. The Orangewomen of England have much to tell us about the nature of working-class women’s activism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the gendered nature of popular imperialism and Toryism. The women’s Orange Order in England also differed in terms of its geographical range. As we will see in Chapter 2, the Orange Order tended to thrive in more industrial areas – in the Scottish case the west Central Belt and the south-west of the country – reflecting the importance of industrial migration between Ireland and Scotland in the growth of the organisation. As a number of historians have established, the Orange Order did thrive in the industrial towns of northern England, an indication of the strength of Irish Protestant participation in the ‘North British’ zone of industrial migration.3 However, the Orange Order also flourished further south in England, especially in working-class communities with strong links to the British armed forces, such as Portsmouth. This geographical spread also had implications for the class structure of the women’s Orange Order in England. While the Order in Scotland was largely dominated by working-class women, in England we see the organisation embracing a far broader spectrum of social backgrounds. In London, for example, the female lodges ranged from the aristocratically dominated Lady Saunderson lodge in Belgravia, to working-class lodges in Woolwich and Walthamstow. English Orangewomen, then, were socially diverse, reflecting the broad-based appeal of Toryism and imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A final key distinction between the female lodges in their respective Orange jurisdictions lies in chronology and development. The development of Orange lodges in England was less determined by shifting patterns of Irish migration – and, consequently, less reflective of the ebb and flow of Irish politics. The Order had taken root in England at the turn of the nineteenth century, when English soldiers returning from quelling the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion in Ireland brought their new-found Orangeism back home with them.4 While there is no evidence

ENGLAND21

that women were involved at this early stage, by the mid-nineteenth century they were stalwarts of the English Order.5 From their roots in the north-west of England (where Frank Neal argues that the influx of poor ‘famine’ Irish migrants and the restoration of the English Catholic hierarchy in 1851 spurred growth in the Orange Order),6 women participated in English Orangeism far earlier than their Scottish or Canadian sisters. This lengthier involvement of women in the English Orange Order tells us much, then, about broader cultures of popular Protestantism and Toryism. While historians have written extensively on the Orangeinflected popular conservatism of early nineteenth-century loyalism and later Victorian ‘Ultra Toryism’, little research has been done on the continuities of popular Toryism over the course of the century.7 Focusing on Orangewomen in England also helps us to understand the evolution of a gendered form of popular conservative politics before the Edwardian high-water mark of the Primrose League and Women’s Unionist and Tariff Reform Association.8 So, in turning our attention to women’s Orangeism in England, this book tells a number of important stories – about the continuing traction of popular Protestantism in conservative politics, how the British Empire was central to working-class people in England, and how both of these were shaped by gender. Foundation: growth, development and membership

From its formal foundation in Lancashire during the mid-nineteenth century, the women’s Orange Order grew steadily in England until the interwar period. While not reaching the numerical superiority experienced by the Scottish women in the 1930s, or matching the sheer size of the LOBA in Canada, the English Orangewomen did become a significant part of the wider organisation in England, comprising almost a third of all lodges on the eve of the First World War.9 This growth reveals a number of important aspects of female Orangeism. First, while the English women were accepted more readily into the Order, the debates that surrounded their participation were similar to those in Scotland and Canada. Respectability and religiosity emerge as the key aspects of the organisation that women’s membership would enhance. The English women’s relationship with their male counterparts, however, was different. From a relatively early stage, Orangewomen were able to take part in meetings of the District Lodge, one of the most significant decision-making bodies in the organisation, in stark contrast to their sisters in Scotland. Moreover, the Orangewomen of England developed, as in Canada, their own Grand Lodge, further demonstrating their more equal position within the Orange Order. This involvement was, however, contingent

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and variable, and at various points in their evolution the representation of women at these District meetings was debated and contested, highlighting the less hierarchical nature of the Order in England and the weaker central Grand Lodge structure. Second, the growth of the female Order in England was also determined by communication between different women’s lodges, although, again, the earlier organisation of the English women meant that it was women in Birkenhead or Southsea who took the lead in inspiring their Orange counterparts north of the border. Finally, the growth and composition of the English Orangewomen reveal important differences with their Orange sisters in Scotland and Canada in terms of class and ethnicity. In England, we see a broader membership base, in terms of social structure, with the rank and file often drawn from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. And, moreover, the English Orangewomen, while demonstrating an important affinity with Ireland and Ulster through their activism and politics, were less likely to join the Order because of their own or their family’s Irish Protestant migrant origins. Growth: local politics and popular religiosity

While formal women’s lodges only took root in England from the 1850s onwards, it is important to note the more informal ways in which women took part in Orange events from the very beginnings of the organisation. Women were very much part of the ‘Orange crowd’. While the Orange Order was far more than a ‘bellicose parading movement’, as Don MacRaild has argued, this element of public Orangeism remained an important feature of the public face of the organisation.10 Moreover, despite the pomp and ceremony of the parades, there was a certain element of informality to such carnivalesque occasions that lent them to women’s participation, lending visible, vocal and physical support to Orange marches. Following its foundation in England at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, the Orange Order swiftly gained a reputation for violence, disorder and secrecy. The organisation grew in areas of significant Irish Catholic migration, and where ‘radicalism and a whiff of Jacobinism were on the wind’.11 Building on the ‘Church and King’ Toryism of the 1790s, the textile towns of Lancashire became key sites for the rise of the Orange Order, fuelled first by soldiers returning from Ireland, and then Irish Protestant migrant weavers. As Katrina Navickas has argued, for much of Lancashire the Irish rebellion in 1798 was as important as the French Revolution in shaping popular Toryism in the region, and this helped fuel an Orange-tinged, Protestant Loyalism that embraced both local elites

ENGLAND23

(especially the magistracy and clergy) and elements of the broader population.12 As the nineteenth century progressed, efforts to ally upper-class Ultra-Toryism with popular Orangeism were interpreted with alarm by the British establishment, leading to the 1835 Select Committee report on the organisation, which resulted in the official proscription of Orange lodges in Britain and Ireland.13 The secrecy and violence of these early English Orange lodges scuppered any efforts to transform them into tools of the Tory establishment. In these early days, however, it is possible to detect the involvement of women in various informal roles. A list of Orange lodges in England from 1811 reveals that a number held their meetings in public houses that were run by women. Out of seventy-five recorded lodges, four were identified as holding their meetings at female-run licensed premises: Miss Harrison’s, The Grapes, Gee Cross; Ellen Hardy’s, Bull’s Head, Gorton; Martha Whitworth’s, Three Cranes, Barnsley; and Mrs Warwick’s, Roe Buck, North Shields.14 In addition to providing space for lodge meetings, women also appear in the 1835 Select Committee report as offering further support to the Orange Order. Correspondence in 1833 between two English Orange stalwarts, Lord Kenyon and William Blennerhasset Fairman, reveal that women were not entirely invisible in the early decades of the Order. Writing to Kenyon in glowing terms about the foundation of a new lodge in Barnsley (‘These brethren are all men of fortune, of high spirit, to whom money is no object’), Blennerhasset Fairman commented on the approval of local ladies of note: ‘All the ladies are with us, and the “Blue belles of Yorkshire” are noble dames. So sensible were they of the injuries that have been heaped on our much-injured Prince [George?] that at a dinner party at Mr Jadison’s when his Royal Highness’ Health was proposed … they actually shed tears.’15 Writing to Blennerhasset Fairman, a local Glaswegian Orange luminary confirmed that women were playing a key role in the Order north of the border, especially in attracting men of position: ‘We are going to get some very dashing fellows to join us here, and the influence of the ladies, I know, will be very powerful in our favour.’16 In addition to society ladies, the Orange Order in Glasgow was keen to corral ladies of the stage to promote their cause: ‘Our charming friend Mrs Wate has promised to wear Orange ribbons in some of her parts upon the stage. She has been acting once or twice lately with wonderful success; and if I can get my packet of ribbons from Coventry by Tuesday next, I shall insist upon her decorating herself with them on that evening.’ This kind of elite support, both in the north of England and in Scotland, provides an early indication of the broader class base of English female Orangeism and echoes the wide repertoire of political activism available to some women during this period.17

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WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

Orangewomen of a less elevated social background were also capable of offering support to these early Orange activities. Women were frequent fringe participants in Orange meetings and Orange parades. A rather judgmental newspaper report from the West Midlands during the 1840s captured the presence of women at one such local gathering. Described as consisting of ‘the very scum of a defunct Orange lodge’, the Protestant Confederation met at the Bull’s Head Inn, Cradley, attracting members from Worcester, Birmingham and Kidderminster. The men, after the ‘customary vituperation of the Pope, Mr O’Connell and others’, sat down to a repast of beef and beer. The Worcestershire Chronicle provides notable evidence of the presence of women, remarking that the women dined separately, on tea and toast, after which ‘at the witching hour of midnight the jolly Orangemen and Orangewomen dispersed’. Moreover, the report also confirms that this was a distinctly working-class affair, noting that the male membership consisted of ‘about twelve or fourteen nailors’.18 Equally, women were often noted as being part of the ‘Orange crowd’ at key public occasions, such as the Twelfth of July march. Reporting the violent aftermath to the Twelfth of July celebrations in Belfast in 1848, the Freemans’ Journal remarked that ‘more than one half at least [of the crowd] was composed of females’. Violence erupted in Sandy Row when ‘a little girl brandished a green branch, whereupon the clothes were torn off the upper part of her body by a number of strong Orange Women’.19 A year later, reporting the violence that occurred at Dolly’s Brae near Rathfriland following a ‘Twelfth’ march in 1849, evidence at the court proceedings related that there ‘were Orange women as well as men (laughter)’.20 Women’s participation in this kind of support role often took on a less public aspect. For example, when a new lodge of the Grand Protestant Association (GPA), Squire Auty’s organisation that formed part of the resurgence in Orange fortunes following the 1835 Select Committee, was formed in Hull in 1853, Br A. P. Payne ‘stated that through the goodness of a lady at Hull, the Orangemen were supplied gratis with 48 copies of the Banner [the GPA’s newspaper]’.21 This final example of the support Orangewomen lent the English Orange Order during the first half of the nineteenth century points us towards women’s increasingly active role in the Order from the 1850s onwards. As Don MacRaild and Katrina Navickas have identified, the textile towns of Lancashire were at the heart of early English Orangeism, and it is here that we see the female Order taking root. In particular the parts of east Lancashire around Rossendale were at the heart of this early English female Orangeism, described by the Belfast Weekly News in 1870 thus: ‘Perhaps in no part of England has Orangeism made more progress

ENGLAND25

than in the valley of Rossendale, a cluster of manufacturing villages in the midst of the moorland range which divides Lancashire from Yorkshire’.22 In this early bastion of female Orangeism an examination of the local press in Lancashire reveals that female Orange lodges were formed in that county as early as 1850. An account of a celebration in Bacup, east Lancashire, commemorating the 5 November (a key date in the Orange calendar given the organisation’s anti-Catholic profile and also the day when William of Orange landed at Brixham in 1688) suggests that the men and women present at the event had a separate organisational identity.23 Furthermore, in 1850 the Grand Protestant Association, a rival  Orange organisation to the main Loyal Orange Institution, could claim twenty-four female lodges, mostly in Lancashire and West Yorkshire.24 The earliest reference to a female lodge in England occurs in June 1851. Meeting in the Black Dog Inn, Newchurch (near Rossendale, Lancashire), the GPA’s Orange and Protestant Banner reported on a joint meeting of both the Orangemen and the Orangewomen. Br John Ormerod was re-elected as treasurer for the women’s lodge and his remarks reveal  that this lodge had been operating for some time. Ormerod commented that the lodge ‘only started a few years since’ but had, in that time, made great progress, numbering ‘near 200 members’ and ‘possessed of a good rich fund being upwards of £300’.25 A couple of months later, during the height of the ‘Papal Aggression’ of that year, a further female lodge was formed at Scholes, near Wigan, and in October another  women’s lodge was opened at the George Inn, Bacup, near Rossendale.26 This lodge was formed with a procession, ‘to show their fidelity to the principles which encourage loyal and peaceable characters to join our loyal order’, employing the band connected with the men’s lodge No. 216. The women paraded through the streets of ‘populous Bacup’, conducting themselves ‘with great decorum’ – indicating that they were taking a visible, public role in the Orange Order earlier than historians have previously thought,27– before their first meeting, when ‘a large number of women enrolled themselves as members of this institution’.28 Further references in both the local and Orange press indicate the presence of women’s lodges in Lancashire during the 1850s. Reports of the Orangewomen of Rossendale in the Preston Guardian emphasise the visible nature of this female Orange activity. Meeting in the Black Dog Inn, Newchurch, the women then processed to the local parish church. Following a service at St Nicholas’ Church ‘accompanied by the band belonging to the Blue Bell Inn Lodge of Loyal Orangemen’,29 the women then paraded first to the Pack Horse Inn at Booth Fold, before making their way back to the Black Dog, ‘where they sat down to the ­hospitalities

26

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

of Mr Sanderson [the publican]’ to enjoy ‘proceedings … of a joyous character’.30 The pub and the church (usually Anglican) were central, then, to this early manifestation of female Orangeism in England. Also in Lancashire, the female lodge at Farington held their meeting at Mrs Marsden’s premises, the Rose and Crown Inn, where members ‘partook of the cup which cheers but not inebriates’, indicating the temperance character which later came to dominate much women’s Orangeism.31 Female Orange sociability in this part of England, then, was something which took place in public, and the Orangewomen of Lancashire operated within a network of Church, pub and street in their Orange activism, underlining the performative elements of female Orangeism discussed in this book’s introduction. Moreover, this mode of female Orangeism also extended east across the border, into Yorkshire. In Bradford, a new women’s lodge opened in May 1853, once more being hosted by a female publican, Mrs Peel of the Forester’s Arms in Windhill Crag.32 Following this early flowering of female Orangeism in Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire, references to women’s lodges in both the local and Orange press become increasingly sporadic. When women’s Orange activities are mentioned, it tends to be in the company of men, joining them for specific Orange celebrations. For example, at Barton-uponIrwell in Manchester, the men of Queen Mary Lodge No. 25 and Prince of Orange Lodge No. 231 joined with the women of the True Blue Girls Lodge No. 25 to celebrate the Twelfth of July. Following a fine meal of ‘the old English dinner of roast beef and plum pudding’, the ‘Orange Boys of 231 each selected a partner from amongst the True Blue Girls of 25, and footed it right merrily until the “wee short hour beyond the twal” warned all to retire, highly delighted with the proceedings’.33 In 1857, referring to Orange Christmas celebrations, Squire Auty’s Orange and Protestant Banner recorded that ‘We spent our Christmas amongst the good men and true of Lancashire, not forgetting the women, who are found in large numbers, in defence of our protestant principles in that county’.34 While women’s lodges were clearly active from the 1850s onwards, there is little evidence of significant growth from the mid-point of that decade. The next period of female Orange expansion occurs in the 1870s, when we see a development in women’s Orangeism that was to characterise the movement well into the twentieth century: the emergence of Liverpool as a key site for female Orange lodges. As both Frank Neal and Don MacRaild have established, Liverpool became the principal centre for both Lancastrian and English Orangeism during the second half of the nineteenth century. Mirroring the broader resurgence in the Orange Order during the 1870s, we find the women’s movement growing

ENGLAND27

­ ramatically in Liverpool during this period, laying the foundations for d the future spread of female Orangeism across other parts of England. Following the ‘Fenian scares’ of the late 1860s and the repeal of the Party Processions Act in 1870 (which had, since the 1820s, significantly hampered the capacity of the Order to display publicly in large numbers), the Orange Order grew apace.35 As with other Orange jurisdictions, where the men thrived, so too did the women. The first indications of this incipient growth come in the 1860s. Presaging the prominent role taken by more socially elite London women twenty years later, we find women attending prestigious Orange events in the capital. Following the brief controversy in 1867 over the reporting of Lord Westmeath’s speeches in Parliament, ‘a party of Orangemen and Orangewomen met at the Hanover Square Rooms’ to protest.36 A year later, the same venue hosted a ‘conspicuous number of women’ at an event at which the Grand Master of the English lodges proposed an ‘army of women’ to fight an anti-Papal, anti-Ritual campaign against certain elements in the Church of England.37 While the Orange women of London did not immediately organise, those in Liverpool did, exploiting the anti-Irish and anti-Ritual mood of the times. The lead in this particular phase of female Orange expansion was taken by the women of Birkenhead. In October 1871, a new female lodge was opened at the Workman’s Hall, Birkenhead, attracting ‘upwards of thirty ladies’ to what was described as a ‘benefit lodge’, to whose intriguing gender-specific mutualist function we shall return shortly.38 This lodge, Female Loyal Orange Lodge (FLOL) No. 9, also had a second female counterpart in the town, FLOL No. 2, The Star of Progress. This particular lodge certainly lived up to its name, playing a key role in the expansion of the women’s Order in Liverpool, Scotland and beyond. In an instructive example of how Orange networks functioned in spreading the organisation (and, in particular, the key role played by the Belfast Weekly News, discussed in further depth below), the Star of Progress lodge was instrumental in first setting up new lodges in Liverpool and Tranmere, before then being involved in women’s lodges that were established in Glasgow and New York.39 Further north, in Whitehaven, Cumbria, we also find a thriving women’s lodge formed in the 1870s, once again as a benefit society and attracting sixty members at its opening in 1873.40 By the end of the 1870s, then, a number of women’s lodges had emerged, in rather different places and contexts to those of the early days of the female Order in 1850s Lancashire. Towards the end of the decade, the Loyal Orange Institution of England reported the existence of twelve warrants for female lodges, of which nine were active: three in Preston, three in Liverpool, two in Blackburn and one in Whitehaven.41 Many of these were thriving, in terms of both their activism and their numbers.

28

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

So, when the Pride of Old Brunswick FLOL No.11 in Liverpool celebrated its first anniversary in 1876, 250 ‘members and friends’ sat down to ‘an excellent tea’, after which its members declared that they would be opening another female lodge in Liverpool ‘with thirty good Protestant females’.42 Further north in Preston, the FLOL No. 1 reported that they began with just seventeen members, ‘but now they had increased to something like 1,000 members’.43 While some exaggeration may be at play here, it is still worth noting that, at least in some key areas such as Preston and Liverpool, the female Orange Order was blossoming in England. From this period of revived female Orangeism in the 1870s, the women’s Order grew apace in England, reaching a peak of almost one hundred lodges on the eve of the Second World War. The key stages of growth largely coincided with events that mobilised the forces of Orangeism more broadly: just like the men, whenever the politics of Home Rule and Ireland came to the fore, or religious controversies over Ritualism or anti-Catholicism flared up, the Orange Order reaped the benefits in terms of increased participation.44 The Home Rule crises of the second half of the 1880s and early 1890s and the period 1910–14, and heated religious debate over issues such as the Prayer Book controversy of the late 1920s, may be identified as significant moments in which both men and women mobilised for the Orange Order. Of course, there are often important local circumstances which explain why female lodges were established in certain areas, and the geographical variation in women’s Orange activism helps us to understand why certain political and religious issues were important in persuading women to join the Order. Moreover, the development of women’s Orange lodges demonstrates the continuing traction of both Irish affairs and popular Protestantism in British politics well into the twentieth century.45 What makes women’s Orange lodges different is the way in which these issues, especially religion, were highly gendered and below we will examine how women’s involvement in the organisation was often framed by assumptions about female religiosity, respectability and virtue. Figure 1.1 outlines the overall patterns of growth of female Orange lodges in England. Progress was steady through the 1880s and 1890s. While some historians have argued that this was the product of Irish politics, a more detailed analysis also demonstrates the increasingly sustained importance of religious issues in determining women’s involvement in the Order. Moreover, at a local, everyday level, it is possible to connect female Orange activism with individual churches, ministers and their families where specific instances of religious controversy inspired the formation of a women’s lodge.

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29

No. of FLOL Warrants

125 100 75 50 25

18 7 18 7 7 18 9 8 18 1 8 18 3 8 18 5 8 18 7 8 18 9 9 18 1 9 18 3 9 18 5 9 18 7 9 19 9 0 19 1 0 19 3 0 19 5 0 19 7 09 19 1 19 1 1 19 3 1 19 5 1 19 7 1 19 9 2 19 1 2 19 3 2 19 5 27 19 2 19 9 3 19 1 3 19 3 3 19 5 3 19 7 39

0

Figure 1.1  Female Orange lodge warrants in England, 1877–193946

In Table 1.1, we see the growth of women’s Orange lodges in England presented in terms of geographical focus and spread. This helps us to make clear the connections between local events and personalities, which then explain why the female Order developed when and where it did across England. The late 1880s saw London emerge for the first time as a significant outpost of female Orangeism. A women’s lodge was established in June 1886, in the triumphant afterglow of the first Home Rule bill’s defeat just a week earlier. Established in Belgravia by the Hon. Mrs Saunderson, wife of the prominent Ulster Unionist politician, Colonel E. J. Saunderson, and the wife of the Imperial Grand Master, Lady Enniskillen, this first women’s lodge would appear to confirm MacRaild’s argument that the ‘real aim’ was ‘to spread the word to Ireland’.47 While many notable women from Ireland (some of significant aristocratic pedigree, such as Lady Fanny Fitzwygram, of Slane Castle, Co. Meath) did join the lodge that night, the broader purpose of the women’s Order in England is also revealed by the Belfast Weekly News’s report. These ‘ladies from Ireland’ were to be ‘the first band of evangelists in the new Order, which … will quickly take widespread and firm root in Ireland’.48 However, this ‘inaugurating crusade’ was just part of the more local context in which this London women’s lodge was formed. Inspired by the example of women’s lodges in other parts of England, the Imperial Grand Master of the Order had authorised the formation of a London lodge to carry out ‘more systematically and vigorously’ the idea of female involvement, building on the English female lodges’ success and the ‘great influence’ they had had on ‘matters social and political’.49 This English dimension, and the prominent role taken by a certain Miss Aldwell – Mistress of the women’s lodge in Southsea and daughter of a leading Evangelical minister – in the

Liverpool Manchester Lancaster Northern North-East Western Metropolitan North-Western East Lancashire South-West Bootle

  12

   1

   7    1

   3

1877

  17

   1    3

   9

   4

1886

  32

   1    2    5

  10    3   11

1891

Source: Annual reports of the Loyal Orange Institution

 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 12 Total

Province no. Province

  36   42   50

   1    1    3    3    2    9    6   11    3    3

  11   17   23    2    3    6   10    9    5

1895 1900 1905

   1   10    7    1    1    4   73

  41    1    6    2

1910

Table 1.1  Female Orange lodge warrants in England by Province, 1877–1939

   2    4   76

  44    4    4    1    1    5    6    5

1915

   3    4   68

   3    8    4

  36    4    3    3

1920

   4    7   87

   1   10    9

  40    7    1    8

1925

   2   13    7    2    2    7   90

  43    8    3    5

   2   14    7    2    3    7   96

  49    7    1    6

1930 1935

   2   13    8    1    3    7   89

  45    6    1    4

1939

ENGLAND31

formation of the London lodge suggest the importance of more local and, indeed, religious issues in the spread of Orangewomen to the capital. Throughout the 1880s and into the early 1890s, there are further examples where Irish concerns inspire English women’s Orange activism. At the height of the Land League crisis at the beginning of the 1880s, we find the Grand Orange Lodge of England (the organisation’s governing body) raising money for ‘the oppressed Protestants of Ireland’ to help them ‘in resisting the pressure brought against them by disloyal and evilminded men connected with the Land League and the Fenian conspiracy’.50 In the north-west of England, one Miss Inman was responsible for raising £2 10s, out of a total of £17 3s for the entire Lancaster Province, demonstrating how Irish politics could inspire female Orange activism.51 A year after the formation of the first women’s lodge in London, the Hon. Mrs Saunderson organised a meeting at her home, Castle Saunderson in Co. Cavan. Here, seventeen women from the local area of Clones were initiated into the Salisbury lodge, the name given to the London lodge after the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. Colonel Saunderson addressed the meeting, emphasising ‘the work of the women of Ireland in helping on the cause of loyalty and order’, before Mrs Saunderson then outlined her plans for extending women’s lodges throughout Cavan and the rest of Ireland.52 It is notable that, despite the Saundersons’ undoubted focus on Irish affairs, the women still had to be initiated into an English female lodge, echoing the cross-jurisdictional and often transnational growth of the women’s Order that characterised both Scotland and Canada. Women’s lodges in England continued to focus on Irish politics during debate over the second Home Rule Bill. In Liverpool, the Joshua FLOL No. 43 held a celebration of its first anniversary shortly after the defeat of the Bill. Commenting on the success of the lodge during its first year, Br A. Rath remarked that the lodge ‘adds another proof to the foresight of the ladies in recognising the value of female lodges as auxiliaries in defence of constitutionalism and Protestantism’. Rath went on to decry the Government’s support for Home Rule, urging the members to ‘organise themselves so as to be ready to make their influence felt in defence of a united empire’, one of the key planks of Unionist thought.53 While the necessity of defeating Home Rule is evident in this meeting of Liverpudlian Orangewomen, the emphasis on women’s role in upholding Protestant principles stands out as significant. It is clear, then, that even at the moments in which female English Orange lodges were concerned and motivated by Irish affairs, the more immediate issues of Protestantism and locality were key during this period of expansion in the 1880s. If four areas of female Orange growth

32

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries are examined – Portsmouth, London, Liverpool and Birmingham – we find that women’s lodges either develop or come to prominence in largely localised religious contexts (see Table 1.1). What is striking about the debate surrounding women’s involvement in the Order is how this female religiosity was gendered. Reflecting Callum Brown’s notions of the ‘feminisation of piety’, women were mobilised in key debates about Ritualism, the Oxford Movement and anti-Catholicism.54 Described as one of the ‘strongholds’ of female Orangeism when the Salisbury FLOL was founded, the first Portsmouth women’s lodges had been formed in 1882.55 A year later, Portsmouth had three female lodges, and by the 1890s it had four vibrant lodges that would remain active throughout the twentieth century.56 The first lodge, FLOL No. 16, was founded in Southsea by Mary Aldwell, the daughter of the Rev. Basil Duckett Aldwell, minister at St Luke’s Anglican church.57 In addition to being the local minister, the Rev. Aldwell was also the District Chaplain from Group 65 of the Loyal Orange Institution of England, the Portsmouth District, and was a concerted campaigner for women’s lodges throughout the 1880s.58 At the meeting of the Grand Lodge of England in 1882 at the Westminster Palace Hotel in London, the Rev. Aldwell was the chief proposer of a motion that intimately connected the formation of women’s lodges with religiosity. Aldwell linked female lodges with the fight against Ritualism and Romanism, moving: That in order to spread the principles of Orangeism, and to counteract the efforts now being made by the Romanists, and the Ritualistic party in the Church of England, to bring the people of this country under the yoke of Sacerdotalism, this Grand Lodge pledges itself to recommend to the Provincial Masters, District Masters and Masters of Lodges that Female Lodges be started and extended throughout the length and breadth of England.59

The following two years’ meetings of the English Grand Lodge saw Aldwell make similar appeals championing the prominent role that women could take in fighting the Orange Order’s religious battles. At the 1883 meeting held in Manchester, the Rev. Aldwell emphasised the perception that women were peculiarly the targets of Catholic proselytism, proposing ‘That taking into consideration the spread of Romish and Ritualistic principles in this country, and the efforts being made by Clergymen, false to their vows, to Romanise the female population, this Grand Lodge pledges itself to recommend that Female Orange Lodges be established throughout the entire Body.’60 Aldwell echoed this endorsement of women’s lodges two years later, this time in Bristol, where he

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stressed the gendered perception that women, as repositories of virtue, were particularly suited to the religious work of the Orange Order. More female lodges were necessary, he argued, because ‘of the great influence wielded by women in the cause of God and truth, and conscious of the great work now being carried out on behalf of the Protestant religion and the liberties of England by the Female Orange Lodges’.61 It is against this background that Portsmouth became one of the most significant centres of female Orangeism in England, emphasising the importance of religious issues to women’s involvement in the organisation. While the timing of the crisis surrounding the first Home Rule Bill certainly helped in terms of boosting women’s involvement with the Order, it was this religious context, and the special role assigned to women by the likes of Aldwell, that provides a more proximate explanation as to why the 1880s were a significant period in the growth of female lodges. Indeed, when Mary Aldwell visited the thriving women’s lodge at Sheerness, Isle of Sheppey (the Daughters of William FLOL No. 23), in October 1890, she affirmed the religious qualities of women’s gendered Orange activism. Speaking in the fine surroundings of the Sheerness lodge room, the local ‘Sailors’ Rest’, Aldwell emphasised women’s ‘important duties as Protestants and Orangewomen, that they were to be witnesses for God and his truth’. Women had a key role, Mary Aldwell argued, in caring for children (especially through Juvenile Orange lodges), ‘training them up to combat the errors of Ritualism and Romanism’.62 The following decade saw a shift in the geographical focus of Orangewomen’s development. While Liverpool took an early lead in terms of male membership – famously attracting 7,000 to 8,000 processors at their Orange march in 1876 – it was not until the 1890s that women’s lodges expanded significantly in the city.63 At the beginning of the 1890s, there were eight female lodges in Liverpool; by the end of the decade, this had doubled to eighteen. This growth continued exponentially, with almost forty women’s lodges by 1909 and forty-seven at the outbreak of the Great War (see Table 1.1).64 While MacRaild has identified the ‘peculiarly intense passions of Liverpool’ as a factor in the growth of women’s lodges in the city, there is little burrowing down in his book into the precise local contexts in which Liverpool’s female Orangeism developed. Equally, while Frank Neal’s study of nineteenth-century sectarian violence in Liverpool is keenly aware of Orangeism’s presence in the city, it is local campaigns by firebrand preachers which take top billing in his account.65 Neal identifies the final decades of the nineteenth century as laying the foundations for the anti-Ritualism campaigns taken up by the two great street preachers George Wise and John Kensit at the turn of the century.

34

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

Inspired by the Oxford Movement of the 1830s, Ritualism in the Anglican Church sought to introduce some of the ‘ceremonies, vestments and practices’ more commonly associated with the Catholic Church.66 The anti-Ritualist movement sought to stem this spread of Catholic doctrine and, in Liverpool, Neal argues that Ritualism became ‘the political issue for Conservatives in 1898’ and dominated Protestant campaigns in Liverpool for the next ten years.67 George Wise arrived in Liverpool in 1888 and by the end of the century his British Protestant Union (formed 1898) joined other ultra-Protestant organisations in the city, such as the Protestant Alliance and the National Protestant League.68 Wise’s campaigns of meetings and court cases against Romish practices reached a peak in 1901. The following year, John Kensit arrived in Liverpool. The founder of the Protestant Truth Society in 1889, Kensit turned his preacher’s fire on Ritualism when he formed the Wycliffe Preachers in 1898.69 During his campaign against Ritualism in 1902, Kensit was struck by a protestor following a meeting in Birkenhead, later dying of his wounds.70 Wise continued in his ultra-Protestant activism (including being a District Chaplain in the Liverpool Orange Order and Deputy Grand Chaplain for the English Order), and in 1908, attention was turned to protesting against the Roman Catholic Church’s Eucharistic Congress in London.71 This, and other public displays of Catholicism, were deemed to flout the terms of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, and Wise and John Kensit Jnr protested against such things as the procession of the consecrated host in public.72 It is against this background of radical Protestant meetings and street campaigns in Liverpool that we see a significant rise in the number of women’s Orange lodges in the city. As Wise and Kensit campaigned, more women joined the Orange Order. At the beginning of Wise’s anti-Ritualism campaign in 1898, there were fifteen female lodges in the city. By the time of Kensit’s death in 1902, this figure had risen to twenty women’s lodges and, after two years of campaigning against public displays of ‘Romish practises’, there were forty-one FLOLs in Liverpool. The context for such growth was also set by the women’s lodges in Liverpool increasingly turning their attention to the issue of Ritualism. While Ritualism was a key concern for many Liverpudlian Orangewomen, one female lodge in particular stands out as engaging most clearly with such religious issues. The Victoria FLOL No. 2 was formed at some point in the 1870s in Toxteth.73 By the late 1880s, when the sisters of the Victoria lodge met in St Marks’ Vestry, Upper Duke Street, the women were firmly committed to their religious mission. At a meeting in February 1888, one of the newly initiated members, a Mrs Rogers (wife of the vicar of St Mark’s, Br Rev. S. Rogers, who just so happened also to be the lodge’s Chaplain) made a speech about the necessity of maintaining ‘their Protestant principles’ in

ENGLAND35

order to ‘help put Ritualism out of the Church of England’.74 The religious focus of the Victoria lodge came to a head in the mid-1890s, when the sisters briefly parted ways with the Loyal Orange Institution of England and joined a new organisation, the Loyal Orange Institution of Great Britain. Following the move to the new Institution in 1895, the women of FLOL No. 2 discussed some of the key issues raised by the anti-Ritualist movement.75 Sister E. Brimble, the lodge’s Worshipful Mistress, spoke about some of the problems that she faced in going to church. She hoped to see some of the sisters at the Emmanuel Free Church, ‘as a real Protestant Church in Liverpool was not, unfortunately, the rule, but the exception’. Brimble remarked on the influence of Ritualism on most Liverpool churches, saying that she ‘had that day seen the inside of Christ Church, Hunter Street, and was disagreeably surprised by it, there not being any difference between it and a chapel of the Pope’.76 A year later, a meeting of the lodge was opened by Bishop Baker, Bishop of the Free Church of England, who had allowed the women of Victoria lodge to congregate in the School Rooms at his palace in Everton. Baker was described at this meeting by Br Gilbert as ‘a rarity in Liverpool – a Protestant’, who had courted unpopularity by shunning Ritualism: ‘if he was a Ritualist, with his unrivalled eloquence, he could fill his church’.77 In June of 1896, the close connection between the Victoria women’s lodge and the anti-Ritualist movement was confirmed when they, together with the Daughters of Enniskillen lodge, attended a parade to Baker’s church in order to hear one of his sermons.78 At a further church parade that year, held to commemorate the ‘Twelfth’, the women of the Victoria lodge were also present, where they heard the doyen of popular Protestantism in Liverpool, George Wise, deliver a ringing denunciation of Ritualism, appealing to them to be ‘strong and of good courage in the cause of Protestantism’.79 The words of Wise were a reflection of the broader sentiment of ­anti-Ritualism abroad in female Orange circles in Liverpool during this period. The Daughters of Enniskillen lodge was also keen to promote Evangelical Protestantism, erecting a ‘large framed photograph’ of the monument in Oxford to the two great Protestant Reformation martyrs, Latimer and Ridley.80 In 1895, as the anti-Ritualism campaign was focusing the efforts of the Victoria women’s lodge in Liverpool, nearby in St Helens, a new female lodge was established, reflecting the religious concerns of the women’s Order in the north-west of England. Lady Randolph Churchill, wife of the great defender of Ulster Unionism, gave permission for the lodge to be named after her and a number of speakers at the meetings emphasised the Protestant mission of the Orangewomen.81 Sister Emily Lee, the newly installed Worshipful Mistress, argued that ‘it augured well for the future … to be ever ready and willing to stand

36

WOMEN AND THE ORANGE ORDER

forth in the defence of the tenets of the Reformation and the glorious heritage that had been handed down by their forefathers’, while the District Master of St Helens eulogised the minister at Parr Church, the Rev. William Edmundson, as ‘a champion of Protestantism’ who had once more allowed his church to be used for the annual Orange Order service.82 The growth of Liverpool’s female Orange lodges, then, reflected the broader religious culture of anti-Ritualism and involved key individuals and parishes in mobilising these women in the cause of radical Protestantism. While London was a less fertile site for female Orangeism during this period, we do find the anti-Ritualist crusade being taken up with gusto by the women of the second lodge to be formed in Belgravia. The development of this particular lodge also owes much to the activism of key men and women who embraced the anti-Ritualist cause. A leading role in the formation of FLOL No. 33 in 1888 was taken by Dr Gideon de Gorrequer Griffith and his wife, Mrs Edith C. Griffith. The first women’s lodge had been formed in London, as we have seen, in 1886. After this lodge’s 5 November celebrations the following year, a group of women approached Dr Griffith (the District Secretary for London, and the Grand Secretary for England) to request that another female lodge be opened in Belgravia.83 Dr Griffith was a key mover behind women’s lodges in England at the end of the 1880s until his retreat from Orange affairs in the early 1890s due to ill health. Griffith was a firm believer in women’s ability to fulfil certain roles in public life, having founded the Medical Mission Home and School for Ladies in London in 1879.84 Taking the advice of the women who had approached him, Griffith broached the subject of a new ladies’ lodge for London at a meeting of the Victoria Jubilee men’s lodge. In reviewing some of the progress of the Order in London, Griffith flagged his hope to ‘be able to open a female lodge in January called the Temperance Coronation Lodge’.85 Just a week later, once more under the keen eye of Mary Aldwell from Southsea, a women’s lodge of that name opened in Belgravia, with Edith Griffith elected as Worshipful Mistress.86 At a glittering celebration of the Temperance Coronation lodge’s first anniversary, attended by such Orange luminaries as the Earl of Erne, Imperial Grand Master, Griffith stressed the importance of women’s lodges and explicitly linked their growth to the defence of Protestantism. Griffith saw the recent debate about Home Rule in religious terms, stressing how Protestants needed to form a united front against ‘Popery, priestcraft and Jesuitry’.87 It was at this point, that Griffith saw the ‘absolute necessity of Protestant women joining the Orange Institution’, drawing a parallel between the influence of women in the recently formed Primrose League and those in the Orange Order.88 So, we see once more that women’s lodges grew in specific locales

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owing to the belief of certain key Orange individuals (both men and women) that the female Order had a central, and gendered, role to play in the fight against Romanism. At one of the first meetings of the Temperance Coronation FLOL No. 33, following a ‘splendid’ rendition of ‘The Orangemen’s National Song’, the women passed a resolution opposing ‘Ritualism in the Church of England, and ordered [it] to be forwarded to the House of Commons’.89 Further resolutions of a religious nature were passed by Edith Griffith’s FLOL No. 33. At a meeting of the lodge in December 1889, the women expressed their disapproval at Lord Salisbury’s sending of an envoy to the Pope and, early the following year, they passed a motion to sign a petition against Campbell-Bannerman’s Catholic Disabilities Removal Bill.90 Protestant fears of Ritualism and the like also fuelled the flowering of women’s lodges in Birmingham. The first female lodge came to Birmingham only in 1913. The Orangewomen of the city soon made up for lost time, and a year later there were four lodges (see Table 1.1). Female Orangeism flourished in the city during the war years and the early 1920s, before falling back to just the one lodge from 1923 onwards.91 Despite being the city of Joseph Chamberlain and famous for its Liberalism, Birmingham had a tradition of radical Protestantism that was heightened once Chamberlain became the figurehead of the anti-Home-Rule Liberal Unionists.92 During the 1860s and early 1870s, Birmingham functioned as the base for William Murphy, a firebrand anti-Catholic preacher who formed the Protestant Evangelical Mission and Electoral Union in 1867.93 However, Murphy’s presence did not inspire any early manifestations of female Orangeism in the city and it was not until the eve of the First World War that a women’s lodge was formed. Although religious culture in the city was dominated by the Anglo-Catholic bishop, Charles Gore, it took the arrival of one of Kensit’s Wycliffe Preachers, the Rev. Louis A. Ewart, to create the conditions in which a women’s lodge could flourish.94 Ewart had made his name as Kensit’s right-hand man in Liverpool and became the leader of the Kensitite movement in the city following Kensit’s death in 1902.95 After spearheading the Liverpool Protestants’ protest against the Roman Catholic Eucharistic Conference in 1908 (where he also became a minister in Bishop Baker’s Reformed Episcopal Church), Ewart headed to Birmingham with his wife, the daughter of a prominent Liverpool businessman. Ewart took up a position as Organising Secretary of the Birmingham and Midland Counties Mission of the Protestant Truth Society, before becoming the Grand Secretary of the English Orange Order in 1914 at the age of thirty-three.96 Youthful, dashing and dynamic, Ewart used his position to promote women’s lodges in Birmingham and beyond. Birmingham’s first women’s lodge, the Ladies of Ulster FLOL No. 120,

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was founded in November 1913, with Ewart’s wife, Maggie Isabel Ewart, at the helm as Worshipful Mistress.97 A year later, three more women’s lodges had been formed, including one in central Birmingham, which had received the blessing of Lady Roberts (wife of the famous soldier, Earl Frederick Roberts) to be named after her.98 Louis Ewart’s support for women’s lodges, as Grand Secretary of the English Order, was significant. During 1914, Ewart brought together a ‘committee of ladies’ in order to ‘raise funds for aggressive Protestant work of the Institution’.99 This belief in women’s contribution to the Order was underlined by an editorial written for The Orange Standard newspaper just after the conclusion of the war. Ewart stressed that women had a vital role to play in the organisation’s post-war recovery, especially in the light of changes to the franchise: ‘We must have many more Female Lodges. The women of England, now they have the vote, are going to be a power to be reckoned with in the future. Establish Female Lodges and it naturally follows that you will also get the men and the children.’100 Once more, female Orangeism provides a key insight into the performative aspects of gender identity: by underlining the normative roles that women could play in the organisation, he was, at the same time (and unconsciously), indicating how women could perform this role in order to become more heavily involved in the public life of politics. Like their sisters in Liverpool and London, the women of the Ladies of Ulster lodge in Birmingham also emphasised the religious focus of Orangewomen. During 1916, the Birmingham women took umbrage at the increasingly popular practice of erecting street shrines to commemorate the war dead. Interpreted as ‘Romish’ idolatry, the Ladies of Ulster decided to campaign against ‘street shrines with images’. First, they wrote a letter of protest to the Bishop of Birmingham, and then they got hold of 200 copies of the Order’s pamphlet on ‘War Shrines’, to ‘circulate in the neighbourhood where idolatrous images had been erected’.101 At their meeting in December of that year, ‘an interesting discussion’ was held regarding the shrines. Sister Ewart took the lead in pointing out the flaws of such commemorations: ‘an “image” or “likeness” representing Christ was, according to the teaching of the Church of England, “a lying image”. Such pictures on Christmas cards, etc., were the imaginations of ­artists – they painted Him beautiful to behold, but God’s Word says: “He hath no form nor comliness [sic] and when we shall see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him.”’102 Such religious issues also preoccupied other women’s lodges during the war. The Grace FLOL No. 121 in Hillsborough, Sheffield, sent a protest letter to the local press against the teachings of an Evangelical church’s Band of Hope: ‘Much surprise was expressed that … children had been

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taught to “play” monks and nuns in a theatrical fashion’.103 In Bolton, the women organised themselves against ‘idolatrous shrines’, ‘resulting in the lodge’s determination to oppose them’.104 Following the end of the war, this concern with religious issues continued for Orangewomen. At the opening of a new women’s lodge in Westminster, the St Stephens FLOL No. 133, several speakers emphasised the importance of the Protestant cause. Following the announcement that Lady Carson, wife of the great Ulster Unionist leader, had consented to become the lodge’s Worshipful Mistress, Sister Bates, from FLOL No. 70 in south-east London, addressed the assembled company, speaking ‘very forcefully of the dangers which beset the country and the need of such a body as the Loyal Institution to safeguard King and Constitution’. This connection between the religious and political aspects of Orangewomen’s mission was stressed by Herbert Dixon MP, who ‘emphasised the great importance of women’s work in the Protestant cause’ and by Ewart, who claimed that the lodge was ‘destined to be the pioneer of a great women’s Protestant movement in England’.105 Religion continued to be a motivating issue of some force for Orangewomen well into the interwar period. Controversy over the introduction of a new Anglican Prayer Book focused female Orange minds during the late 1920s. The Church of England was riven by debate in 1927 and 1928 about a new liturgy that aimed to incorporate some elements of Anglo-Catholic ritual.106 As we have seen above, such sentiments were inflammatory to Orange anti-Ritualist sensibilities. Figure 1.1 illustrates how this period was the high-water mark of female Orange activism, with consistently over ninety female lodges active. The Prayer Book Controversy motivated many Orangewomen, including those in Darwen, Lancashire. Here, the women of the Lady Saunderson FLOL No. 21 joined with their brethren in opposing an ‘Anglo-Catholic’ vicar ‘who persisted in carrying out services not found in the Book of Common Prayer [1662]’, succeeding in having the errant priest ousted from his parish.107 Throughout the remainder of the period up to the outbreak of the Second World War, religious issues continued to be important. Such events as the centenary of the Oxford Movement in 1933 fuelled the anti-Ritualist fervour of Orangewomen, demonstrated by the activism of almost one hundred lodges during the 1930s.108 We can see, then, from the upsurge in female Orangeism in certain locales at specific times, that religious issues paid a key part in motivating women to act publicly in the cause of the Order. While MacRaild rightly identifies the importance of changes in gender politics during this period, there was more than ‘a glint of suffragette steeliness’ about these Orangewomen.109 The Orange sisters of England, especially in significant centres such as Liverpool, Birmingham and London, responded to the call to defend the Protestant

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faith against such threats as Ritualism and the like. And this emphasis on religiosity as something both attractive to women and a sphere of Orange activism peculiarly suited to them indicates the gendered nature of women’s participation in the Order. English Orangewomen’s relationship with men

In turn, women’s gendered involvement in the Orange Order was significantly shaped by their relationship with the male membership. As we have seen above, leading men in the Order, such as Ewart and Griffith, played a key role in nurturing female lodges. And, while many men were opposed to women’s involvement as we shall see, the debates about women, religiosity and respectability seen in the Scottish context (see Chapter 2) were also echoed in England. From the very earliest days of English female Orangeism in the 1850s, Orangemen viewed women’s role in the organisation in highly gendered terms. Women were seen as ‘natural’ repositories of virtue, capable of shaping the moral tone of the home, the community and the nation. These ‘angels of the home’ could carry out good Orange work by instilling their inherent goodness in children – by making their homes sites of purity and virtue, Orangewomen would create the ideal breeding ground for the next generation of Orangemen and, in turn, aid the respectability and good name of the organisation. However, as with so much women’s activism in the nineteenth century – especially of a more conservative stripe – by seeing a role for women based on notions of their innate caring femininity, women’s involvement in the public sphere was justified.110 Clearly, once women were allowed to participate in the organisation, many wanted to have a say in the running and governance of the Order. And, just as we shall see with the Scottish women in Chapter 2, the issue of women’s attendance at District and Grand Lodge meetings became a significant point of debate and contention. The textile towns of Lancashire would seem a fruitful location for women’s activism in the mid-nineteenth century. Certainly, we have seen that Orange women in Rossendale and Preston were far more public in displays of their Orangeism than historians have previously thought – they were not simply there to ‘dispense tea and buns’.111 But, these women’s access to the more public aspects of Orange activism was determined by prevailing gender discourse that saw their role primarily as wives and mothers, caring for and nurturing the next generation of the Orange Order. Away from the early manifestations of female Orangeism in the north of Lancashire, the men of Liverpool noted the potential of women. At the opening of a ‘Black Lodge’ of the Grand Protestant Association in

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the city in 1853, the men used the occasion to celebrate the contribution made to the new lodge by the wife of the Worshipful Master, a Mrs Simmens. A toast to the health of Mrs Simmens was proposed, accompanied by a glowing testimony to her ‘zeal and self-denial in the cause’: her ‘purse was always open to the relief of a deserving bro. in distress’ and the men wished that ‘she would not stand alone, but have many helpers’, looking forward to ‘the pleasure in seeing her name attached to a female warrant’. Br Simmens replied to this praise in distinctly patriarchal terms. Speaking ‘in her behalf’, Simmens pointed out the role women had in championing the cause of Protestantism, ‘seeing that they have the giving of early impressions to children and, therefore, of forming the characters, to a great extent, of the rising generation, – for good or for evil, – for vice or virtue – for religion or irreligion’.112 However, such early calls for the women of Liverpool to become members of the Orange Order fell on stony ground. Two years later, at a dinner to celebrate the ‘Twelfth’ at lodge No. 35, the Grand Master of the GPA, Robert Burton, remarked upon the Liverpool men’s habit of allowing their families to attend such occasions, ‘once a year … where their wives would learn their duties, as protestant mothers, how to teach their children to avoid error, love and value truth as taught in our good old protestant church.’113 From the outset, then, we can see that many men viewed female participation in the Orange Order through a gendered prism: women were fine in the Order, as long as they fulfilled their role as good Protestant wives and mothers. Such sentiments continued throughout our period. Speaking at the first ‘Orangewomen’s Congress’ in 1890, Gideon Griffith confirmed his belief in the prominent role women could play in the Order. Referring to Lord Salisbury’s praise for the good work done by the Dames of the Primrose League, Griffith commented that the women’s lodges performed a ‘great deal of good socially, politically and religiously’ (as long as they were organised ‘on purely temperance lines’). Despite being such an enthusiastic supporter of women’s participation in the Order, Griffith’s remarks were still framed by assumptions about women’s maternal role. Women were ‘responsible for the little ones’ and should be ‘determined to raise their children on the lines taught by the Bible’.114 In the same year, at a meeting of the women’s lodge in Heywood, Gideon de Griffith FLOL No. 40, the Worshipful Mistress, Sister Bryant, spoke to the assembled sisters in similar terms, reminding them of ‘the duties of Orangewomen towards Protestantism’, and urging them ‘to live a life of righteousness and stability’.115 Such ideas that linked women’s virtue with their Orange activism were often, however, related to their participation in public life. In 1891, also

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at the Heywood lodge, their Secretary, Br Whitworth emphasised this gendered role for women, working for Protestantism. Referring to the recent Grand Lodge meeting in Preston at which the role of women was discussed, Whitworth, stressed ‘the great Protestant Scriptural work’ women could do; despite not having the vote, women could do much valuable political work ‘to sustain the Constitutional cause’.116 This belief in women’s public, political role – especially in the context of the second Home Rule Bill – was framed by assumptions about women’s gendered religiosity. Speaking at a meeting of the Lady Claude Hamilton FLOL No. 20 in Liverpool, the District Secretary, Br T. Gilbert, commented on the recent local election victory of Br Roberts ‘for the Constitutional cause in South Toxteth’, before praising his daughter, Miss W. F. Roberts, for taking the chair at the meeting. Gilbert concluded his remarks by commenting on ‘the usefulness of female lodges as tending to make mothers more particular in the religious education of their children’. Miss Roberts (‘a lady of … well-known sound Protestantism’) then replied to this vote of thanks ‘in a graceful and able manner’, focusing her speech on women’s ability to be active agents in both municipal and parliamentary elections.117 The contrast between male and female speeches at this meeting was stark: while the male District Secretary focused on women’s gendered role as mothers, responsible for the moral education of their children, the female Worshipful Mistress, in taking the public role of chair and speaking about women’s ability to play a role in elections, demonstrated the public activism of which Orangewomen were capable. For many men in the Order, women’s fundamental role was to burnish the organisation with a patina of respectability. Commenting on a grand Orange soirée to commemorate the Gunpowder Plot in London, the Belfast News-letter remarked favourably on the large numbers of women in attendance. Female members had ‘added immensely to the popularity and attractiveness of the Order’. The involvement of such ‘kindly, loving, tender-hearted women folk’ had helped to improve the image of the Order, removing the ‘slanderous aspersions on the character of Orangemen’.118 The function, then, of Orangewomen, in the eyes of men, was to use their supposedly innate qualities of virtue and religiosity to help the men become more respectable, just as we shall see in the case of their sisters in Scotland at the beginning of the twentieth century. This tension between men’s and women’s perceptions of the female Orange Order in England was reflected in the extensive debate at both grass-roots lodges and at the annual Grand Lodge meetings about women’s role and status in the organisation. Discussion at Grand Lodge tended to focus on whether women should be admitted to these annual meetings, and the status of their rules and ritual in relation to the male brethren.

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While, by the beginning of the twentieth century, women were allowed to attend as visitors, our period ends with the Grand Lodge blocking women’s attendance at both the annual national meeting and at District meetings, maintaining their position as an ‘associate’ body. In contrast, the situation in local lodges was far more fluid and complex – at branch level, women challenged and negotiated their position, often gaining access to key District meetings and holding ambitions towards equality with men. As we have seen before in the development of female Orangeism during the nineteenth century, London lodges took a lead in promoting the position of women within the movement. Almost immediately following the formation of women’s lodges in the capital, the men and women both pressed for lodges to be mixed. A year after the first female lodge had been established, the issue of mixed lodges arose. At the meeting where he announced the formation of the second women’s lodge in London, Gideon Griffith suggested ‘to permit the female members to meet at the same time and same place as the men’, but this was objected to by the rest of the membership.119 Relations between the male and female lodges in London, however, blossomed. At the opening of the Coronation Temperance FLOL in January 1888, Br B. Harper, the former Grand Master of England, told the women how much he had enjoyed ‘the brilliant assembly’ and how he hoped that ‘there would soon be a Grand Lodge for Women in England’, with the Hon. Mrs Saunderson as its Grand Mistress.120 December that year saw the men of Victoria Jubilee Loyal Orange Lodge (LOL) No. 537 ‘heartily’ supporting a concert and ball held by the female Coronation Temperance FLOL and one of the women ‘kindly’ presenting the Orange male officers of the District with ‘full regalia’.121 The year 1888 concluded with the men and women meeting together as Orange brothers and sisters; while men and women were frequently mixed at Orange entertainments and events, to meet together as a lodge was unprecedented. At the last meeting before Christmas of the Gideon Temperance LOL, Griffith announced that the women of Coronation Temperance lodge would like to join them for their meeting. The matter was opened to the floor, which included several visitors from other lodges in both England and Ireland. Br Gibson, ‘an experienced member of the Order’, declared that there was ‘not any law in the rules of the Institution to prevent members of the female lodges being admitted in the male lodges as visitors’. It was unanimously agreed to admit the ‘ladies of the Coronation Lodge’, who were received with ‘loud applause and saluted by the brethren, who fired a volley of twenty-one guns’.122 Relations between the Orange men and women of London continued to be cordial under this new mixed arrangement during the following year. At the monthly meeting of the Gideon Temperance men’s lodge during

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September 1890, Br W. Harnden, the District Master for Woolwich, spoke about the ‘good work’ being done by the female lodges under his jurisdiction, especially those in Sheerness, and how delighted he was to be at a meeting where ‘the Orange sisters were permitted to be present at the men’s lodges’. Br W. M. Bell affirmed the benefits of mixed lodges, pointing, once more, to the example of the Primrose League as an organisation where women’s expertise was keenly felt. In particular, according to Bell, women had considerable power ‘in supporting true religious politicians’, and they were successful in this precisely because ‘women were allowed to take part in all their meetings’.123 Dissenting voices, however, were never distant, and soon the concept of mixed Orange lodges faced opposition, indicating some of the restraining gender discourses that framed female Orangeism. A meeting of the Schomberg LOL No. 186 provided a forum for hostility to mixed lodges. The men took distinct umbrage to the women of the Coronation female lodge taking part in a male lodge meeting, expressing their ‘strong opposition’. They passed a resolution declaring that such a mixed lodge was ‘contrary in letter and spirit to the laws and ordinances of the Institution’, before concluding their evening with ‘patriotic toasts’ and ‘capital songs’.124 Rather ironically, given Br Harnden’s ringing endorsement of the work of the female lodge in Sheerness, the women of the Daughters of William lodge declared against the idea of mixed lodges. At a meeting in January 1891, the women unanimously passed a resolution ‘That mixed lodges would be a source of harm instead of good, and that the work of the Loyal Orange Institution of England can be better carried on by separate male and female lodges’.125 The class implications of this are discussed in more depth below, but it would seem to suggest that the working-class women in the naval town of Sheerness were more traditional in their desire not to perform their Orange work in the company of men, unlike their middle- and upper-class sisters in Belgravia. During the 1890s, the focus of tension between male and female members fell on the issue of women’s right to attend (or not) at District Meetings. As we shall see, this continues to this day to be an issue for the Orangewomen of Scotland, but in the Woolwich District, the men and women debated at length whether women should be allowed to represent themselves at these important Orange meetings that were just one level below Grand Lodge. In March 1894, the men of Woolwich District ­(including representatives from South African lodges affiliated with them) convened in the Burrage Arms, Plumstead, for their quarterly meeting. Once the formalities of the lodge were out of the way, the men settled down to a discussion about the place of women in the organisation. They resolved to send a recommendation to the Grand Secretary (no longer

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Griffith, but instead the largely less sympathetic Br W. S. Touchstone) that ‘such changes be made in the working of the female lodges as to enable them to sit and vote in the District meetings’.126 At the following year’s meeting, the men of the Woolwich District confirmed that women would be allowed to take part in their proceedings. The Worshipful Mistresses of the female lodges would ‘be summoned to the district quarterly meeting’ where, importantly, they would have the same rights as men: they would ‘be allowed to speak and vote at these meetings’.127 The Daughters of William lodge in Sheerness welcomed this, responding favourably to finally being able to play a full role in District meetings and, therefore, in the running of the wider Orange Order.128 Despite this important movement towards women’s equal treatment, the female lodges of the Woolwich District continued to struggle to gain access to meetings at this level. Communication problems with the male members lay at the heart of the difficulties experienced by the women of the Daughters of Deborah FLOL No. 46 in Plumstead, and indicate the fundamentally unequal nature of gender relations in the English Orange Order. Following news in the Belfast Weekly News that the lodge had failed to submit a report of their activities for the year to the Woolwich District Lodge, the women replied in terms that indicate the tense nature of relations with the men. First, the Worshipful Mistress, Mrs W. G. White, pointed out that they had never received notice of the forthcoming District meeting. This, however, was incidental, considering that while the District should have appointed ‘two male representatives’ for the Daughters of Deborah, none ever were, meaning that the lodge ‘could not be represented at the district meeting’. Sister White continued combatively. Despite being a thriving female lodge, attracting more members than any of the male lodges in the District, they had only ever received one visit from a district officer in the three years they had been formed. Sister White opened the matter up to the floor and, following a brief discussion, the Daughters of Deborah followed in the footsteps of their sisters in the Victoria lodge in Liverpool, deciding to leave the Woolwich District. White’s biting coda to the evening’s meetings summed up their feelings of frustration and alienation: they would, instead, apply for a new warrant under the Loyal Orange Institution of Great Britain ‘where it is hoped that the lodge will receive more attention from the responsible officers’.129 The Plumstead Orangewomen acted swiftly. A month later, they reopened as a new lodge, under the jurisdiction of the Institution of Great Britain, underlining that they ‘were not satisfied with the treatment which they had received’ from the Loyal Orange Institution of England. Br R. Alabaster opened the lodge and congratulated the sisters on the ‘success which had attended their lodge’. Alabaster reinforced the ­precarious

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position of the women in the English Orange Order and suggested that women of such tenacity and talent should be rewarded with an equal role in the organisation, as they were in other parts of the Empire: ‘It was a remarkable thing that in this country the influence of the ladies was not appreciated by the heads of Orangeism, but in the Colonies they were a strong body, and had District and Grand Lodges of their own.’130 As we shall see below, Orangewomen across the globe often had far greater equality with the men, and the different levels of access given to female members in other parts of the world were frequently used by the women of England and Scotland to advance their argument for a more significant role in the running of the organisation. Women’s access to District Lodge meetings continued to be a source of contention with the men throughout our period, and was often rolled into discussions about female involvement at the highest level of the organisation, at Grand Lodge. The representation of women at District level varied considerably according to location. For example, in Sheffield in 1915, the women of the Grace FLOL No. 121 at Hillsborough remarked on their visit to the District Lodge and ‘how greatly they had enjoyed the discussions’.131 Two years later, six women of the Barrow District appeared in a fine photograph of the District Lodge meeting, published by the Orange Standard.132 Yet, in Manchester, the women were excluded from these meetings. The women of the No Surrender FLOL No. 115 met in April 1919 to discuss the presence of female lodges at District meetings, and decided to send ‘a strongly-worded protest … at the exclusion of Sisters from the District Meetings’.133 In the north-east of England, although women’s Orangeism was developing a dynamic power base of its own, the men still sought to control their female counterparts. They had tried to address the issues surrounding the existence of organised female Orangeism a few years after the Hebburn ladies’ lodge came into being. In 1911, for example, the district passed a motion of control for the (then) single female lodge: ‘that we pick two Representatives for the looking after of the Ladies lodge’.134 This rather condescending tone was typical of the male Orange system of this time, and the implication that lay behind such a controlling attitude would cause friction for years. Ten years later, the Orangewomen were still struggling against this rather one-sided approach to the management of the Order. In May 1921 women’s representatives were asked to come to District meetings; six months on it was agreed women could attend District meetings but that they could not hold office.135 Although running a lodge gave women a right to attend District meetings, no woman served as an officer at District or provincial level in these years. Debate about women’s access to District meetings came to a head

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during the Grand Lodge meetings of the early 1920s. The role of women in the Order had been discussed at Grand Lodge since the 1880s, when, as we have seen, the likes of the Rev. Aldwell were keen advocates for female lodges. At the Grand Lodge meeting at Westminster in 1886, Aldwell was one of the members of a special committee convened to consider the position of the women and their relationship to the men. Addressing such issues as the name of the women’s organisation (changing it from ‘Female Association’ to ‘Women’s Association’), the title of the head of a female lodge (‘Conductor’ became ‘Mistress’) and the length of the women’s ritual (to be made shorter), the committee also attended to a complaint made to Grand Lodge about the need for women’s lodges to have two male officers elected. This situation was considered to be undesirable but, in the spirit of the Orange Order’s institutional inertia, change was subtle: Grand Lodge resolved ‘“That each Lodge shall have a Mistress, Deputy Mistress, a Treasurer, and Secretary and a Male Conductor, if thought desirable, etc”’.136 Some women’s lodges resolved to enact this new hint of freedom. When the Lady Randolph Churchill FLOL No. 54 was inaugurated in Liverpool, the women soon decided to break with convention and elect a female Secretary. Fanny Burton was elected to this key role and the sisters commented on how important it was to have an entirely women-only lodge: it demonstrated the ‘pluck and determination of the new lodge to elect a secretary to do their business without the aid of male members’.137 Women’s access to Grand Lodge, and their ability to act with freedom elsewhere in the organisation, continued to be prescribed by the men. Leading male members of the Grand Lodge did attempt to press for more rights for Orangewomen. Br Rev. Dr Potter and Br Hindle brought a resolution to the Grand Lodge in 1889, requesting that ‘two sisters’ be admitted, but this was refused by the assembled men.138 A ‘Grand Lodge Special Council’ was then convened by the meeting to consider the application of male levels of hierarchy to the female Order. Earlier that year, the rather progressive Dr Griffith had further championed women’s role in the Order by initiating the women into the Royal Arch Purple Degree. Ten women of the Coronation Temperance FLOL No. 33 (including Edith Griffith) were raised to ‘that sublime degree’ of the Purple Order, at a meeting in which Griffith explicitly linked this appropriation of male Orange ceremonial to the vital role that women had to play in the organisation.139 The Special Council’s response to this elevation of women to the Purple was robust. Male members, such as Griffith, had acted ‘under a misapprehension of their power’ in conferring this ‘male’ degree on women, and the Council concluded with a resolution repudiating ‘the administration of the Purple Order to Females’.140

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The Orangewomen of England, however, did not demurely accede to Grand Lodge’s repudiation of a female Purple Degree. Instead, they organised themselves on a national level and, in June 1890, the first ‘Conference of the Orangewomen’ was held at the Oddfellows’ Hall in St Anne Street, Liverpool. The event drew ‘large numbers of sisters from all parts of the country’ to hear lively discussion about women’s role in the Orange Order. Following a rousing speech by Br Gilbert (as we have seen above, a firm supporter of women’s lodges in Liverpool), in which he once more declared the immense value of women in promoting the virtues of Protestantism, Gilbert came out in favour of conferring the Purple Degree on women, ‘as a true test of the faithfulness of Orangewomen’. The women then put together a resolution supporting women’s right to be elevated to the Purple Degree and proposing that they should make direct representation to Grand Lodge.141 Women’s trenchant demand to be allowed the same rights as men then faltered somewhat. From the 1890 meeting of the Grand Lodge onwards, a committee of men instead met to consider the position of women in the Orange Order.142 After four years of deliberation, the men finally accepted that women could also participate, at lodge level, on the same basis as the male members when Br W. Touchstone, the Grand Secretary, proposed that ‘the second degree be granted to Orange Women’.143 Female lodges enthusiastically accepted this newfound equality with men, such as the women of Daughters of William lodge in Sheerness, who resolved to promote all sisters who were entitled to the Purple Degree at the first meeting following Grand Lodge’s decision.144 Once women’s participation at District meetings and their right to be initiated into the same degrees of Orangeism had been established, the next significant battle to be fought was over women’s presence at Grand Lodge. At the 1903 Grand Lodge meeting, held at the Town Hall in Gateshead, some women did attend, but merely as guests at dinner, where they were toasted by the assembled brethren.145 While women’s attendance in Gateshead simply confirmed a supportive role in the organisation, appearing at an Orange soirée, the next year’s Grand Lodge saw women attend the meeting itself. From FLOL No. 1 in Preston, Ann Garstang and H. Gallen met in Barrow to hear that year’s Grand Lodge deliberations.146 For the following two years, only representatives of the Preston ­women’s lodge were in attendance, but from 1907 onwards women were an increasingly visible presence at Grand Lodge meetings.147 Women’s greater participation in Grand Lodge affairs would appear to have come to a successful culmination when, at the meeting in 1921 in London, a resolution was passed allowing female lodges ‘the same representation in District, Province and Grand Lodge, as the Male Lodge,

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and that they pay the same dues’.148 However, there followed a period of significant retrenchment on the part of Grand Lodge, which appeared to ­copper-fasten women’s subordinate status within the English Orange Order. The Barrow and London Districts proved to be the battleground for another struggle by women to gain representation. In 1922, Agnes Ellwood from the Lily of Whitehaven FLOL No. 105 had been elevated to the lofty position of District Chaplain, once more emphasising the specific religious mission that women had within the Order. In London, Sister Knight, from FLOL No. 116 in Balham, had been appointed to the equally important role of Assistant District Secretary for District 87. Grand Lodge responded tersely to the appointment of women to such roles. The names of Ellwood and Knight were ‘struck out’ from their respective offices, and the Acting Grand Master decreed ‘that Sisters are not eligible to sit on District Committee or hold any office above that of their own private lodge’.149 Grand Lodge turned its full attention during the next three meetings to the rather confused status of women within the Orange Order. The Grand Lodge in 1923 discussed the ‘present unsatisfactory position of the Female Branch’. Recent decisions made by Grand Lodge in relation to women had given rise to ‘conflicting interpretations’ of Orange law. It was decided to establish a special committee, comprising ‘one Brother and one Sister from each Province, with an additional five Sisters from the Liverpool Province’, reflecting the city’s importance as the hub of female Orangeism during the interwar period. This committee was charged with the task of compiling a report for the following Grand Lodge on ‘what changes, if any, are deemed desirable in the present organization of the Female Branch in relation to representation to Grand Lodge’.150 Prior to hearing the committee’s report at the next year’s meeting in Manchester, the Grand Lodge returned to the resolution passed in 1921 giving women equality of representation. Grand Lodge was now very clear on this issue. As no notice of amending the ‘Laws and Ordinances’ had been given, ‘the resolution had no enacting effect and the constitutional position remained exactly as before’ and women could hold no office above their own lodge.151 The Special Committee on the Female Branch met in December 1923 in Liverpool, where a ‘long discussion’ developed on three key points: 1. That there be no change in the present constitution. 2. That Sisters have equal rights and opportunities in every respect with Brethren. 3. That the Female Branch be allowed direct female representation in Grand Lodge with their own District Warrant.

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A majority of the delegates voted against the second and third points, and the Committee concluded that ‘there be no change in the present Constitution’.152 The matter, however, did not rest there, and a further twist to the debate came with a resolution to canvass opinion throughout the female membership. The Grand Secretary was authorised to draw up a ‘referendum’, asking the women if they were in favour of:

a) Maintaining intact the present organisation of the Women’s Branch? b) Equal representation with equal dues, throughout the Order? c) One representative (Brother or Sister) in Grand Lodge from each Province? d) The establishment of a separate Women’s Grand Lodge?153

The results of the referendum were revealed at the 1925 Grand Lodge in Bootle. Over seventy per cent of the sisters replied and, while about a quarter of the female membership was in favour of equal representation at Grand Lodge and a separate Grand Lodge for women, a majority voted in favour of maintaining the status quo. Thus, Grand Lodge affirmed the women’s status as ‘based on the principle of association with the Brethren’s Order’.154 Orangewomen, and their male supporters, continued to lobby Grand Lodge for change. At the 1929 Grand Lodge, the Portsmouth District – long a hotbed of female Orangeism, as we have seen – put forward a motion that women possessing the Purple Degree should be allowed to attend Grand Lodge, yet this was defeated at the 1931 meeting.155 Women’s representation at District Lodge meetings was once more discussed at the 1936 Grand Lodge. Again, the South-Western Province put forward a motion to allow women to attend and vote, but this, too, was thrown out at the following year’s meeting.156 Throughout this period, from the mid-nineteenth century through to the Second World War, the Orangewomen of England struggled to gain recognition from the men and representation on the organisation’s governing bodies. While clearly some lodges, such as those in Liverpool, Plumstead, Portsmouth, Hebburn and Sheerness, to name but a few, did provide women with the space and purpose to challenge the male Orange hierarchy, individual and local displays of agency and activism were ­ultimately thwarted by men. In their quest for equality, the more progressive and publicly minded Orangewomen of England fell short and, certainly, their status in the organisation was less than that of the Canadian women of the LOBA (see Chapter 3).

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Membership

Having established where female Orange lodges arose in England, the local contexts in which they were often formed and how their activism was framed by their relationship with their male brethren, it is important to establish the social and ethnic background of English Orangewomen. As Chapters 2 and 3 explore, the female Orders in both Scotland and, to a lesser extent, Canada were both largely the products of Irish Protestant migration. Equally, both groups of Orangewomen came from a mostly working-class background. In England, women from slightly different ethnic backgrounds and from a rather broader set of social circumstances joined female lodges. There were, of course, many English Orangewomen who were Irish Protestant migrants or their descendants and who, just like their Scottish or Canadian sisters, took the Order with them in their travels as part of their cultural identity ‘baggage’. This was the case especially in the some of the northern industrial towns which experienced significant Irish migration – say, Jarrow and Hebburn on Tyneside, or Barrow in Cumbria. However, just like the men, many women joined the Order in England who had no connection at all with Ireland. As we have seen, the women’s Order was geographically strong also in areas such as London, Portsmouth and Birmingham, and here lodges were dominated by English-born women. Once more, this points to the strength of popular Protestant politics in British politics between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. Certainly, the prominence of Liverpool as a centre of female Orangeism may be explained by the continuing traction of a working-class Tory politics, in which popular Protestantism played a key role. Moreover, the social background of English Orangewomen was often quite diverse: while many lodges were dominated by working-class women, those in centres such as London, Southsea and Birmingham were thoroughly middle-class in terms of both membership and culture. Determining the social and ethnic backgrounds of English Orangewomen is by no means straightforward. But, through a combination of details provided by some Orange records and the England and Wales Census Enumerators’ books, it is possible to trace a sample of almost 200 Orangewomen. The Grand Lodge reports provide details of the name and address of the key officers for each lodge, usually the Worshipful Mistress and the Secretary. Taking this information for the years in which there was a Census (1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911), these names can then be cross-referenced with the Census data, which provides some information about place of birth and occupation for both the women and their families. Using this approach, 171 female Orange lodge officers can be traced

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in the Census, which allows us to draw some conclusions about ethnic and social background. In terms of place of birth, eight of this sample were born in Ireland, representing about 5 per cent of this cohort. Only half of this Irish-born group provided more precise details about where in Ireland they were from but, of these, all were born in the north, in Antrim, Tyrone, Down, Lurgan and Belfast. These Irish-born Orangewomen were all Worshipful Mistresses, and they ran female lodges in Newcastle, Hebburn, Maryport, Preston, Wigan, Liverpool, Birkenhead and Portsmouth. Broadening our definition of Irish ethnicity to include those related to a head of household born in Ireland – and, therefore, of second or subsequent generation Irish heritage – returns a further seven Worshipful Mistresses who may be considered to be Irish. In total, then, there were thirteen Irish Worshipful Mistresses in the English Orange Order between 1881 and 1911, representing 7.6 per cent of this cohort.157 While clearly not matching the levels of Irish membership seen in some parts of the Scottish women’s Orange Order, this proportion of Worshipful Mistresses with an Irish background indicates that Irish migrants were still over-­represented, compared to the rest of the English population. The location of these Irish-led women’s lodges supports the notion that many Orange lodges in the industrial north of England were the product of Irish Protestant migration. The class background of these Irish-born Mistresses also underlines the largely working-class nature of this particular migrant membership. Only two of these women are listed in the Census Enumerators’ books as having an occupation.158 Both, however, would fall firmly into a working-class category of employment. Margaret Bunting was the Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 5 in Preston from 1889 until 1892.159 She was born in Lurgan in 1854 and, in her mid-twenties, was living in Preston where, like so many other women in this part of Lancashire, she worked in the textile industry, as a linen winder, and shared a house with a fellow female cotton weaver.160 Catherine Beggs was the Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 29 in Wigan from 1890 until 1908.161 She was born in Ireland around 1841 and had become a dressmaker in Wigan. Like Margaret Bunting, Catherine was single and lived in a house with other working people – in her case two coal miners (male), a factory operative and a domestic servant (both female).162 Of the remaining seven Irish-born Worshipful Mistresses, most were also from working-class backgrounds. The head of household data in the Census provides something of a proxy for these women’s socioeconomic class. They were the wives of working men, all with occupations that could be classified as ‘skilled’.163 Elizabeth Bowness was born in Co. Down and became Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 98 in Flimby, Cumbria, during 1910 and 1911.164 Her husband was a colliery engine-

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man, a position of some considerable importance and skill. In Liverpool, the Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 20 during 1891 and 1892, Mary Ann Parr, was born in Ireland around 1840.165 Her husband, Robert, was a coachman from London – once more a skilled position – while Mary Ann’s eldest son, Joseph, was a policeman.166 The only one of this cohort of Irish-born Worshipful Mistresses who was not from a working-class background was the redoubtable Mary Aldwell. As we have seen above, Aldwell was a significant figure in the development of female Orangeism in England during the 1880s, leading the formation of lodges in her home town, Southsea, while being the driving force behind the expansion of the women’s Order to London, Ireland and beyond. Aldwell was born in Ireland in 1861 and was Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 16 in Southsea from 1882 until her death in 1907.167 She was lauded by Grand Lodge following her passing as ‘a standard bearer among us’ and Br Griffith, writing in the Belfast Weekly News, described her at the height of her powers in 1890 in effusive terms as a ‘saintly’ woman.168 Aldwell, however, was from a rather different social background than most of her Irish-born counterparts. As noted earlier, Aldwell was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Basil Duckett Aldwell, vicar of St Mark’s church in Southsea.169 Her father’s occupational status marked out Aldwell as firmly middle-class, which may explain some of the social confidence that would have been necessary to organise the socially lofty ladies of Belgravia into a female lodge in 1886. The ethnic background of the Irish-born Worshipful Mistresses from this sample underlines the Irish Protestant migrant status of the organisation in England: while not as prolific or significant as their Irish Orange sisters in Scotland, clearly some Irish migrant women did join female lodges in England. The largely working-class nature of this cohort also underlines the broader social background of the English women’s Order. While significant figures such as Aldwell and the ladies of the Belgravia female lodge clearly came from the upper echelons of English society, the majority of Orangewomen came from more modest upbringings, and analysing the social background of the rest of our sample of 171 Orange officers confirms this. Over one-third of this group were employed. Of the 62 Orange officers who had occupations, the majority fell into a working-class category. Most of these were employed in the textile industry, as spinners, weavers, winders and machinists. The majority worked as cotton weavers in the industrial towns of Lancashire. Letitia Armstrong was head of FLOL No. 29 in Wigan for two decades, between 1910 and 1930.170 Like so many women in this Lancashire town, she was a cotton weaver and single,

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living with her mother and nephew, a coal miner.171 Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 7 in Blackburn in 1880 and 1881, Ellen Haworth was a cotton warper in the town and the daughter of a local farm labourer.172 In Preston, the Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 6 was Jane Livesey, a worsted knitter who held office in 1881 and was the daughter of a joiner.173 The next most significant employment sector for this sample of female Orange officer holders was domestic service. This was by far the largest source of work for women during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and a number of domestic servants held office in the English women’s Orange Order, once more confirming the working-class character of the organisation. Mary A. Greer was head of FLOL No. 35 in 1909 and Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 58 from 1910, both in Everton, Liverpool.174 Greer, born in Aberdeen, worked as an office cleaner and was the wife of an army pensioner. Emma Jane Williams was the Secretary of FLOL No. 34 in Cheltenham, holding office from 1896 until 1901.175 Intriguingly, she was employed as a domestic cook by Mabel S. Henry, who just so happened to also be the Worshipful Mistress of the Cheltenham ladies’ lodge.176 Other female lodge officer holders were hawkers, packers in tobacco factories and street news vendors, among other working-class occupations. While most of these working Orange office holders were employed in manufacturing and domestic service, some did have jobs of a more elevated social status. Fourteen of the women in our sample may be categorised as holding positions in white-collar or middle-class sectors. A number of these Orangewomen were employed in the growing clerical sector, establishing themselves as lower middle-class. Violet White, the Secretary of FLOL No. 110 in Manchester from 1911 until 1913, was a typist, living with her Irish-born mother, a shopkeeper.177 In Devonport, the Secretary of FLOL No. 93 in 1910 was Alice Tillyer, a short-hand typist who had been born in Madras while her father served in the Indian Army.178 Other office holders from our sample were more securely middle-class. Hannah Skuse was Secretary of the vibrant women’s lodge in Southsea, where she served under the indefatigable Mary Aldwell from 1887 until 1912.179 Skuse was an independent woman, maintaining herself through renting out lodgings in Portsmouth.180 The Worshipful Mistress of the women’s lodge in Whitehaven, Ellen Cradduck, was an innkeeper.181 Four of our group of office holders were described in the Census as living from ­independent means, such as Mary Aldwell or Louisa E. Sutton, the Secretary of the women’s lodge in Sheerness.182 Analysing the social and ethnic background of these Orange office holders tells us something, then, of the composition of the female Order in England. The organisation was largely dominated by English-born

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women of a broadly working-class background, indicating how women’s Orangeism was one way in which ordinary women could play a public role in advocating popular Toryism and Protestantism. However, there were significant minorities within this membership, both of Irish-born and middle-class women, demonstrating the rather more diverse and variegated nature of the women’s Order in England, as compared to their sisters in Scotland. Orange activism

Having established how the female Orange Order developed in England and the largely English-born working-class nature of its membership, it is important now to consider what these women actually did. Exploring the weekly, monthly and yearly activities of the English Orangewomen, at their lodges, in their streets and in their broader communities helps us to understand the motivations women had for joining the Order. Female lodges were a focus for considerable activism, both behind closed doors and more publicly. For many women, joining a lodge fulfilled a primarily social function – it was at Orange meetings that women could meet people from likeminded backgrounds. Joining an Orange lodge was also about reinforcing support networks, both emotional and financial, and a strong part of a lodge’s role was to help sisters in times of distress and hardship. While sociability was important, women were also attracted to the Order by the chance to express aspects of their religiosity. Both in the private surroundings of the lodge meeting and in more public spaces, Orangewomen could engage in the deeply religious ritualistic aspects of the movement in their lodge, while also campaigning more publicly, as we have seen above, for the cause of popular Protestantism. Orangewomen’s public activism was also firmly focused on charity. Fundraising for both the Order and the wider community formed a central plank of female lodge work, especially during the First World War, and, much like the religious aspects of the women’s Order, emphasised the gendered nature of female Orangeism, where women took the lead in caring for their communities through charitable works. The Orangewomen of England, just like their counterparts in Scotland and Canada, were also enthusiastic participants in other aspects of Orange public activism. As we have seen, women did march on key Orange occasions, making a very public statement of their position in the organisation. Equally, women’s Orange activism also embraced politics. At both a local level, and in Irish diaspora politics, Orangewomen played a role, often one that was highly gendered, emphasising women’s charitable or religious ‘attributes’. But, from municipal and school board elections to broader national concerns

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regarding Ulster Unionism and the politics of Home Rule, women played a role in supporting various aspects of Orangeism. For many women, joining an Orange lodge was largely about friendship and sociability. From the beginnings of the female Order in England during the 1850s, it was clear that women’s lodges fulfilled an important social function. At a 5th November celebration in Bacup in 1850, the Orangewomen of the town joined their Orange brethren in marking this important date in the Orange calendar. Meeting at the New Inn in Bacup, the women and men enjoyed some ‘good old English fare’, before spending the rest of the evening ‘in mirth and harmony’.183 The Orangewomen of Preston held a tea party for 300 of their sisters in October 1876, where they were entertained with recitations of a no-doubt strongly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic nature, such as ‘Handy Andy, servant to an Irish priest’.184 Such Orange entertainments were common at female lodge soirées. Just before Christmas 1887, the women of the Princess of Devon FLOL No. 17 enjoyed an ‘excellent’ tea before being entertained by members doing ‘turns’, such as Sister Charlton, who performed ‘a very laughable sketch’ entitled ‘Rory O’More’s Present to the Priest’.185 At a ‘teaparty and ball’ to celebrate their first anniversary, the women of the Lady Saunderson FLOL No. 35 were treated to a number of songs, including Sister Morgan performing ‘No Popery, No Surrender’.186 These social events were clearly a source of pleasure and entertainment to these English Orangewomen, and the opportunities for friendship and sociability provided by the Order were clearly attractive. The enjoyment experienced by these women in taking part in Orange social activities was captured in a report of the Daughters of Deborah FLOL No. 46 on their annual outing. The women went for a picnic in Borstal Woods, enjoying the glorious weather and ‘a substantial tea under the trees’. After listening to their Worshipful Mistress, Sister White, urge ‘all Christian women to enroll themselves’ under the Orange banner, the sisters sang songs, before spending the rest of the day ‘rambling through the woods enjoying the beauties of nature’.187 In June 1896, the women of the Daughters of Enniskillen FLOL No. 39 went on their annual outing to the popular seaside resort of Southport. Travelling by wagonette, they found the day was ‘beautifully fine’. After a day by the seaside listening to Orange speeches and songs, the ladies returned to Liverpool via Crosby, ‘the beautiful scenery being greatly enjoyed’.188 Such events clearly ­provided a strong social focal point to women’s Orange lodges, which continued well into the mid part of the twentieth century, when more modern entertainments brought the Orangewomen together. At the Portsmouth female lodge, for example, the women met just before Christmas 1932 to sample ‘two hours of enjoyable kinematograph entertainment’.189

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The clear friendship which attracted women to the Orange Order was not just about jolly seaside jaunts and slap-up teas. A key function of female lodges was to provide emotional support to its members in times of distress. Orangewomen were particularly adept at rallying round their sisters who were experiencing bereavement. At the monthly meeting of the Daughters of William FLOL in Sheerness, the members were exposed to what must have been a familiar tragedy living in a naval port. The husband of one of the Sheerness women, Sister Bayles, had been killed while serving on board HMS Neptune, when it collided with another ship. The Daughters of William responded with a heartfelt ‘letter of sympathy’ to their bereaved Sister Bayles.190 At a meeting in which the women of the Coronation Temperance FLOL No. 33 in Belgravia wholeheartedly approved the idea of mixed lodges, they also passed ‘a profound vote of condolence’ for Sister Robina Jones and her children, Noble and Ada, whose father had recently died.191 Such expressions of sisterly solidarity in the face of grief were appreciated by lodge members. Following the death of her husband, Mrs KingHarman’s daughter responded to the vote of condolence passed by the Coronation Temperance lodge in London with an appreciative letter, thanking the sisters for ‘the very kind and touching expression of … ­womanly sympathy’.192 At a meeting of the Daughters of Enniskillen lodge in Liverpool, the lodge received a letter from Sister William ‘expressing her sincere thanks to the members for their kindly expression of sympathy in her great bereavement’.193 Female lodges were also adept at expressing their emotional support for their members through organising and attending Orange funerals. In June 1896, the women of FLOL No. 39 in Liverpool organised a burial service for one of their members. Sister Isabella Freckleton was interned in Everton cemetery with full ‘Orange honours’. The funeral cortege was accompanied to the cemetery by a band from one of the male Liverpool lodges and, once they arrived, the ‘sisters formed a ring around the grave’ during the ‘beautiful’ Church of England ceremony.194 The women of the Princess of Devon lodge in Plymouth organised a similar farewell to their longstanding member Sister Charlton in January 1896. Charlton had been Worshipful Mistress of the lodge for less than a year and was described by her sisters as ‘a mother’, who was willing to help all members. The sisters adapted a ceremony from the New South Wales Orange district (in an intriguing kind of diasporic borrowing discussed in greater depth below), ‘the whole of the brothers and sisters forming a chain with a missing link around the grave’.195 The emotional support lent to members in times of need and the organisation of funeral ceremonies were fed, to some extent, by the mutualism

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of women’s lodges. Like their Orange brethren, female lodges often had a strong friendly society and benefit aspect to their organisation and operation.196 However, there was a distinct gender aspect to some of this mutualist function, where the benefits offered by female lodges were specific to women. The principle of lodges providing a ‘collective economic shelter’ was an important feature of Orange associationalism.197 From ‘death-sinking’ burial funds to basic insurance against unemployment or ill health, the Orange Order in England fulfilled an important mutualist role for its members, who were, as we have seen, more largely from a ­working-class background. Historians have mainly treated this as a male function, although MacRaild does discuss the mutuality of the women’s lodge in Whitehaven from its foundation in 1873.198 However, women were not simply the recipients of male Orange benefits. As established above, many Orangewomen were in paid employment and, as such, could afford to contribute to their own and their family’s insurance. Coming from largely working-class communities, English Orangewomen supported each other financially through various benefit funds, once more demonstrating the active nature of women’s participation in the Order. From a relatively early stage in their development, we find female Orange lodges in England providing a variety of mutualist support. At the foundation of a new women’s lodge in Birkenhead at the end of 1872, the women immediately stated their friendly society credentials. The lodge was opened by Br T. Plain, former Grand Master of the Royal Black Preceptory in Ireland, and after the officers had been elected, the intent of the lodge was announced: it was to be ‘a benefit lodge, granting sums of money to members at confinement and to their friends at death of member’.199 Of course, the granting of financial support on the death of an Orange sister was nothing unusual (although the emphasis on ‘their friends’, not family, is interesting). What is striking here is the money given to members to support them during pregnancy, especially the period of ‘confinement’ when they would have been unable to work. That the Birkenhead women’s lodge was prepared to provide money for such an eventuality indicates that its members were young, of childbearing age and, largely, in work, and that such a fund would be necessary to compensate for loss of earnings while pregnant. Such benefits were not an unheard-of feature of friendly society culture during the nineteenth century, but it is striking that these funds were provided by an organisation that was frequently masculinist in its tone and outlook.200 The medical benefits provided by some female lodges were a distinct attraction to prospective members. Just like in Canada, some lodges had a doctor associated to them to provide healthcare to their members.

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Opened in 1872, the Queen Victoria FLOL No. 9 in Whitehaven celebrated its first anniversary by reiterating its benefit function. Members paid an admission fee of 1s, and monthly contributions of 6d, and these funds were applied to both ill health and death: ‘sickness members would have the attendance of a doctor, and in case of death the friends of the deceased would receive £3’.201 Such ‘high dues’ indicate that this was not only for the ‘wives of better-off working men’, but for working women themselves.202 Equally, when the new female lodge opened in Kidderminster in 1893, the women were keen to advertise the benefit functions of the organisation. After the election of its officers, the meeting discussed the health and death benefits of the lodge: ‘attached to its principles are funeral and medical attendance benefits, which should encourage a large number to join’.203 While clearly many women were attracted to the female Orange Order by its mutualist function, others became involved in a female lodge for more altruistic reasons. Charitable activity was a key part of female Orangeism for the English Order. Culminating in the opening of the Orange Ward during the First World War, outlined above, and the campaign to provide for Orange orphans, the success of English Orangewomen in raising money for charity, both Orange and public, at least matched that of their sisters in Scotland. Women’s charitable efforts were often in Orange causes. But this focus on, say, raising money for Ulster Unionists in Ireland or funds for a new Orange lodge was a tipping point towards Orangewomen’s greater involvement in public activism. From the very beginnings of female Orangeism in England during the mid-nineteenth century, Orangewomen were involved in raising money for charity. Frequently, it was immediate Orange causes that drove women’s fundraising, often to help fix an Orange Hall or pay off a debt, or simply to raise funds for their lodge. The Daughters of Enniskillen in Liverpool demonstrated their fundraising capacity in 1896, when a tea party and ball raised £3 9s 11d. The members then discussed how they were going to raise more money through a sale of work, which ‘each member promised to send an article to’.204 The lodge’s bazaar in the Emmanuel Church Hall in Liverpool was successful, to such an extent that it was left with ‘a very large amount of money standing to its credit’. Discussion followed, after which the sisters decided to spend the money on themselves, treating the lodge to the wagonette ­expedition to Southport described above.205 Other lodges raised money for the broader Orange cause. The Orangewomen of Blackburn were instrumental in raising funds for the town’s new Orange Hall, ‘in aid of the fund for the extinction of the debt against the members of the Orange Club’. All the stallholders were women, including a Ladies’ Stall and one run by Mrs Austin, wife of the Grand Master of England, who

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was described as being ‘as strong in the principles of Orangeism as her husband’.206 Female lodges were also adept at raising money for other parts of the Orange world. When the Orange Order in Derry was in need of a new hall, the women of the Daughters of William lodge in Sheerness raised funds and were thanked by their Irish brethren ‘for the handsome donation sent in aid of the Derry Orange Hall fund’.207 On Tyneside, women’s Orange activism was most tightly focused on fundraising. The press reports in the Belfast Weekly News and the lodge minutes for the Jarrow and Hebburn District and the Jarrow Primrose FLOL demonstrate that raising money for the construction of an Orange Hall in Hebburn dominated the activities of both male and female lodges. Reading these accounts of the prolonged fundraising efforts of the District, the importance of acquiring a property of their own in which to house their Orange mutualism becomes clear; the coming together of both Orangemen and Orangewomen was less about the promotion of any sense of Protestant Irish or Orange identity, and more about providing an opportunity and location in which to associate with like-minded people from an Orange background. The fundraising undertaken by the women would appear to confirm that their participation in the Orange order was based upon perceptions of their essential domestic character, making money from bazaars, teas and socials. Yet these women were not carrying out these tasks merely to support the Orange men of the District. Instead, despite usually being outnumbered by the men, they were at the forefront of the campaign to secure an Orange lodge for the District, taking an active and vital role in what was the principle goal of Orangeism in that part of Tyneside for much of our period.208 The Jarrow and Hebburn District Lodge’s efforts to build its own Orange Hall are recorded first in February 1907, when a report in the Belfast Weekly News relates the District handing over the proceeds of its annual tea and ball to the ‘Gibson Memorial Orange Hall Fund’, and the appointment of a committee to make plans for its construction. Within three months, the District minutes record that this committee was ‘working very hard’, that they already had a balance in hand of over £26 and were making plans to have the foundation stone laid by the beginning of the following year, 1908.209 However, such optimism soon looked misguided, given the men’s inability to raise and manage the money to buy their own hall. Not only did these women feel marginalised by the male lodges, but they also felt that the success of the Orange order in the District, especially its efforts to secure its own lodge hall, was being frustrated by the incompetence of the men. As early as 1909, the ladies of the Rose of Hebburn lodge passed unfavourable comment on the men’s efforts to raise money for their Orange Hall. Br W. N. Cameron, ­praising

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the Hebburn ladies for their successful first year, remarked upon the importance of female Orangeism, as the ‘country was being overrun with Romanists’.210 Furthermore, Cameron commended the ladies for holding a bazaar to aid the Orange Hall fund. Neatly avoiding Cameron’s bromides, Sister Montgomery, the Worshipful Mistress of the Hebburn ladies, shot back tartly that ‘referring to the bazaar, she […] was glad to hear that the Orangemen of the District were at last going to do something with the hall scheme, and promised them that they would do all in their power to make the bazaar a success’.211 Montgomery’s tough stance was part of her modus operandi. As the District’s most powerful and forcible Orangewoman, she showed a grim determination to gain recognition for the Orange sisterhood. While the wider climate may have created an atmosphere of challenge and confidence around these women, personalities remained of some importance. Montgomery was wife of one of the Province’s most noted members, John Montgomery. Like her male counterparts, she was a club and society sort of person; Orangeism was not her only outlet. She was a stalwart of the Primrose League, as well as long-serving Mistress of her own lodge.212 Well connected within local Unionist circles and a regular at political meetings and picnics, as well as a good attender of District meetings, she was impatient with the slowness of the menfolk when it came to raising funds, and critical of their somewhat stiff relations with women members. Orangewomen outstripped the men in their money-making efforts. The contrasting success of male and female fundraising activities is most marked by reports of their respective efforts during the first half of 1912. At the beginning of the year, the men of the Jarrow and Hebburn District lodge reported raising £2 from a ‘smoker’, a social evening of songs, drinking and smoking.213 It was rare for a male lodge to raise greater amounts than this with drink-related socials. Sometimes, a little more could be raised through balls and dances that introduced families and allowed friends who were non-members to attend.214 Just three months later, the ladies of the Rose of Hebburn handed over the considerable sum of £14 15s 9d raised from ‘a social sale of work and subscriptions’, work neatly fitting the domestic role prescribed for women in the Orange Order. Yet, its effectiveness provided a means by which the women of the Rose of Hebburn lodge, and later the Jarrow Primrose, influenced and shaped the character of Orangeism in the region.215 This period saw a developing confidence in the activities and actions of these women, and a more determined, sometimes almost confrontational, mode of representation to the males who still controlled the District. In this same year, 1912, as part of the context of these fund-raising initiatives, and in keeping with

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a more general change in the mood of Orangeism and of society, these ladies were coming to see themselves more as Orangewomen in their own right, rather than simply as Orangemen’s wives. This process became more pronounced as male intransigence over the Orange Hall grew stronger. Discussions at the District Lodge level suggested the women were angry at being marginalised. The women also believed that their Orange brothers were acting in an inefficient or even profligate manner. After handing over their hard-earned cash from a sale of work, and following the failure of Br Rowan, the Worshipful District Master, to reply to an invitation to one of their lodge meetings, the women of the Rose of Hebburn lodge concluded that the men were scorning their efforts.216 Rowan’s failings resulted in a forcible and public rebuke.217 The Secretary, Williamson, recorded that the ‘sisters felt they were being slighted by the District’, which was a pity, they said, since ‘if the officials would only help them and give them a bit of encouragement they thought they would be amply repaid’.218 Williamson acknowledged that a good female lodge would clearly be of benefit to the District. He also tried to defend Rowan against the charge of ignoring the sisters (the minute rendered as it appeared on the page): [H]e had went down to the sisters lodge in response to their invitation and upon going to the usual meeting room he found they were not there and after inquiring off the caretaker Mr Brice if it was not being held Mr Brice informed him that he did not think it was the night but if it was they had removed themselves to the other end of the building. Our Worthy Master went to the other end of the building and after several attempts give it up as a failure to find their room.219

Rowan’s final word on the matter allied mocking chauvinism to a wish for better times in the future: Our WDM also thought it would be a bad day for the District when it had to depend upon the sisters lodge and said it was no doubt that the Sister lodge would be better looked after by the Officials of next year and that he was not a ladies man but he hoped they would be better looked after next year.220

The tone of the male District Master suggested that he knew these women were exerting their influence, and was resistant to their more direct approach. Rowan hid behind his advanced years in a show of mock detachment; but the women’s presence of mind, hard work and success had a rankling effect on one old Orangeman. In the end, the women’s funds helped to realise the local Orangemen’s dream to buy their hall. The hall that they finally acquired, on the corner of Station Road, Hebburn, remains in the hands of the Orange Order. But

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the site was not acquired until later in the 1920s, and not without more battles. The badgering of the District by women lodge members finally led to the appointment of yet another committee to oversee fund-raising – but this time from the wranglings there emerged a distinct shift in the power base as women achieved a share of the decision-making process with regard to the fund-raising efforts.221 As part of the rumbling frustration at the men’s perceived inaction, the women of the Rose of Hebburn lodge sent a stinging letter to a meeting of the District Lodge in February 1919, enquiring sardonically ‘if the brethren intended doing anything towards the building of the Orange Hall’.222 In true Orange fashion, the men decided to form a committee, but the tenacious Rose of Hebburn women were not to be deflected quite so easily. Later in 1919, the ladies, having raised yet more money through bazaars, teas and socials, held the men to ransom, saying they were only ‘prepared to hand their money over to the Gibson Memorial Committee providing they have one trustee’.223 By February of the following year, two ladies were sitting on the hall committee, and by March 1920, the District Lodge had made a down payment of £500 on premises in Hebburn.224 Although the minutes record Br John Montgomery’s claim that they needed to act promptly to secure the building because ‘the Roman Catholics or Sinn Feiners were trying hard to get it’, undoubtedly the pressure of the female lodge and the women’s eventual presence on the committee had a clear influence on the decision to purchase a lodge hall.225 They had secured the site that the district eventually bought.226 These women, then, felt that their fundraising work, based on the impact of their domestic economy on the public sphere, was, in fact, central to the health of Orangeism on Tyneside – and they were correct. As a consequence, the women of the Rose of Hebburn lodge pushed hard to make their influence felt. The domestic tasks of arranging teas and bazaars provided a typically Edwardian ‘way in’ to Orange associational life, but once established, the Orange women were keen to play an active role and drive the organisation forward. Placing an emphasis on domesticity was often a crucial means by which women at the beginning of the twentieth century gained access to public and associational life, and these Tyneside Orange women were no different, using strategies similar, for example, to those of the women of local government described by Patricia Hollis.227 Although the period of greatest activity and achievement for the Orange women – the purchase of the Gibson Memorial Hall – coincided with women’s emergence as citizens following the Representation of the People Act of 1918 and, one could argue, acted as an immediate ‘call to arms’ for these women to demand influence, it must be remembered that the campaigns for women’s equality,

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far from ending dramatically in 1918, continued strongly throughout the interwar years and built on the patterns of activism established in the earlier part of the century. The women of Orangeism were reflecting a two-tiered struggle for recognition. In one sense, they were representations of women at large and the struggle for greater appreciation of their rights in the broader sphere of gender politics. More specifically, though conditioned by the mood of the day, they were seeking to strengthen a movement to which they were plainly committed and to bolster their political influence within it. This was a struggle for women’s rights in the broadest sense: for the good health of Orangeism in a general sense, and for the equality of Orangewomen with Orangemen in a more specific way. Thus, instead of being an anachronistic hangover from the Edwardian period, during the 1920s and 1930s female Orange lodges in the north-east were comparable to organisations such as the Women’s Co-Operative Guild and the Women’s Institutes in their promotion of female activism and desire for a measure of gender equality within a framework that nevertheless continued to stress the importance of female domesticity.228 Orangewomen also raised money for causes outside of the immediate organisation, often with a political or religious connection to the aims of Orangeism. The Crimean War provided a focus for Orangewomen’s charitable efforts during the early days of female Orangeism in the north-west of England. As we have seen in the case of the female lodges on Tyneside, the women of Newchurch and Bacup outstripped their male brethren in raising money for a ‘Patriotic Fund’ organised by the Grand Protestant Association. This fund was designed to raise money ‘for the relief of wives and children of our brave soldiers sent to the seat of war’.229 In March 1855, the women of the Queen Elizabeth lodge, of the Black Dog Inn in Newchurch, gave £5 to this fund, such a large amount being described by the Orange and Protestant Banner as ‘sympathy and generosity to the letter’.230 A month later, the Orangewomen of Bacup outdid both their local brethren and their sisters in Newchurch. The Female Lodge No. 13 raised £6, placing ‘our female friends at the head of the movement’, as the three male lodges had only raised half that amount between them, and helping to defend ‘every liberty we enjoy, civil and religious, so dear to the heart of every true-born Englishman’.231 The Orangewomen of England were also eager to do charitable work for their more immediate communities. The women of the Catherine von Bora lodge in Southsea (named after the wife of Martin Luther) raised £4 from a sale of work in ‘aid of dissemination of Protestant literature amongst the masses in Portsmouth’.232 The same lodge was also involved in raising money for local Church charities. In 1894 the Catherine von

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Bora FLOL raised 10s 6d for the St Luke’s Sick and Indigent Visiting Society, an organisation with links to the Orange Order through its former vicar, the Rev. Aldwell.233 It was with the outbreak of war in 1914, however, that English Orangewomen’s charitable efforts became significant and helped to define the purpose of the organisation. Culminating in the building of an Orange Ward and Recreation Hut at Trent Bridge in 1917, Orangewomen’s war efforts focused on entertaining injured servicemen through charity concerts and by supplying scripture to the troops (in contrast to raising money for soldier’s wives and their children during the Crimean War). Together, these activities demonstrate further how female Orangeism was inflected with gendered assumptions about both women’s religiosity and their role as society’s carers and nurturers. When war broke out in Europe, the Orange Order was quick to portray it as a conflict in defence of both Protestantism and Ulster Unionism. Echoing the mentality of Unionists in Ireland analysed by Jane McGaughey, the Orange Order in England saw the war as a battle for both the unity of the Empire (with Ulster an integral part of it following the putting on ice of the Home Rule crisis in August 1914) and the righteousness of the Protestant faith.234 The Orange Standard, the voice of English Orangeism published by the Rev. Louis A. Ewart in Birmingham, was a strident advocate of Orange involvement in the war, in terms of both men and ideas. In a column entitled ‘War Items: Stirring Messages from Brethren on Land and Sea’, Ewart printed letters sent to the newspaper from Orangemen fighting at the front. Writing from HMS Sydney, Thomas Hales recounted the ship’s success in sinking the Emden of the German navy. Hales’s thoughts then turned to the absence of news from Belfast: ‘I began to think my “Old People” had been shot when things got hot on the Home Rule question sometime ago (ha! ha!) but I am sure they are all right’. Hales concluded his letter with a ringing endorsement of the Unionist cause, claiming that ‘They will never conquer the Protestants of Ulster, as we are made of too good stuff for them.’235 Such Protestant interpretations of the war were shared by the Orangewomen of England. Shortly after the outbreak of conflict, one of the leading English Orangewomen framed an appeal to help the soldiers at the front in distinctly Orange terms. Maggie Ewart spoke of helping servicemen who had ‘gone out to fight for Right, Truth, Justice and Freedom’ by making clothes for them ‘in the name of Orange and Protestant Englishwomen’.236 The Grace FLOL No. 121 in Sheffield met at the end of 1915 to hear about the experience of an Orange brother at the front. While recovering from his wounds in a Sheffield hospital, a Birkenhead Orangeman called Richard Probbing visited the local

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female lodge. Gassed at Ypres ‘on the memorable and glorious 12th July’, Probbing spoke about ‘how to conduct the female lodges and what to teach the sisters on true Orange principles’. The Sheffield sisters then proposed that they attend the ‘thanksgiving service for Protestant liberties and privileges’ at their parish church, underlining the Orangeism of the event by wearing their full regalia.237 Just as the women emphasised the Protestant nature of the war, they also were keen not to forget the plight of Unionists following the partial resolution of the Home Rule crisis in September 1914. At the aptly named Ladies of Ulster FLOL No. 120 in Birmingham, Maggie Ewart proposed a resolution to be sent to the Prime Minister ‘protesting against the Governments betrayal of Ulster, and pledging the Lodge to stand by Ulster’.238 This thoroughly Protestant framework provided the context in which Orangewomen carried out charitable wartime work. English women’s lodges engaged in activity that was commonplace to many women’s organisations during the Great War. The Kirkdale’s Glory FLOL No. 80 in Liverpool made its first contribution to the war effort in October 1914, unanimously agreeing to send £1 1s to the Kirkdale Conservative Ladies Committee for buying wool to be made into ‘soldiers sleeping caps, socks, body belts, etc’.239 Women were also involved in the broader efforts of the English Orange Order to support servicemen. In December 1914, an ‘Orange War Relief Fund’ was formed, framed once more by the recent crisis in Ulster: ‘At a time when the Nationalists are getting so much credit for the new-found loyalty, we feel that what we do should be done in the name of the Institution.’ Women were to play a role in organising this fund through a working party to distribute donations of wool and other materials to women’s lodges, where they would then be made up into clothes.240 The Orange-tinged nature of female activism for the war effort was further amplified by women’s participation in the English Order’s Scripture fund. In December 1915, Louis Ewart reported on the progress of a scheme established at that year’s Grand Lodge, to ‘present the members of the Orange Order and others on active service with a khaki-bound copy of the New Testament’. Again, the conflict was framed in Orange and Protestant terms: the collecting scheme was ‘to raise funds to circulate the Word of God and to maintain those Protestant principles which have made the British Empire’.241 Collecting cards were sent out to individual lodges, where the women perceived the fund in similar terms. The Bolton No Compromise, No Surrender women’s lodge had received the cards in December 1915. Sister M. Hickman, the Worshipful Mistress, urged her lodge to ‘do their best for the noble cause of providing scriptures for our sailors’, closing the meeting with a stirring rendition of the song ‘The

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Soldiers Gallantly fighting for Our Empire’.242 By July 1916 over £1,000 had been raised ‘to supply Scriptures to the troops’, and Ewart demanded that a further £1,000 be given by the Orange brethren and sisters, as ‘there are thousands of soldiers and sailors who have not had a testament yet’.243 Having established the Orange and Protestant nature of their war work, the Orangewomen of England began to focus more on providing care for wounded returning soldiers towards the end of 1916. In calling for more funds to be raised for soldiers’ New Testaments, Ewart also highlighted a different Orange campaign – ‘to endow at least 12 beds at the Nottingham Red Cross Hospital’.244 This new concern for the welfare of returning servicemen reflected their increasing visibility ‘back home’ in England. Injured Orange brethren were frequent visitors at women’s lodge meetings. At the beginning of March 1916, the women of the Saunderson’s Memorial FLOL No. 93 welcomed ‘a number of wounded sailors and soldiers to a tea and social’. The ‘wounded heroes’ joined in with the entertainment, with prizes for the ‘best song given’, before being sent home with hampers of fruit and flowers.245 In Croydon, the women’s lodge hired a special tram to bring ‘fifty convalescent soldiers’ to a tea and social at their meeting, where they were entertained with a ‘liberal repast’ and ‘music and recitations’, and each given a Gospel. Such treatment of wounded soldiers echoes the findings of Joanna Bourke, who argues that returning servicemen were ‘effeminised’ on their return home, as their injuries at the front had made them less than ‘real’ and ‘complete’ men: by being treated to jolly teas in the female space of Orange lodges, these soldiers and sailors were domesticated and made safe by Orangewomen.246 Orangewomen also reciprocated, visiting injured servicemen in hospital and sending them morale-boosting gifts. Shortly after the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, the women of the Bolton No Compromise, No Surrender lodge went to visit wounded soldiers in the local Townley Military Hospital, meeting some of the ‘Ulster brethren who took part in the glorious charge on 1st July’.247 The women were assisted in their visit by the ‘Ladies of Middle and Over Hulton Primrose League’, demonstrating an important aspect of conservative female activist co-operation. The Bolton lodge also arranged for the soldiers to visit Orangewomen’s homes, ‘where they have spent many happy hours’.248 A couple of months after these visits, the Bolton women were rewarded with letters from the wounded soldiers ‘who had been so well treated in Bolton and were now back at the front’.249 In Birmingham, Louis Ewart took the initiative in organising visits to the Red Cross War Hospital in Northfield. Visiting the hospital in September, Ewart had been given money raised by the ‘Ladies of Ulster’ ‘to be spent on goods for any Irish

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Protestants or Ulstermen to be found in the hospital’. Ewart had spent the money on ‘cakes, fruit, [and] copies of the New Testament’ given to members of the Ulster Division, the Irish Guards, and Australian and London regiments. Ewart’s visit and the gifts bought using the ‘Ladies of Ulster’ funds were appreciated by the wounded. Rifleman P. Scott of the Ulster Division had been in the hospital for eleven weeks, and said that ‘the visit had put new life into him’.250 Once more, the emphasis on helping Protestant or Ulster servicemen underlined the Orange nature of women’s war work. This was demonstrated further by the next fundraising initiative organised by the Order: finding money to provide for a specifically Orange hospital ward. In October 1916, a campaign was launched by the English Orange Order to open a special ward for injured Orangemen at the Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. This fundraising drive was led by Lady Ellen Maud Bruce, described by The Orange Standard as a ‘prominent Ulster lady’ who had been an agent for the Carson Ulster Division fund, was a representative on the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council and the wife of the Baronet of Downhill, Co. Londonderry.251 The fund was established in October 1916 to provide ‘exclusively for Ulstermen and Orangemen’ and aimed to raise £500 to provide for ‘full equipment, structural alterations, reading room and Protestant library’. Emphasising once again the sectarian nature of such charitable work, the fund advertised itself to wounded Ulstermen in other hospitals: ULSTER DIVISION. Ulstermen serving in other Units and Members of the Loyal Orange Institution are requested to notify their arrival in Hospital to – LADY BRUCE, Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital, Cricket Pavilion, West Bridgeford, NOTTINGHAM. Immediately wounded Brethren report themselves, arrangements will be made for their removal to the ‘Orange Ward.’252

Fundraising for the new Orange War began apace. In Birmingham, the two women’s lodges in November 1916 ‘unanimously decided’ to send donations to the Nottingham hospital.253 The Preston women’s lodges held a ‘successful Christmas Social’ in aid of the Orange Ward and, by December 1916, both female lodges and individual women featured heavily on the list of Orange subscribers.254 From the London women’s lodge, Sister Mrs W. J. Sims had donated 5s, while Sister E. C. Reep, Worshipful Mistress of FLOL No. 72 in Croydon, had given £1 1s. Of the women’s lodges, Birmingham’s two lodges had raised 5s each, Bolton 7s, Liverpool’s FLOL No. 79 2s 6d, the City of London FLOL No. 123 5s, and Croydon’s FLOL No. 72 £1 11s 6d.255

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By January 1917 sufficient funds had been raised to open the first stage of the Orange Ward. Once £200 had been raised in the first two months of the campaign, the Orange Ward and ‘Ulster Recreation Hut’ were opened on 16 January by the Duke of Portland, together with a ‘medical electrical ward’ provided by the Freemasons of West Bridgeford.256 The facility at Trent Bridge had been expanded from its original twenty beds when it opened as a VAD hospital in 1915 to an impressive ninety beds, taking in the Ladies’ Pavilion, behind which was built the new ‘Ulster Hut’. It was here that the Orange nature of the Red Cross Hospital was most apparent. Above the entrance to the hut, wounded Orange soldiers were greeted by a hospital sign bearing the distinctive ‘Red Hand’ of Ulster, as seen in Figure 1.2, where the indomitable Lady Bruce stands proudly in front of the building. Inside, the wounded were treated to a large recreation room, with billiard tables, a piano and ‘facilities for reading, games, refreshments, meetings and concerts’.257 The reading material, in particular, had a distinctive Orange hue, featuring copies of the voice of global Orangeism, the Belfast Weekly News, together with the Belfast Weekly Telegraph.258 The Orange nature of the Ulster Hut was further emphasised at the grand opening. The patron was, of course, Sir Edward Carson, yet he had been unable to attend owing to his ‘urgent public duties at the Admiralty’, sending his best wishes instead and a signed photograph to hang in the hut.259 In giving the vote of thanks to Carson’s replacement at the opening, the Duke of Portland, Lady Bruce once more underlined the importance of the Orange Order to the Trent Bridge hospital. Stressing her own close association to the province of Ulster (‘there was no more loyal portion of His Majesty’s empire’), Bruce remarked upon how the Ulster Hut grew out of her visits to ‘men from the Ulster Division’, but also that the facilities were ‘open to all the soldiers who came as patients to the hospital’.260 The Ulster Hut thrived as a facility for convalescing servicemen. Every Sunday, ‘Divine Service’ was held for the wounded men. The Hippodrome Theatre in Nottingham donated electric light to the hut, and gave ‘a weekly performance’.261 Fifteen concerts were held in January and February 1917, and by May these had turned into nightly entertainments for the ‘wounded soldiers’.262 After six months, these concerts had raised £50 for the Hut Canteen and the total Orange Ward funds stood at £460, not far short of the overall £500 target.263 These funds had been bolstered significantly by the charitable activities of the English Orangewomen. In June 1917, the sisters of FLOL No. 1 in Preston made a considerable donation of £10, the largest by a women’s lodge and described as ‘a great credit … for their example and work on behalf of our wounded Brothers’.264 In addition to the Preston FLOL

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Figure 1.2  Lady Bruce outside the Ulster Hut, Trent Bridge, Nottingham, 1917 (The Orange Standard, February 1917)

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No. 1, by December 1917 female lodges in Birmingham (FLOL Nos 120 and 124), Bootle, Bolton, Everton, Jarrow, Liverpool (FLOL Nos 79 and 86), Croydon, Preston (FLOL No. 5), London and Paisley (Scotland) had donated to the Orange Ward scheme.265 Overall, women’s lodges raised just over £21, with the women of FLOL No. 102 in Jarrow donating £3, the second highest amount after FLOL No. 1 in Preston. By the end of 1917, the Orange Ward and Hut scheme had been deemed so successful that the English Order decided to organise a more ambitious fundraising scheme. The ward had been ‘a testimony of the loyalty of the Order’, according to The Orange Standard, and funds had been secured to see the operation of the hospital through to the end of the war. With the support of the two leading Unionist politicians, Carson and Craig, and that of the Grand Masters of both England and Ireland, the English Orange Order decided to launch a War Memorial Fund. This new scheme proposed to raise £20,000 to establish an ‘Orange Orphanage’ in Ulster for the ‘benefit of the Orphans of the Brethren killed in the War and Orange Orphans generally’.266 The organisational focus of this new fund, however, remained in Nottingham, where Lady Bruce acted as treasurer for this much-expanded campaign.267 Women’s lodges also turned their fundraising activities towards supporting the new scheme. Shortly after the launch of the scheme, an article in The Orange Standard made a plea to the Orangewomen of England to get behind the new campaign, especially given the benefits that some might derive from it: ‘The loss of the father – the breadwinner of the family, throws an enormous responsibility on the remaining parent, and in the struggle for existence which much necessarily ensue when the war is over, no Orange Sister, placed in that position, and needing assistance, should be allowed to fight the battle alone.’ The onus for the success of this new fund, then, fell on the women of the Order: ‘Some of the Ladies’ Lodges might find a Sale of Work a good plan of raising funds, and if worked as a District or Pro-Grand matter, a good sum could be raised.’268 Once again, the shift in emphasis of the Orangewomen’s charitable efforts is significant. After the war was over, women refocused their fundraising on objects deemed more suitable to female activism: women and orphans, not wounded servicemen. It was only once the war was over, however, that the Orange Orphanage scheme gained a head of steam. And, once more, the context for revived female activism was provided by the identity politics of Unionism and popular Protestantism. As the political situation in Ireland deteriorated during 1919 and it became increasingly likely that the country would be partitioned, the Grand Lodge of England decided to launch a ‘Hands off Ulster’ campaign to ‘educate the English Electorate on the real issues of

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the effort to secure Home Rule for Ireland’. The Grand Secretary, Louis Ewart, organised this tour of English towns, and also used it as an opportunity to promote the Orange Orphanage scheme.269 Early the following year, the Orangewomen of London were urged to organise sales of work, which resulted in FLOL No. 70 raising £1 for the scheme.270 The women of the No Surrender lodge in Bolton donated money to the Orphanage scheme in June 1920, while a month later the Florence Nightingale FLOL organised a sale of work.271 The Orphanage scheme was formally launched by Grand Lodge at its annual meeting in Birmingham at the beginning of July 1920. It was to be the Order’s memorial ‘to the Orangemen who have made the supreme sacrifice’. However, given the difficulties in raising significant amounts of money during the economically depressed post-war era, Grand Lodge decided to create a more modest fund, which would dispense financial aid to orphans on a more individual basis.272 The Orange Orphanage scheme, however, continued to struggle throughout the 1920s. Each year’s report of the scheme at Grand Lodge began with an account of the difficulties they faced in raising money at such an economically difficult time. In 1928, the Orange Orphan Society reported that their hopes for an increased income that year had floundered (‘indeed, it is with great regret we have to state that a rather serious decrease of £90 has to be reported’), despite the efforts of Orangewomen in organising sales of work.273 Two years later, the Orange Orphan Society continued to struggle, showing a ‘serious decrease from that of the previous year’. Their income, however, was significantly bolstered by ‘a munificent donation of £20’ from the FLOL No. 145 in Brighton. The Orangewomen of Brighton had held a ‘drawing-room Sale of Work’, and Grand Lodge urged ‘our Women’s Lodges to adopt a similar course of procedure’.274 The Orange Orphan Society’s struggle continued into the 1930s, despite the best efforts of the Brighton women, who raised a further £32 in 1932 with their ‘unabated zeal and interest’.275 Charitable work formed a considerable part of Orange women’s activism in England during this period. As we have seen, while underlining the gendered nature of women’s caring and nurturing roles, raising money for various Orange and non-Orange causes involved significant public activism, organising events and going out into their respective communities. Especially through their war work, Orangewomen ­demonstrated their capacity for mobilising in an Orange cause and, in the case of the Nottingham Red Cross Hospital, in the community more broadly. However, once the war was over, women’s charitable efforts returned to work deemed more firmly to fall within a ‘female sphere’ of caring and nurturing, demonstrating that Orangewomen’s gender identities were not fixed and changed over time.

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Politics

Orangewomen’s engagement with public activism was also expressed through their political work. Like many conservative women, the women of the Orange Order sought to influence local politics, often exploiting the perception that the affairs of school board or municipal elections were more suited to women’s gendered role in society, to play a part in political affairs on their doorstep. Given the migrant character of the Orange Order, it is no surprise that female Orangeism was also concerned with the broader world of Irish Protestant diaspora politics. Just like their Canadian sisters, although the influence of Irish Protestant migrants was less significant than in Scotland, English Orangewomen’s thoughts and actions continued to be shaped by Irish politics long into the twentieth century. English female Orange lodges engaged with local politics from the 1880s onwards. As British politics became more democratic following the various franchise reforms of 1884 and 1885, the opportunities for women to become involved in elections expanded. While still being denied the vote, women began to mobilise in support of political groups at both local and national levels, with organisations such as the Primrose League (founded in 1883) proving especially attractive to women.276 Given how we have seen wartime co-operation with the Primrose League, it is not surprising to find Orangewomen playing a role in English conservative politics from this late-Victorian period onwards. As female lodges began to grow during the 1880s, so too did their political activism. Shortly after its foundation at the beginning of 1888, the women of the Coronation Temperance female lodge in London were reminded of their political potential. After Gideon Griffith had expounded once more on the virtues of women’s lodges, Br T. C. S. Brendon underlined this point, arguing that women should work politically for the Order because of the ‘power the women had in the Primrose League and at parliamentary elections’.277 This Orange female political power was most keenly felt in Liverpool, where local elections were particularly inflected with sectarianism. When the Victoria FLOL No. 2 met in February 1889, the members recognised the importance of local politics to their Orange activism, thanking Dr Griffith for his support of Col. Sandys MP in the Bootle Division of Liverpool: ‘that he may be long spared to carry on the battle for Protestantism is the earnest prayer of the sisters of the Victoria LOL 2 (Female Association)’.278 The Orangewomen of Liverpool came to the fore during the city’s municipal elections in 1895. During the October 1895 meeting of the Victoria FLOL No. 2 in Liverpool, the Secretary of the lodge urged the

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women to ‘do their best’ to secure the return of local Orangeman, Br Carr, to the City Council. The women of the lodge were ‘excellent canvassers’ and would emulate their counterparts in the Primrose League: ‘It was an undoubted fact that the Primrose dames greatly contributed to the success of the Unionist candidates, and he hoped the Orangewomen would prove themselves as able as their sisters of the Primrose League.’279 The women of the Victoria lodge were clearly successful in their canvassing efforts, as Br Carr was returned to the Netherfield Ward in Liverpool, winning 781 out of the total 1,823 votes.280 At their December meeting, Carr visited the Victoria lodge to thank them in person for all their efforts, informing the sisters of the action he intended to take on their behalf at the Council.281 Orangewomen’s interest in local politics also led them into a concern with Irish political affairs. In Liverpool, Br Carr once more spoke about the political influence of women, and how it was their duty to support candidates in the next general election who would ‘maintain the unity of empire’.282 At a joint male and female meeting of the two London Temperance Orange lodges in December 1888, Gideon Griffith emphasised the important role that women could play in this kind of Unionist politics. In announcing his intention to run as a Unionist candidate in the next election, Griffith remarked on the success that the Orange Order had had in returning favoured candidates at municipal and school board elections in Liverpool. The meeting’s next speaker, Br H. Smith from Ballyhoe lodge in Ireland, spoke about the continuing importance of Irish politics, and how he had nearly been shot by ‘Fenians’ and was now ‘obliged to carry a revolver to protect his own life’.283 From the 1880s onwards, then, Orangewomen in England were also heavily concerned with political affairs in Ireland. Key moments of crisis in Ulster helped to focus the attention of female lodges on what was going on ‘across the water’: the crises over Home Rule in the 1880s, early 1890s and 1910–14, and the post-war debate about partition, the Boundary Commission, and the emergence of the Irish Free State. Despite the seeming resolution of the first Home Rule crisis in 1886, the female Orange lodges of England continued to be concerned with Irish politics at the end of the 1880s. In the context of continuing agrarian violence in Ireland, the women of the Catherine von Bora lodge in Southsea met in February 1888 to discuss Irish politics.284 The women unanimously proposed a resolution to be sent to A. J. Balfour, the Chief Secretary of Ireland, for his ‘success attending the administration of the Crimes Act in Ireland’.285 Later that year, in response to a plea for support from the Grand Lodge of Ireland, the women of the Salisbury FLOL in London resolved to send a £1 donation to ‘prove the interest Orangewomen take

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in the cause’. The lodge also gave a further £1 to the Cavan Protestant Hall, and £3 to distribute Orange badges in Ireland, demonstrating their interest in and activism for Irish politics.286 Their Orange London sisters, the Coronation Temperance lodge, also had a focus on Irish politics. At a meeting in October 1889, following a lengthy speech by Br Badenoch on the evils of Catholic education, the women resolved to oppose any move to ‘denominational education’, sending this on to Balfour.287 English Orangewomen’s focus on Irish affairs intensified during the next Home Rule crisis in 1893. Following Gladstone’s introduction of the Second Home Rule Bill to Parliament in February 1893, the sisters of the Daughters of William lodge in Sheerness discussed the second reading of the Bill in April, resolving ‘That the members of this lodge pledge themselves to assist our Irish brethren in every possible way to resist the passing of the Home Rule Bill now before Parliament’.288 The Orangewomen of Liverpool were also determined to help Irish Unionists in the fight against Home Rule. The Lady Claude Hamilton lodge met at the end of January 1893, just as Gladstone was preparing to put the Bill to the House of Commons. After Br Roberts had been congratulated on his victory ‘for the Constitutional cause in South Toxteth’ during the recent municipal elections, Roberts thanked the lodge and urged the Liverpool Orangewomen to ‘be ready to resist the dismemberment of the empire as proposed by Mr Gladstone’.289 Once more in Liverpool, the opening of a new women’s lodge in Toxteth proved an occasion to reflect on women’s role in defeating Home Rule. Speaking at the inauguration of the Joshua FLOL No. 43, Br A. Rath reflected on the current Irish political crisis, condemning ‘the present Government in regard to their Home Rule policy’. The foundation of a new women’s lodge, Rath argued, was ‘proof to the foresight of the ladies as auxiliaries in defence of constitutionalism and Protestantism’. The women of the Order, he concluded, had to be ready to ‘make their influence felt in defence of a united empire’.290 In the days before a formal female franchise, the political influence of Orangewomen in Liverpool demonstrates how women could become involved in politics without having the vote.291 Orangewomen’s opposition to Home Rule came to a head during the crisis over the Third Home Rule Bill in 1914. The female lodges of England were vigorous in resisting the Bill. At a meeting of Bolton’s FLOL No. 96 in January 1914, the women remarked on the progress made by the Order under the Grand Secretaryship of Louis Ewart, before discussing the situation in Ireland: ‘In the course of the proceedings the Home Rule Bill was denounced and the Protestant cause staunchly advocated.’292 The Anne Askew FLOL No. 70 met in South London in May 1914 to discuss Irish politics, and the sisters decided to send a letter to the Unionist ­candidate

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for North Camberwell, Guy Radford, ‘for splendid correspondence on Home Rule’.293 In the same month, the women of Bolton affirmed their Unionist political credentials, ‘warmly’ discussing the ‘affairs of Ireland’ and praying that ‘God would give the Ulstermen victory’.294 Shortly after the Easter Rising in 1916, the Bolton women reaffirmed their interest in Irish politics and their connection with Ulster Protestants in their protest against Nationalists selling the ‘Green Flag’ of Ireland ‘without the Crown’ on St Patrick’s Day. The Bolton protest caught the attention of the Duchess of Abercorn, a staunch supporter of Unionism, who wrote to praise the actions of the Worshipful Mistress, Sister E. Fallows: ‘I am glad to see that though you live in England you are still a sound Ulster woman’.295 As we have seen above, Irish politics continued to be important to English Orangewomen after the Great War and into the 1920s and beyond. In framing the English Orange Order’s ‘We Stand By Ulster’ campaign, Louis Ewart made an explicit appeal to the ability of women to help defend Ulster. Orangewomen’s political influence had increased following their gaining the vote in 1918 and Ewart saw them as vital to the Unionist and, importantly, Protestant cause: Now that the women of England have the vote we must do all in our power to convince them that Ulster is fighting against Rome, is fighting for her very life. We appeal to every female member of the Orange Order to help in this campaign. Sisters, arm yourselves with facts and use your persuasive eloquence on your neighbours and your friends. It is surprising what you can do when you try.296

One of the key speakers in this tour of English towns was Maggie Ewart, who gave her ‘maiden speech’ in Workington, Cumbria, and ‘since then she has been the means of organising the ladies into working parties on behalf of Ulster’.297 Migration, diaspora and empire

The emphasis on Orangewomen’s political work for the cause of Ulster Unionism indicates the continuing traction of Irish politics for English Orangeism. While never matching the migration levels of Scotland or Canada, the character of the female Order in England was still shaped by the experience of migration, diaspora and empire. As we have seen, the English women’s Order was not an Irish Protestant migrant organisation to the same extent as their Scottish and Canadian sisters. However, the experience of migration was still keenly felt by some female lodges in England. Moreover, women’s lodges in England often had strong

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c­ onnections with their Orange counterparts across the globe. Female lodges in England, then, functioned on a similar diasporic level to those in Scotland and Canada: English Orangewomen were just as aware of their place within an interconnected Orange world. This Orange diaspora was fundamentally connected to the British Empire: the political campaigns analysed above involved women in concerted efforts to maintain the unity of a Protestant empire, and an imperial world view was central to Orangewomen in England. While migration did not shape the character of female Orangeism in England to quite the same degree as in Scotland, there were still some notable examples of English Orangewomen leaving for other parts of the country or the world. In several female lodges, members’ migration was marked by ceremonies that indicated the support offered by the Order to migrants and how, in losing members abroad, the nature of the lodges themselves was influenced by the process of migration. At the close of 1888, the women of Victoria FLOL No. 2 met in Liverpool to initiate a new member. This was a special meeting, though, because the new member was about to leave England and set sail for Canada. Mrs M. J. Gordon joined the Liverpool female lodge just prior to leaving for Toronto, to join her husband in their new life together across the Atlantic. Intriguingly, her husband was already the Worshipful Master of LOL No. 641 in Toronto and had, seemingly, returned to Liverpool to collect his wife. Once initiated into the Victoria lodge, the Gordons were sent on their way with ‘the good wishes of the sisters’. For Mrs Gordon, then, it was clearly important for her to join the Order before emigrating: being a member of a lodge had a direct migrant function, enabling the likes of Gordon to ease the difficulties of establishing a new life in an unfamiliar society. Furthermore, the Gordons announced their intention to set up female lodges in Toronto, underling in the importance of Orangeism to those moving abroad.298 Certain lodges developed a more sustained reputation for sending migrants across the globe. In Sheerness, the proximity of the female lodge to one of the busiest ports in southern England gave the sisters of the Daughters of William lodge a closer connection to the outside world. During their last meeting of 1888, the Worshipful Mistress of the lodge, Sister M. E. Scott, announced that she was leaving Sheerness for Belfast, on her way to more foreign climes.299 Her fellow sisters unanimously decided to hold a special meeting before she left England, where they bid her a fond farewell. Scott was presented with a ‘handsome album as a small token of love and esteem’ and was wished ‘much happiness in her new home’. This emotional support given to Scott as she was on the verge of embarking on a life-changing voyage was much appreciated. Scott thanked her sisters ‘heartily for their handsome gift, which she would

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treasure far beyond anything of the kind she had hitherto possessed.’ Scott then set sail for Belfast (on her way to joining her husband in the ‘north Pacific’) with the praise of her lodge, thanking her for ‘helping the glorious cause of Orangeism’, ringing in her ears’.300 The Orange Order’s migrant function was also underlined by other lodges. The Mary’s First FLOL No. 130 convened in Bournemouth at the beginning of 1920 to bid farewell to one of their members. Sister Fookes was on her way to New Zealand but, before her journey, was ‘under special emergency, admitted to the Purple Degree’.301 For Fookes, being raised to the highest degree of Orangeism was important before she left, as this would enhance her kudos within the New Zealand Order and ease entry into her new life. Members departing for nearer shores were also given fine send-offs. The former Worshipful Mistress of the Princess of Devon FLOL No. 17, Sister Symons, was treated to a grand departure by the members of the lodge on her leaving for London. Despite the short journey, Symons was still thanked for her ‘labours in the glorious’ cause. Symons was presented with ‘a beautiful inkstand, suitably engraved’ as a ‘token of love and gratitude’. When presenting this leaving gift to Symons, Sister Charlton emphasised the emotion of the occasion: ‘words could not convey what was uppermost in the heart, as one and all felt they were losing one whose place could not be easily filled’. Symons replied, thanking the sisters for the ‘kind appreciation of her labours’ and wishing ‘her old lodge God speed’.302 At the height of the Third Home Rule Bill crisis, the women of FLOL No. 96 in Bolton combined their warm discussion of ‘the affairs of Ireland’ with saying a fond farewell to one of their sisters. Sister Nurse Potter was presented with ‘an Orange collarette’ on her way across the water to Ireland.303 On her arrival in Londonderry, Potter wrote back to her Bolton lodge. In her letter, Potter combined personal affairs with details of events in Ireland, notifying ‘the members of her recent marriage in Ireland, also stating the movements of the Ulster Volunteers, of whose gallantry she gives great praise’.304 Potter’s communication with her old lodge emphasises how women used the Orange Order to facilitate a sense of diaspora, creating a connection between different ‘nodes’ of the Orange world that had been forged by migration. The actions of Potter and others helped create a social world that linked together different female lodges in a diasporic fashion. Through letters sent back to old lodges, return visits and the visits of other members from abroad, the Orangewomen thought diasporically and were aware of being part of an interconnected world of Orangeism. Given its status as a key naval port, Sheerness provided a key location for Orangewomen’s diasporic activity, in terms of communication with migrant members, the presence of visitors from across the world

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and helping to begin a new lodge. Following her move to Belfast, Sister Scott wrote back to her old lodge in the town ‘sending her warmest love and fraternal greetings’.305 A month later, she received a reply from the Daughters of William lodge, sending her, in an appropriation of the masculine language of the Order, the ‘fraternal greetings of the sisters’. During this same meeting, the women of the Sheerness lodge also referred to a relationship which they were establishing with Orange sisters on the other side of the world. The female Order in Sheerness struck up communication with male and female lodges in South Africa, and their meeting in March 1889 was also used to send ‘fraternal greetings … to the brethren and sisters of Simon’s Town, Cape of Good Hope.306 This relationship began in November 1888, when the Sheerness women played host to visitors from the Cape. At a joint celebration of 5 November and the landing of William of Orange at Brixham, the women and men of the Sheerness Orange Order welcomed visitors from Simon’s Town, ‘who gave an interesting account of the progress of Orangeism in that colony’.307 Six months later, the visitors wrote back to their friends in Sheerness. Clearly inspired by the example of the Daughters of William lodge, the brethren of both the Simon’s Town and Cape Town lodges wrote to the sisters, ‘stating their intention of opening female lodges at both places as soon as arrangements can be made’.308 Communication between the Sheerness women and South Africa continued, and by 1894 this exchange of letters had resulted in the ‘ladies of Capetown’ forming a women’s lodge.309 The Orangewomen of Sheerness were clearly acting in a diasporic fashion, making a connection with their sisters on the other side of the world and enabling them to transpose the social world of the Orange Order into the new environment of the Cape colony. This Orange communication and its diasporic function was clear to the men and women themselves, including those who emigrated from England. At a joint meeting of the Sons and Daughters of William in Sheerness, the two lodges gathered ‘to farewell several brethren leaving England for Australia’. Having drunk the migrant Orangemen’s health, the departing Brs Moore and Abbott thanked the assembled Orange crowd. They reflected on the organisation’s diasporic nature, ‘assuring them that when they arrived on the other side of the world they would unite with the Orange brethren of those parts in spreading the glorious doctrines and principles of the Reformation’.310 The women of Sheerness were not unique, however, and the diasporic function of the Orange Order had been fulfilled by female lodges in England since their inception. As we have seen, in the case of the first female lodges to be established in Scotland, there was considerable communication and exchange between women in the two Orange jurisdictions. In the spring of

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1872, the women of The Star of Progress FLOL No. 2 in Birkenhead were the welcome recipients of a letter from Glasgow. The Glaswegian women’s letter gave them ‘great satisfaction’, as they were asking for help from the Birkenhead lodge in setting up their own lodge and they promised to ‘help forward and spread the Order’.311 Shortly afterwards, the Excelsior Daughters of Levi FLOL No. 8 was opened in Glasgow, and they were deeply grateful for the help received from the Birkenhead women. The Deputy Mistress of the Glasgow lodge, Mrs Caldwell, gave great thanks to Sister Buckley, the Worshipful Mistress of the Birkenhead lodge, for ‘her communications in the Belfast Weekly News, whose communications had done a great amount of good, both in promoting the Order and encouraging the sisters in the path of duty’.312 The diasporic credentials of the Birkenhead women were also underlined by further communication with other Orange jurisdictions. Shortly after hearing from the women of Glasgow, the Birkenhead female lodge then received an application for a women’s lodge in New York, in the United States.313 The Birkenhead women then put this arrangement to the Grand Lodge of England, and once permission had been ‘kindly granted’, the Corresponding Secretary of FLOL No. 2, Br Collinson, contacted the New York sisters to make arrangements for the new lodge.314 At the beginning of August 1872, the Birkenhead women received confirmation from New York that their efforts had been successful and that a women’s lodge had been created in the USA.315 The diasporic connection between FLOL No. 2 (now based across the Mersey, in Liverpool) and New York continued into the 1890s. A special meeting of the lodge was held at the end of August 1890 in order to welcome their distinguished visitor from the USA, Sister M’Keown from the Princess of Orange LOL No. 6 in New York City. M’Keown entertained the Liverpool sisters with a ‘graphic account of Orangeism in the United States’, confirming Liverpool’s status as a transatlantic, imperial entrepôt.316 The diasporic position of the Orange Order and female lodges was experienced by other lodges, largely through visits either to or from other outposts of Orangeism. The women of the London lodges were, as we have seen, eager to promote the establishment of female Orangeism in Ireland. Meeting at the end of 1888, the Coronation Temperance lodge welcomed a new member, Mrs Susanna Mitchell from Ireland. Mitchell’s purpose in being initiated into the London lodge was to enable her to open women’s lodges in Ireland on her return home.317 Two years later, the women of the Coronation Temperance lodge convened a special meeting in order to give a ‘hearty welcome’ to Br Abigail MP, from Sydney, Australia. According to the sisters, Abigail’s presence underscored the diasporic nature of the organisation: having him visit the London ­women’s lodge

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was ‘a convincing proof that oceans cannot sever the bonds of unity that exist between brothers and sisters in the Order’.318 On the south coast of England, when the Orangewomen of Bournemouth opened a new lodge in 1919, they were joined by representatives of female lodges from ‘Birmingham, Portsmouth and even Canada’.319 Equally, visits made abroad by English Orangewomen also served to emphasise these diasporic connections. In Manchester, Sisters Leach and Holmes paid a visit to Newcastle, Co. Down, in 1920 for the Twelfth of July celebrations and to meet the local women’s lodge. The two travelling sisters proposed that, on their next visit to Northern Ireland, they would ‘present a Bible to the first Female Lodge in Newcastle’.320 These diasporic connections between Orangewomen were also recognised and articulated at the highest level of Orange governance. From the very beginnings of female lodges in England, Grand Lodge was aware of women’s position in the broader Orange diaspora. Speaking at the Grand Lodge meeting in 1878, the Grand Secretary, Richard Davis, praised the great progress being made by female lodges in England. Davis had recently received a telegram from a new women’s lodge in Canada, the Princess Louise Benevolent Local Orange Lodge No. 1, who had been inspired by the example of the English Orangewomen.321 During the 1920s, the Grand Lodge of England worked to standardise the organisation and ritual of female Orangeism across the different jurisdictions. English Orangewomen were conscious of their connection to Orange sisters in other parts of the world, and were aware of how the status of women within each Grand Lodge varied. So, in 1914, we find the Mona women’s lodge on the Isle of Man making a plea for women’s greater recognition and a Grand Lodge of their own ‘to be worked something on the likes of the Canadian Ladies’ Lodges’.322 Efforts to formalise relations between female lodges in different parts of the world were taken up by the Grand Lodge of England in 1923. During their debate about women’s elevation to the Purple Degree, the Grand Lodge discussed how they could use the Lecture already in use in Scotland, ‘so bringing two of the three Female Branches in these Isles into line’.323 Two years later, Grand Lodge sought to create greater co-operation between the Orangewomen of England and Ireland. The English Grand Lodge established ‘a working agreement between the Association of Loyal Orangewomen and ourselves’, ensuring that the annual passwords for women’s lodges would be the same in both countries, that discipline of one lodge would be accepted by another, and that each jurisdiction would accept transfers between lodges. The ‘fraternal bonds between our Irish sisters and ourselves’ were further strengthened by agreements with the Orange Order in Canada and the United States.324 During the visit of

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Sister Mrs Adrain, Deputy Grand Mistress of British America, and Sister Mrs Mary Henry, Supreme Grand Mistress of the United States, the Grand Lodge in 1926 extended the ‘agreement for mutual co-operation’, bringing the most significant component of the Orange world into line with the practice of the English sisters.325 The Orangewomen of England, then, would have felt that these institutional innovations gave them a strong diasporic connection with their Orange sisters across the globe. Moreover, this sense of being part of a diaspora related to, and was underpinned by, the British Empire. We have already seen how Orangewomen’s activism in England was inflected with imperial sentiment, especially in their commitment to upholding Protestantism and Unionism. Moreover, through relations with female lodges in the United States, this sense of global connection extended to a broader British world.326 Again, while not exhibiting quite the enthusiasm for empire as their sisters in Scotland and Canada, the Orangewomen of England still saw the British Empire as the ideological glue which held their world view together. Just like their Canadian and Scottish sisters, female Orange lodges in England made frequent use of the symbols and theatre of empire to perform Britishness. The St Helens’ female lodge celebrated their anniversary in 1896 with a ‘tea party and concert’ at the local Conservative Club. The room was decorated with ‘Orange colours and banners’ and the sisters took it in turns to sing suitably patriotic songs. Sister Emily Lee sang ‘A maiden pined by Derry’s Walls’, while Br Ormesher gave a fine rendition of ‘Britannia, pride of the ocean’.327 During the Preston Orange Order’s annual parade in June 1933, the procession was headed by a group representing ‘England’s greatness’, which included Miss May Gladwyn dressed as Britannia.328 Equally, the institutional support given by Grand Lodge to the English Orangewomen to work more closely with their sisters across the globe was framed imperially. At the 1930 meeting of Grand Lodge, the proposed ‘Ladies’ Imperial Grand Council’ was discussed. Sisters representing the ‘five Grand Jurisdictions’ had petitioned the English Grand Lodge, who gave their approval to a scheme which would bring greater uniformity to Orangewomen’s practice throughout the world. English Orangewomen, then, were strongly influenced by the Orange Order’s place within a British world that was committed to empire and Protestantism. Migration and diaspora were important to the female lodges of England, connecting them to their Orange sisters around the globe. What stands out, however, regarding the experience of women in the English Orange Order is the emphasis on religiosity: the Orangewomen of England were mobilised to defend the Protestant nature of English

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politics and society, and it was the debates over anti-Ritualism and the Anglican Church which most clearly account for the growth and success of female Orangeism in certain parts of England at key points of religious controversy. As our analysis moves to Scotland, we see this commitment to empire and Protestantism given a far more distinctively Irish tinge, reflecting the importance of Glasgow and the Central Belt of Scotland as a destination for Irish Protestant migrants during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Notes

1 ‘Grand Opening of the Ulster Hut’, The Orange Standard, February 1917, pp. 21–6; ‘Trent Bridge Pavilion Hospital’, Nottinghamshire Evening Post, 16 January 1917, p. 2. 2 For further discussion of the significance of William’s proclamation in 1688 to the Orange Order, see J. McConnel, ‘The 1688 landing of William of Orange at Torbay: numerical dates and temporal understanding in early modern England, Journal of Modern History, 84:3 (2012), 539–71. 3 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting. 4 F. Neal, ‘Manchester origins of the English Orange Order’, Manchester Region History Review, 4:2 (1991–92), 13. 5 MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, pp. 106–8. 6 Neal, ‘Manchester origins of the English Orange Order’. 7 On early nineteenth-century Loyalism in Lancashire and its connections with Orangeism, see K. Navickas, Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 109–29; on the continuing traction of popular Conservatism during the nineteenth century, see the overview by M. Roberts, ‘Popular Conservatism in Britain, 1832–1914’, Parliamentary History, 26:3 (2007), 387–410. 8 For women’s involvement in organisations such as these, see D. Thackery, ‘Home and politics: women and Conservative activism in early ­twentieth-century Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 49:4 (2010), 826–48. 9 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Temperance Institute, London Street, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 6th and 7th, 1910 (Manchester, 1910). 10 MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, p. 97. 11 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 38. 12 Navickas, Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, p. 80. 13 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 42. 14 Grand Orange Lodge of England, A List of Orange Lodges under the Superintendance of the Grand Lodge of England, held at The Spread Eagle, Manchester up to June 26 1811 (n.p., n.d.). 15 House of Commons 1835, Report from the Select Committee appointed to

84 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

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inquire into the origin, nature, extent and tendency of orange institutions in Great Britain and the colonies; with the minutes of evidence, appendix and index, (605), pp. 112–13. Ibid., p. 190. For more on these cultures of informal female politics, see Gleadle, Borderline Citizens. ‘Stourbridge’, Worcestershire Chronicle, 25 March 1840, p. 3. ‘The Twelfth in the Provinces’, Freeman’s Journal, 14 July 1848, p. 2. ‘Orange “Razzia” in the North’, Freeman’s Journal, 17 July 1849, p. 3. ‘Opening of New Lodges’, Orange and Blue Banner, November 1853, p. 239. ‘Grand Orange Demonstration’, Belfast Weekly News, 6 August 1870. ‘Rossendale’, Preston Guardian, 9 November 1850. Grand Protestant Association of the Loyal Orange Institution of Great Britain, Reports of the Proceedings of the Grand Committee of the Above Association 1850 (Bradford, 1850). Orange and Blue Banner, June 1851, pp. 108–9. MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, p. 107. ‘Orange Intelligence’, Orange and Blue Banner, October 1851, p. 205. Don MacRaild argues that the Orangewomen of the 1850s were ‘attending dinners and teas, not parading’. See MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, p. 107. Preston Chronicle, 4 October 1851. ‘Orange Intelligence’, Orange and Blue Banner, April 1852, p. 340. Preston Guardian, 17 April 1852. ‘Orange Festival at Farington’, Orange and Blue Banner, December 1852. Leeds Intelligencer, 28 May 1853. Bradford was the centre of the 1850s revival of Orangeism, being the headquarters of the Grand Protestant Association, led by the indomitable Squire Auty. It is notable that this is the only reference to a women’s GPA lodge in Bradford, compared to several in Lancashire, a reversal of the pattern of male GPA lodges, where Yorkshire was the strongest redoubt of Orangeism during this period. For more on the GPA, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 49–53. ‘Orange Intelligence’, Orange and Protestant Banner, August 1853, p. 173. ‘Orangeism and Protestantism in Lancashire’, Orange and Protestant Banner, January 1857, p. 543. For the growth of the Orange Order more broadly during this period, see MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, pp. 101–2. London Daily News, 31 July 1867. ‘A Slight Taste of Orangeism in London’, Freeman’s Journal, 26 July 1868. ‘Female Orange Associates’, Belfast Weekly News, 4 November 1871. ‘Birkenhead’, Belfast Weekly News, 9 November 1872; ‘Star of Progress’, Belfast Weekly News, 7 December 1872; ‘Birkenhead’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 March 1872; ‘Female Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 June 1872; ‘Birkenhead’, Belfast Weekly News, 20 July 1872; ‘Female Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 24 August 1872.

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40 Whitehaven News, 15 March 1875, quoted in MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 132. See also MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, p. 107. 41 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in Manchester, on Wednesday, July 4th, 1877 (London, 1878), p. 109. 42 ‘Pride of Old Brunswick Female Lodge’, Belfast Weekly News, 16 September 1876. 43 ‘Female Orange Lodge Tea Party at All Saints’, Preston Guardian, 21 October 1876. 44 MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, pp. 101–3. 45 See E. Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism 1876–1906 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); D. Jackson, Popular Opposition to Irish Home Rule in Edwardian Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009); MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, pp. 108–9. For the continuing importance of religion more broadly in British society, see J. Wolffe, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland, 1843–1945 (London: Routledge, 2002). 46 These figures are derived from the Loyal Orange Institution of England’s Grand Lodge Reports, 1877–1939. As Don MacRaild points out, using lodge warrants as a proxy for the actual numerical strength of the Order is problematic, as some lodges did not report to the Grand Lodge and others held on to warrants with little sign of associational life – ‘Hardly the statistician’s dream, the Orange Order was a shadowy thing, never fully illuminated’, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 62. However, these lodge warrant figures do provide a relatively consistent set of data with which to measure change over time. 47 MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, p. 107. For more on Col. Saunderson, see A. Jackson, Colonel Edward Saunderson: Land and Loyalty in Victorian Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 48 ‘Female Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 June 1886; Birmingham Daily Post, 11 June 1886. 49 ‘Female Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 June 1886. 50 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Public Hall, Wigan, on Wednesday, July 6th 1881 (London, 1881), p. 16. 51 Ibid., p. 109. 52 ‘Meeting of Women’s Orange Organisation’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 January 1887. 53 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 May 1893. 54 C. G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800–2000 (London: Routledge, 2009). For the significance of Ritualism in Victorian Britain, and the battles against it, see N. Yates, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain, 1830–1910 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). 55 ‘Female Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 June 1886; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange

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Lodge, Held in Westminster Palace Hotel, London, on Tuesday, July 18th, 1882 (London, 1882). 56 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Protestant Hall, Hull, on Wednesday, July 4th, 1883 (Manchester, 1883); Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Lecture Hall, Crown Hotel, Birmingham, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 5th and 6th, 1899 (Manchester, 1899); Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, Held at the Temperance Institute, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, 5th and 6th July 1939 (n.p., 1939). 57 ‘Late Miss Aldwell’, Portsmouth Evening News, 7 April 1931. 58 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in Westminster Palace Hotel, London, on Tuesday, July 18th, 1882 (London, 1882), p. 93. Aldwell was an Evangelical critic of the Oxford Movement, publishing the pamphlet Tractarianism Exposed, and Proved to be False, by the Doctrine of the Church of England, and the Word of God. Other Errors in Divinity Refuted: A Sermon Preached in St. Luke’s Church, Landport, on Sunday Evening, Nov. 13th, 1864 (Landport, 1864). Intriguingly, an obituary notice for his son (Rev. Basil Silver Adwell) alludes to the Irish origins of the father, which may also explain his interest in the Orange Order. See Gospel Magazine, November 1890, p. 690. 59 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in Westminster Palace Hotel, London, on Tuesday, July 18th, 1882 (London, 1882), p. 14. 60 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Protestant Hall, Hull, on Wednesday, July 4th, 1883 (Manchester, 1883). 61 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Assembly Room, Grand Hotel, Bristol, on Wednesday, July 1st, 1885 (Manchester, 1885), p. 14. 62 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 October 1890; The ‘Sailors’ Rest’ in Sheerness was one of a number of establishments founded for sailors by Agnes Weston. See A. Kennerley, ‘Weston, Dame Agnes Elizabeth (1840– 1918)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), available at www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36842, accessed 29 October 2014. 63 F. Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 184. 64 Figures derived from Grand Lodge reports, 1877–1939. These figures include those for the Bootle Province, excluded from the figures (43 FLOLs) in MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 133. 65 Neal, Sectarian Violence, especially chapters 8 and 9. 66 G. T. I. Machin, ‘The last Victorian anti-ritualism campaign, 1895–1906’, Victorian Studies, 25:3 (1982), 277. 67 Neal, Sectarian Violence, pp. 198, 227.

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68 Ibid., pp. 200–1. 69 Ibid., pp. 206–7. 70 See M. Wellings, ‘The first protestant martyr of the twentieth century: the life and significance of John Kensit, 1853–1902’, Studies in Church History, 30 (1993), 347–58. 71 ‘Death of Bro. Pastor Geo. Wise’, The Orange Standard, January 1918, p. 8. 72 Ibid., p. 227. 73 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in Manchester, on Wednesday, July 4th, 1877 (London, 1878), p. 109. 74 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 11 February 1888. 75 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 4 May 1895; ‘Loyal Orange Institution of Great Britain’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 September 1895. 76 ‘Loyal Orange Institution of Great Britain’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 September 1895. 77 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 March 1895. 78 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 20 June 1896. 79 ‘Church Parade at Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 July 1896. 80 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 November 1890. 81 On Randolph Churchill and Ulster Unionism, see R. F. Foster, ‘To the Northern Counties Station: Lord Randolph Churchill and the prelude to the Orange Card’, in F. S. L. Lyons and R. A. J. Hawkins (eds), Ireland Under the Union: Varieties of Tension (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 237–87. 82 ‘St Helens’, Belfast Weekly News, 1 June 1895. 83 ‘Belgravia, London’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 January 1889. 84 P. D. Chapman, ‘The Whole Gospel for the Whole World: A History of the Bible School Movement Within American Pentecostalism, 1880–1920’, unpublished PhD thesis (Michigan State University, 2008), p. 99. 85 ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 31 December 1887. 86 ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 January 1887. 87 ‘Belgravia, London’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 January 1889. 88 Ibid. 89 ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 14 July 1888. 90 ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 14 December 1889; ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 15 March 1890. 91 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Allan St. Mission Hall, Douglas, Isle of Man, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 8th and 9th, 1914 (Birmingham, 1914), p. 72; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Lodge Held in the Grand Hotel, Bristol, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 7th and 8th, 1915 (Birmingham, 1915), p. 104; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, on Wednesday and Thursday 4th and 5th July, 1923 (Birmingham, n.d.), p. 70. 92 On Chamberlain and the Liberal Unionists, see I. Cawood, The Liberal

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Unionist Party: A History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012). For the broader political context, see E. H. H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: Politics, Economics and Ideology of the Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London: Routledge, 2005). 93 P. Sutherland, ‘Sectarianism and evangelicalism in Birmingham and Liverpool, 1850–2010’, in J. Wolffe (ed.), Protestant–Catholic Conflict from the Reformation to the 21st Century: The Dynamics of Religious Difference (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 138–9. For more on Murphy and the Orange Order, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 187– 92, and W. L. Arnstein, ‘The Murphy Riots: a Victorian dilemma’, Victorian Studies, 19:1 (1975), 51–71. 94 Sutherland, ‘Sectarianism and evangelicalism’, p. 144. 95 Neal, Sectarian Violence, pp. 212–13, 226–7. Neal claims that the police thought that the missile which killed Kensit was actually intended for Ewart, ‘who was bitterly disliked by local Catholics’ (p. 212). 96 ‘Bro. Louis A. Ewart’, The Orange Standard, September 1914, p. 130. Ewart was also a leading proponent of the Orange Order in West Africa, and became the representative for Togoland at the League of Nations during the 1920s. 97 The National Archives (TNA), RG14/17278, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1911. 98 ‘The City LOL No. 855’, The Orange Standard, February 1915, p. 32. 99 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Allan St. Mission Hall, Douglas, Isle of Man, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 8th and 9th, 1914 (Birmingham, 1914), p. 12. 100 ‘Editorial’, The Orange Standard, January 1920, p. 5. 101 ‘Ladies of Ulster, LOL 120’, The Orange Standard, December 1916, p. 192. For more on such street war shrines, see the footage of Queen Mary visiting one during the war: ‘Queen Mary decorates street shrine’, British Pathé, 1914–18, available at www.britishpathe.com/video/queen-mary-­ decorates-street-shrine, accessed 30 October 2014. 102 ‘Ladies of Ulster, FLOL 120’, The Orange Standard, January 1917, p. 16. 103 ‘The Grace Female LOL 121’, The Orange Standard, May 1915, p. 80. 104 ‘No Compromise No Surrender FLOL 96’, The Orange Standard, February 1917, p. 35. 105 ‘Grand Secretary Opens Important Ladies’ Lodge in Westminster’, The Orange Standard, June 1920, p. 68; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Grand Hotel Birmingham, on Wednesday and Thursday, 7th and 8th July 1920 (Birmingham, 1920), p. 20. 106 See J. D. Maiden, National Religion and the Prayer Book Controversy, 1927– 1928 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009). 107 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England, held at The Hall, 179 Lancaster Road, Preston, Lancs, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 4th and 5th, 1928 (n.p., 1928), p. 19. 108 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England,

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109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

133 134 135 136 137 138

held at the Congregation Church Hall, Lisgard Road, Seacombe, Wallasey, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 3rd and 4th 1935 (n.p., 1935). For the centenary of the Oxford Movement, see A. Atherstone, ‘Evangelicals and the Oxford Movement centenary’, Journal of Religious History, 37:1 (2013), 98–117. MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 138. For the idea of a ‘feminine public sphere’, see Smitley, The Feminine Public Sphere, and in an Irish context, D. A. J. MacPherson, Women and the Irish Nation: Gender, Culture and Irish Identity, 1890–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). MacPherson and MacRaild, ‘Sisters of the brotherhood’, 43. ‘Orange Intelligence’, Orange and Blue Banner, March 1853. Orange and Protestant Banner, August 1855, p. 169. Belfast Weekly News, 7 June 1890. ‘Heywood’, Belfast Weekly News, 20 December 1890. ‘Heywood’, Belfast Weekly News, 19 September 1891. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 11 February 1893. ‘Mr Disraeli’s Opinion of the Orange Order’, Belfast News-letter, 8 November 1887, p. 7. ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 31 December 1887. ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 January 1888. ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 1 December 1888; ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 8 December 1888. ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 22 December 1888. ‘Belgravia’, Belfast Weekly News, 13 September 1890. ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 22 November 1890. ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 3 January 1891. ‘Woolwich’, Belfast Weekly News, 4 March 1893. ‘Woolwich District’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 March 1894. ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 May 1894. ‘Plumstead (London)’, Belfast Weekly News, 28 December 1895. ‘London District No. 13’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 January 1896. ‘The Grace Female LOL 121’, The Orange Standard, May 1915, p. 80. ‘Northwestern Province, Barrow District’, The Orange Standard, August 1917, p. 129. ‘No Surrender FLOL 115’, The Orange Standard, May 1919, p. 64. Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, 13 May 1911. Ibid., May 1921. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Town Hall, Westminster, on Wednesday, July 21st, 1886 (Manchester, 1886), p. 19. Emphasis in original. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 August 1895. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Constitutional Club, Liverpool, on Wednesday, July 3, 1889 (Manchester, 1889), p. 22.

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139 ‘Belgravia’, Belfast Weekly News, 23 March 1889. For more details of the Purple Degree, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 82–4. 140 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Constitutional Club, Liverpool, on Wednesday, July 3, 1889 (Manchester, 1889), p. 123. 141 Belfast Weekly News, 7 June 1890. 142 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Constitutional Club, Liverpool, on Wednesday, July 3, 1889 (Manchester, 1889), p. 22; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Borough Hall, Newport, Isle of Wight, on Wednesday, July 2, 1890 (Manchester, 1890), p. 14; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Public Hall, Preston, on Wednesday, July 1st, 1891 (Manchester, 1891), p. 15. 143 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Westminster Town Hall, London, on Monday and Tuesday, July 23rd and 24th, 1894 (Manchester, 1894). 144 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 11 August 1894. 145 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Town Hall, Gateshead, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 1st and 2nd, 1903 (Manchester, 1903), p. 27. 146 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Town Hall, Barrow-in-Furness, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 6th and 7th, 1904 (Manchester, 1904), p. 13. 147 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in St George’s Hall, Liverpool, On Wednesday and Thursday, July 5th and 6th, 1905 (Manchester, 1905), p. 14; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Town Hall Douglas, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 4th and 5th, 1906 (Manchester, 1906), p. 11. 148 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at Holborn Restaurant, Kingsway, London WC1, on Wednesday and Thursday 6th and 7th July 1921 (Birmingham, 1921), p. 29. 149 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at Crown Hotel, Newcastle-on-Tyne, on Wednesday and Thursday 5th and 6th July, 1922 (Birmingham, 1922), p. 11. 150 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, on Wednesday and Thursday 4th and 5th July, 1923 (Birmingham, n.d.), p. 14. 151 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Religious Institute, Deansgate, Manchester, on Wednesday and Thursday 9th and 10th July 1924 (Birmingham, n.d.), pp. 15, 22. 152 Ibid., p. 25. 153 Ibid., p. 30. 154 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England

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156

157 158

159

160 161

162 163

Held at the Town Hall, Bootle, Liverpool, on Wednesday and Thursday 8th and 9th July 1925 (Birmingham, n.d.), p. 15. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Grand Orange Lodge of England, Held at The Mechanics’ Institute, Bradford, Yorks., on Wednesday and Thursday, 10th and 11th July 1929 (n.p., 1929), p. 24; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of England, Held at The Methodist Church, Ebrington Street, Plymouth, on Wednesday and Thursday, 9th and 10th July 1930 (n.p., 1930), p. 25. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of England, Held at The Christ Church Institute, on Wednesday and Thursday, 8th and 9th July 1936 (n.p., 1936), p. 22; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of Proceedings of the Annual Meeting in the Coronation Year of their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Held at The Orange Hall, University Road, Bootle, on Wednesday and Thursday, 7th and 8th July 1937 (n.p., 1937), p. 21. It has been beyond the scope of this book to investigate further the potential multi-generational Irish background of these Orangewomen. Of course, the problems of using the nineteenth century censuses as a precise guide to women’s occupational status, and therefore their social class background, are well known. See E. Higgs, ‘Women, occupations and work in the nineteenth century censuses’, History Workshop Journal, 23 (1987), 59–80, and, more recently, S. McGeevor, ‘How well did the nineteenth century census record women’s “regular” employment in England and Wales? A case study of Hertfordshire in 1851’, History of the Family, 19:4 (2014), 489–512. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Constitutional Club, Liverpool, on Wednesday, July 3, 1889 (Manchester, 1889), p. 65; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Albany Galleries, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 20th and 21st, 1892 (Manchester, 1892), p. 60. TNA RG12/3436, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales 1891. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Borough Hall, Newport, Isle of Wight, on Wednesday, July 2, 1890 (Manchester, 1890), p. 58; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Beaconsfield Hall, Blackpool, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 1st and 2nd, 1908 (Manchester, 1908), p. 59. TNA RG12/3053, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1891. On the significance of the Orange Order’s skilled working-class membership in the north of England, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 112–14.

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164 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Temperance Institute, London Street, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 6th and 7th, 1910 (Manchester, 1910), p. 90; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Darwen Provident Co-Operative Society’s Assembly Rooms, The Green, Darwen, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 5th and 6th, 1911 (Manchester, 1911), p. 90. 165 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Public Hall, Preston, on Wednesday, July 1st, 1891 (Manchester, 1891), p. 26; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Albany Galleries, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 20th and 21st, 1892 (Manchester, 1892), p. 24. 166 TNA RG12/2923, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1891. Interestingly, Mary Ann’s son had been born in Ireland, suggesting that she had returned back home at some stage during her adult married life. 167 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in Westminster Palace Hotel, London, on Tuesday, July 18th, 1882 (London, 1882), p. 98; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Lodge Held in the Town Hall, Portsmouth, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 3rd and 4th, 1907 (Manchester, 1907), p. 17. 168 Ibid.; ‘Orangeism in London’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 January 1890. 169 TNA RG12/870, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1891. 170 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Temperance Institute, London Street, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 6th and 7th, 1910 (Manchester, 1910), p. 51; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Methodist Church, Ebrington Street, Plymouth, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 9th and 10th 1930 (n.p., 1930), p. 45. 171 TNA RG14/22975, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1911. 172 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Grand Hotel, Birmingham, on Wednesday, July 7th, 1880 (London, 1880), p. 97; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Public Hall, Wigan, on Wednesday, July 6th 1881 (London, 1881), p. 103; TNA RG11/4196, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1881. 173 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Public Hall, Wigan, on Wednesday, July 6th

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174

175

176 177

178

179

180 181

1881 (London, 1881), p. 103; TNA RG11/4230, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1881. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Cheetham Conservative Club, Manchester, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 7th and 8th, 1909 (Manchester, 1909), p. 46; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Temperance Institute, London Street, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 6th and 7th, 1910 (Manchester, 1910), p. 39; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Religious Institute, Deansgate, Manchester, on Wednesday and Thursday 9th and 10th July 1924 (Birmingham, n.d.), p. 24. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Town Hall, Gateshead-on-Tyne, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 1st and 2nd, 1896 (Manchester, 1896), p. 85; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in Exeter Hall, London, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 3rd and 4th, 1901 (Manchester, 1901), p. 81. TNA RG13/2446, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1901. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Darwen Provident Co-Operative Society’s Assembly Rooms, The Green, Darwen, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 5th and 6th, 1911 (Manchester, 1911), p. 42; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Old Town Hall, Barrow-in-Furness, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 2nd and 3rd, 1913 (Manchester, 1913), p. 51; TNA RG14/24153, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1911. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Temperance Institute, London Street, Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 6th and 7th, 1910 (Manchester, 1910), p. 94; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Old Town Hall, Barrow-inFurness, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 2nd and 3rd, 1913 (Manchester, 1913), p. 103; TNA RG14/13045, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1911. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Exchange, Blackburn, on Wednesday, July 6th, 1887 (Manchester, 1887), p. 103; Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge Held in the Gordon Saloon, Holborn Restaurant, London, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 2nd and 3rd, 1912 (Manchester, 1912), p. 75. TNA RG12/855, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1891. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in Exeter Hall, London, on Wednesday and

94 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201

202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211

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Thursday, July 3rd and 4th, 1901 (Manchester, 1901), p. 96; TNA RG13/4892, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1901. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in the Public Hall, Preston, on Wednesday, July 1st, 1891 (Manchester, 1891), p. 98; TNA RG12/722, Census Enumerators’ Books, Census of England and Wales, 1891. ‘Rossendale’, Preston Guardian, 9 November 1850. ‘Female Orange Lodge Tea Party’, Preston Guardian, 21 October 1876. ‘Plymouth District’, Belfast Weekly News, 31 December 1887. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 9 August 1890. ‘Plumstead’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 June 1895. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 20 June 1896. ‘Loyal Orangewomen’, Portsmouth Evening News, 16 December 1932. ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 26 May 1888. ‘Belgravia’, Belfast Weekly News, 13 October 1890. ‘Belgravia’, Belfast Weekly News, 11 August 1888. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 September 1896. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 June 1893. ‘Plymouth’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 January 1895. See MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 200–41. Ibid., p. 206. MacRaild, The Irish Diaspora in Britain, p. 107. ‘Female Orange Associates’, Belfast Weekly News, 4 November 1871. For forms of maternity benefit provided by friendly societies during the nineteenth century, see A. A. Rusnock and V. E. Dietz, ‘Defining women’s sickness and work: female friendly societies in England, 1780–1830’, Journal of Women’s History, 24:1 (2012), 60–85. ‘Female Orange Lodge in Whitehaven’, Edinburgh Evening News, 29 March 1875, p. 4. MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 132. ‘Kidderminster’, Belfast Weekly News, 4 March 1893. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 May 1896. ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 13 June 1896. ‘Orangemen’s Bazaar at Blackburn’, Blackburn Standard, 31 October 1891. ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 6 September 1890. For the importance of claiming physical, and consequently political and ideological, space to the Orange Order, see McFarland, ‘Marching from the margins’. Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, 11 May 1907. Cameron, Worshipful Master of LOL 339 Monkton True Blues, was returned in the 1901 census as a 55-year-old Irish-born shipyard driller, married with no children living at home. See Census 1901; Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, passim; LOL 339, Minutes, 1906–11. ‘Hebburn. Rose of Hebburn F.L.O.L. 102’, Belfast Weekly News, 16 September 1909, p. 10.

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212 See, for example, Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, 23 August 1913. A piece in Wallsend Herald and Advertiser, 15 March 1912, places her at a political meeting of the Primrose League. 213 Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, 10 February 1912. 214 A rather successful social event organised for Christmas 1911 by Jarrow and Hebburn’s Temperance lodge, LOL 812, raised £3 and so quadrupled the treasurer’s money in hand. LOL 812 James Gibson Memorial, Hebburn, Minutes, 28 January 1911. 215 Ibid., 11 May 1912. 216 Ibid. Thomas Rowan was a long-standing Orangeman and member and several times Worshipful Master of LOL 432 Jarrow Purple Heroes. In 1901, he was returned in the census as a 41-year-old Irish-born steel smelter who was married with eight children. See Census 1901; Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, passim; also LOL 432, Minutes, 1904–18, where Rowan is returned as an office holder or committee man in each of these fifteen years. 217 Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, 11 May 1912. 218 Ibid. 219 Ibid. 220 Ibid. 221 Ibid., 8 February 1919. 222 Ibid. 223 Ibid., 5 December 1919. 224 Ibid., 14 February, 13 March 1920. 225 Ibid., 13 March 1920. 226 This was announced at a special meeting of the district. Jarrow and Hebburn District (No. 46), Minutes, 13 March 1920. 227 See P. Hollis, Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government, 1865–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), and, more recently, E. J. Yeo (ed.), Radical Femininity: Women’s Self-Representation in the Public Sphere (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). Graham Walker remarks on the supreme organisational skills that women brought to the Orange movement, and it would appear that the ladies of Tyneside were no different. See Walker, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland between the wars’, 203. 228 See P. M. Thane, ‘What difference did the vote make? Women in public and private life in Britain since 1918’, Historical Research, 76:192 (2003), 269–70. 229 ‘The Patriotic Fund’, Orange and Protestant Banner, April 1855, p. 77. 230 ‘The Patriotic Fund’, Orange and Protestant Banner, March 1855, p. 61. 231 ‘The Patriotic Fund’, Orange and Protestant Banner, April 1855, p. 77. 232 ‘Southsea’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 December 1887. 233 Portsmouth Evening News, 1 May 1894, p. 2. 234 McGaughey, Ulster’s Men, p. 108. 235 ‘From the Emden’s Destroyer’, The Orange Standard, February 1915, p. 17. 236 ‘A Word to Orangewomen’, The Orange Standard, October 1914, p. 155.

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237 ‘Grace FLOL 121’, The Orange Standard, November 1915, p. 176. 238 ‘Ladies of Ulster FLOL 120’, The Orange Standard, October 1914, p. 159. 239 ‘Kirkdales Glory Female LOL 80’, The Orange Standard, October 1914, p. 158. 240 ‘Orange War Relief Fund’, The Orange Standard, December 1914, p. 191. 241 ‘Grand Secretary at Work’, The Orange Standard, November 1915, p. 174. 242 ‘Bolton FLOL 96’, The Orange Standard, December 1915, p. 192. 243 ‘Grand Secretary’s Report’, The Orange Standard, August 1916, p. 120; ‘Brethren, a Word with You’, The Orange Standard, November 1916, p. 159. 244 Ibid. 245 ‘Devonport District’, The Orange Standard, April 1916, p. 64. 246 ‘Orange Ladies Entertain Wounded Soldiers to Tea’, The Orange Standard, March 1917, p. 45; J. Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the First World War (London: Reaktion, 1996). 247 ‘Manchester Province’, The Orange Standard, September 1916, p. 144. 248 ‘Ulster Division Orangemen Entertained by Bolton Lodges’, The Orange Standard, October 1916, p. 156. 249 ‘No Compromise, No Surrender, FLOL 96’, The Orange Standard, February 1917, p. 35. 250 ‘Ladies of Ulster FLOL 120’, The Orange Standard, October 1916, p. 160; ‘Ulster Wounded in English Hospitals’, The Orange Standard, December 1916, p. 187. 251 ‘Our Orange Ward’, The Orange Standard, January 1917, p. 12; ‘Lady Bruce’, The Orange Standard, February 1917, p. 25. 252 ‘Red Cross Hospital’, The Orange Standard, October 1916, p. 156. 253 ‘Lady Roberts FLOL 124’, The Orange Standard, December 1916, p. 192. 254 ‘Editorial’, The Orange Standard, January 1917, p. 4. 255 ‘Orange Ward’, The Orange Standard, January 1917, pp. 9, 11. 256 ‘Trent Bridge Pavilion Hospital’, Nottingham Evening Post, 16 January 1917, p. 2; ‘Funds Urgently Needed’, The Orange Standard, February 1917, p. 25. 257 ‘Grand Opening of the “Ulster Hut” and Orange Ward’, The Orange Standard, January 1917, p. 21. 258 ‘Orange Ward Notes’, The Orange Standard, April 1917, p. 64. 259 ‘Grand Opening of the “Ulster Hut” and Orange Ward’, The Orange Standard, January 1917, p. 22; ‘Orange Ward Notes’, The Orange Standard, May 1917, p. 70. 260 ‘Grand Opening of the “Ulster Hut” and Orange Ward’, The Orange Standard, January 1917, p. 25. 261 ‘Orange Ward Notes’, The Orange Standard, March 1917, p. 45. 262 Ibid., pp. 45, 70. 263 ‘Orange Ward Notes’, The Orange Standard, July 1917, p. 106. 264 Ibid., p. 91. 265 ‘Orange Ward and Hut Fund’, The Orange Standard, December 1917, p. 187. 266 ‘Orange War Memorial Fund’, The Orange Standard, September 1917, p. 140.

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267 ‘Loyal Orange Institution £20,000 War Memorial Fund’, The Orange Standard, September 1917, p. 142. The location of such an obviously Orange institution in Nottingham may be explained by the support lent by the Unionists of the city to anti-Home-Rule campaigns prior to the First World War. See Jackson, Popular Opposition to Irish Home Rule in Edwardian Britain, pp. 167–8. 268 ‘An English Orange Home’, The Orange Standard, June 1918, p. 91. 269 ‘“Hands off Ulster” Campaign’, The Orange Standard, October 1919, p. 123. 270 ‘English Orphanage Fund’, The Orange Standard, April 1920, p. 41; ‘EyeOpeners’, The Orange Standard, May 1920, p. 50. 271 ‘“No Surrender” FLOL 115’, The Orange Standard, June 1920, p. 69; ‘Our Orphanage’, The Orange Standard, July 1920, p. 80. 272 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Grand Hotel Birmingham, on Wednesday and Thursday, 7th and 8th July 1920 (Birmingham, 1920), p. 16. 273 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at The Hall, 179 Lancaster Rd., Preston, Lancs, on Wednesday and Thursday, 4th and 5th July 1928 (n.p., 1928), p. 20. 274 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Methodist Church, Ebrington Street, Plymouth, on Wednesday and Thursday, 9th and 10th July 1930 (n.p., 1930), pp. 21–2. 275 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Orange Hall, University Road, Bootle, on Wednesday and Thursday, 6th and 7th July 1932 (n.p., 1932), p. 15. 276 For a useful recent discussion of the Primrose League during the 1880s, see A. Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism in Imperial London, 1868–1906 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), pp. 99–102. 277 ‘London, S.W.’, Belfast Weekly News, 16 June 1888. 278 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 23 February 1889. 279 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 19 October 1895. 280 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 23 November 1895. 281 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 December 1895. 282 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 24 September 1894. 283 ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 22 December 1888. 284 For continuing agrarian violence in Ireland during the 1880s, see S. Lucey, Land, Popular Politics and Agrarian Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2011). 285 ‘Southsea’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 February 1888. 286 ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 June 1888. 287 ‘London’, Belfast Weekly News, 19 October 1889. 288 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 6 May 1893. On the Second Home Rule Bill, see A. Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 80–6. 289 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 11 February 1893. 290 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 May 1893.

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291 For women’s broad repertoire of political activism during the nineteenth century, see S. Richardson, The Political Worlds of Women: Gender and Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain (London: Routledge, 2013). 292 ‘LOL Female 96’, The Orange Standard, February 1914, p. 31. 293 ‘Anne Askew Female LOL 70’, The Orange Standard, May 1914, p. 78. 294 ‘Bolton Female LOL 96’, The Orange Standard, May 1914, p. 79. 295 ‘Female LOL 96’, The Orange Standard, June 1916, p. 95. 296 ‘We Stand By Ulster’, The Orange Standard, November 1919, p. 133. 297 Ibid. 298 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 8 December 1888. It is not clear if the Gordons attempted to form female lodges on their arrival in Canada. However, one of the early leading figures in the Toronto LOBA, Jeanie Gordon, shared their name. See Chapter 3. 299 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 December 1888. 300 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 January 1889. 301 ‘Mary’s First Ladies LOL 130’, The Orange Standard, February 1920, p. 22. 302 ‘Plymouth District No. 72’, Belfast Weekly News, 20 June 1891. 303 ‘Bolton Female LOL 96’, The Orange Standard, May 1914, p. 79. 304 ‘Female Loyal Orange Lodge No. 96’, The Orange Standard, August 1914, p. 127. 305 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 February 1889. 306 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 9 March 1889. 307 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 November 1888. 308 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 8 June 1889. 309 ‘Woolwich District’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 March 1894; ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 August 1889; ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 November 1892. 310 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 March 1891. 311 ‘Birkenhead, England’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 March 1872. 312 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 October 1872. 313 ‘Female Orange Lodge’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 June 1872. 314 ‘Birkenhead’, Belfast Weekly News, 20 July 1872. 315 ‘Female Lodge No. 2’, Belfast Weekly News, 24 August 1872. 316 ‘Liverpool’, Belfast Weekly News, 6 September 1890. For Liverpool’s transatlantic status and position, see J. Belchem, ‘Hub and diaspora: Liverpool and transnational labour’, Labour History Review, 75:1 (2010), 20–9. 317 ‘England’, Belfast Weekly News, 22 December 1888. 318 ‘Belgravia’, Belfast Weekly News, 28 June 1890. 319 ‘Bournemouth’, The Orange Standard, December 1919, p. 147. 320 ‘Queen Victoria FLOL 110’, The Orange Standard, September 1919, p. 113. 321 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Annual Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge, Held in The Portland Hall, Southsea, Portsmouth, on Wednesday, July 9th 1878 (London, n.d.), p. 120. 322 ‘The Mona Female LOL 6’, The Orange Standard, June 1914, p. 95. 323 Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England

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324 325 326 327 328

Held at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, on Wednesday and Thursday 4th and 5th July, 1923 (Birmingham, n.d.), p. 15. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Town Hall, Bootle, Liverpool, on Wednesday and Thursday 8th and 9th July 1925 (Birmingham, n.d.), p. 17. Loyal Orange Institution of England, Report of the Grand Lodge of England Held at the Holborn Restaurant, London, on Tuesday July 6th, 1926 (n.p., n.d.), pp. 14–15. For an exploration of the ‘British world’ in an anglophone context, see J. Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). ‘St Helens’, Belfast Weekly News, 15 February 1896. ‘Old Arab Charger and War Hero’, Lancashire Evening Post, 5 June 1933, p. 6.

2

Scotland I got it when I was in Tyrone, And I’ll get it to the last, I’ve got it here in Glasgow, And I’ve got it in Belfast. You may talk about your sporting games Or anything you choose, But each Thursday night sure I delight In my “Belfast Weekly News”.1

In September 1913, at the height of the Third Home Rule Bill crisis, the women of FLOL No. 19 gathered in their lodge room in the East End of Glasgow. While the political crisis in Ireland was foremost in their discussions that night, the social event that followed their meeting filled their Bridgeton headquarters with the above song, articulating these Orangewomen’s awareness that they were part of a much broader world of Orangeism. Stretching from their lodge room in Scotland back to many Orangewomen’s origins in Ireland and on to destinations throughout the British world, these women felt themselves to be part of an Orange diaspora, shaped by the material experience of migration and by the imagined community of global Orangeism. Through the performance of a song such as this, the Orangewomen of Scotland articulated a sense of connection to the Orange world that was greater than that of their English sisters, and this was largely a function of the heightened role of migration in the Scottish Orange Order. This chapter examines how the female Orange Order was established in Scotland and how it grew to become the most numerically significant section of that country’s organisation during the 1930s.2 The nature of its membership and of Orangewomen’s public activism tells us much about how working-class women in Scotland could engage with conservative politics, especially during the interwar period. The identity of these Scottish Orangewomen changed and shifted over time, leading to the emergence of a more diverse set of ethnic backgrounds and allegiances

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amongst the membership than simply a broad Irish Protestantism. As female Orangeism grew in Scotland, its members found themselves to be increasingly a part of the global world of the Orange Order, taking advantage of the opportunities the organisation afforded for migration to various locations throughout the British world. While the ethnic identifications of its members multiplied, the global outlook of Orangewomen in Scotland was knitted together by a belief in the British Empire, a world view that held fast until the end of our period, the outbreak of the Second World War. We saw in the previous chapter how popular Protestantism and a broad commitment to the British Empire shaped female Orangeism in England. The experience of the Orangewomen of Scotland, however, was focused on migration and a sense of imperial identity rooted in the Irish Protestantism of many of the Order’s members. Moreover, this chapter demonstrates the diversity of working-class women’s activism in Scotland, emphasising how women from Protestant and Unionist backgrounds could be active political agents. This chapter analyses the emergence of female Orange lodges in early twentieth-century Scotland, demonstrating how women’s entry into the masculinist world of the Orange Order was shaped by wider debate about suitable public roles for women. For women, participating in the Orange Order gave them access to the public world of Irish Protestant ethnic culture in Scotland. Orangemen perceived women as a useful tool in the battle to be considered part of the ‘respectable’ Scottish working classes.3 Women’s participation in the Orange Order, therefore, not only demonstrates the diversity of working-class women’s public activism in interwar Scotland, but it also indicates how women were active agents in shaping the nature of the Irish Protestant ethnic community, as first-, second- and subsequent-generation migrants, and the broader community beyond.4 Through their work raising money for maternal and child welfare, campaigning politically against Home Rule and in education authority elections, and engaging in debate about the shifting ethnic identity of the Order, Orangewomen in Scotland played an important role in the changing public life of the Irish Protestant community in Scotland. While the timing and conditions in which female Orange lodges emerged were determined by broader gender discourses, the activities of lodges and the identities articulated by Orangewomen demonstrate the durable, malleable and gendered nature of Irish Protestant ethnic identity in twentieth-century Scotland.

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The origins of women’s Orange lodges in Scotland

While the women’s Orange Order in Scotland was formally established in 1909, female lodges were, in fact, formed as early as the 1870s. The first women’s lodges were organised in Glasgow towards the end of 1872, following a period of communication with the ‘Star of Progress’ female lodge in Birkenhead, as we saw in Chapter 1.5 Little, however, is known about these lodges beyond the mid-1870s, although it is clear that women continued to have at least an informal presence in the Orange Order in Scotland for the remainder of the nineteenth century, featuring in Orange church parades and Twelfth of July demonstrations.6 At a meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland in June 1895, a motion to prevent women from taking part in ‘Orange processions’ and wearing ‘the recognised colours of the Orange Brotherhood’ was defeated, indicating the contested acceptance of women’s informal participation on such occasions.7 When women’s participation in the Orange Order was discussed at the beginning of the twentieth century it was, then, a revival of an older idea. The issue of women’s involvement resurfaced in December 1900, when William McIntyre and William McRoberts from Greenock motioned the Grand Lodge of Scotland to grant warrants to female lodges, citing the success of Orangewomen in England as an example to follow.8 After much debate, Grand Lodge voted against female lodges, with many members abstaining.9 Further motions to allow female lodges from the Greenock and Edinburgh District Lodges were unsuccessful in 1902, 1905 and 1906.10 Pressure continued to be placed on Grand Lodge to involve women in the Order. A committee was formed in December 1907, which upheld Grand Lodge’s intransigent position and voted against female lodges in the following June.11 A number of Protestant women in Scotland were evidently deeply frustrated by the Orange hierarchy’s obstruction and in July 1908 Mrs Dorothy Wilson, together with her daughter Harriet, travelled south to Newcastle in order to be initiated into an English female lodge.12 The Wilsons returned to Scotland and organised a Ladies’ Auxiliary in Glasgow. The meetings of the Ladies’ Auxiliary were successful in putting pressure on Grand Lodge to reconsider the issue of women in the Order, and it finally approved female lodges in June 1909.13 The first lodge of the revived female Order in Scotland was opened in November of that year and soon female lodges spread across the west Central Belt of Scotland, with Glasgow, Clydebank, Wishaw, Paisley, Dumbarton and Blantyre becoming particular strongholds.14 Women’s entry into the Order in 1909, however, was hotly contested by some men, revealing a number of broader debates about religiosity,

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respectability and women’s role in public life. Grand Lodge’s opposition to female lodges indicates that the general mood in the Order towards women was one of apathy at best. At a social event held by a Glasgow men’s lodge in 1908, Br Rice, later a champion of the women’s lodges, remarked that he was ‘pleased to see the ladies there’, but was unsure whether reviving female lodges would be a ‘good thing’.15 Men’s low opinion of female participation in the Order was echoed at a meeting of the St Columba lodge in Glasgow. Debating the ‘advisability of establishing female lodges in Scotland’, the members of the lodge delivered an ‘emphatic no’, in which discussion was laced with ‘a considerable amount of levity’.16 Such condescension turned into downright hostility during the summer of 1910. Following the inauguration of female lodges, the first flashpoint for debate came during that year’s marching season. From the very outset, it seems, women were permitted to march alongside men, in church parades and in demonstrations to commemorate the ‘glorious Twelfth’.17 A number of men were uneasy with women engaging in these public displays of Orange identity. During the Grand Lodge debate in which female lodges were approved, Br Woods argued that if women were admitted to the Order they would then have to be allowed to march with the men on the Twelfth. This was unacceptable to Woods, who argued that ‘the proper place for any lady was not in an Orange procession, and not in an Orange lodge’.18 Once lodges had been established, some male members of the Order appeared deeply uncomfortable at what they saw as an unwomanly public role. The publication of a letter in the Belfast Weekly News expressing these sentiments was the cue for a heated debate about women’s role in the Order and in public life more generally. For one of the correspondents, William M’Lean, women’s participation in parades affronted both the Orange Order and broader society, challenging certain expectations of what women’s role should be. Women were ‘out of place’ and spoilt the ‘look of the procession’ and, according to M’Lean, had enough to do ‘attending to their domestic duties … without identifying with the Orange Order’.19 M’Lean’s views were echoed by a correspondent calling himself ‘Linnonian’, who argued that women’s colourful clothing made a parade ‘resemble more a flower show, with the combination of a fancy dress promenade’.20 Moreover, he argued, parading with the men was unfeminine and inconsistent ‘with the traditions of the fair sex’. Both female and male correspondents to the Belfast Weekly News robustly countered such views. Annie Wilson, secretary of the Scotland’s First lodge, argued that women had a right to take part in the public ritual of the Orange Order. For Wilson, being a member of the Order was entirely compatible with being a woman:

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No matter how many household duties a woman has to perform she can always find time to attend an Orange meeting. By publicly adopting Orange principles, a woman will be better fitted to discharge the duties of life in whatever sphere it may please God to place her.21

Rather than undermining a woman’s domestic role, taking part in the public life of the Orange community, according to Wilson, actually enhanced it. This view was echoed by a number of male correspondents, including Richard Mayes, Dumbarton District Master, who argued that women were not defined exclusively by their domestic roles and that their presence on parades added to the ‘beauty and dignity’ of the Orange march.22 The belief that women would enhance the public image of the Orange Order informed many men’s support for female lodges. At the height of debate about women’s lodges in the summer of 1908, Br William Duff of LOL No. 210, Glasgow, linked the participation of women with an increase of more ‘respectable’ men joining the Orange Order, who were ‘sober’ and ‘Christian’.23 Speaking later that year in support of women’s lodges, Br Rice argued that ‘if a Ladies Orange Association was formed in Scotland and was properly worked by decent, respectable, virtuous women, it would be a crown and a jewel in the Grand Lodge of Scotland’.24 Once female lodges had been formed, Rice argued that ‘if the Orange Order was good for married men it ought to be good for their wives’ and ‘if the Orange lodge was good for the young men, it ought to be excellent for their sweethearts’.25 For Rev. J. M’Garva, women were an essential part in the mission to make the Order more respectable and would ‘with their gentle influence smooth off the rough corners’, adding ‘picturesqueness as well as enthusiasm into their ranks on demonstration days’.26 While projecting a highly gendered image of women, the ambition towards respectability was a key concern for the Orange Order in Scotland. During the nineteenth century, the Orange Order had struggled to shake off the popular perception that its principal activities were fighting and drinking. At the beginning of the twentieth century, women, then, were a vital tool in the campaign to integrate the Orange Order into the ranks of the respectable Scottish working classes.27 Male members were clear in the advantages women gave the organisation, especially in their ability to enhance the religious aspects of the Order and, moreover, boost further their respectable credentials. Speaking at a Ladies’ Auxiliary social at the end of 1908, Br Rev. Alex Watt demonstrated his support for the formation of female Orange lodges, arguing that Christianity had done much for women and, in turn, women could do commendable work for ‘Christianity and all good causes’.28 Fulfilling the Evangelical-inspired stereotype of the good

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Christian wife and mother,29 however, did not preclude Orangewomen from engaging with the public life of their community and beyond. At the opening of a new female lodge at Anniesland, the Grand Master, David Ness, argued that women were rightly coming to prominence in public life and could use this changing role to articulate Christian principles. As a member of the West of Scotland’s Women’s Suffrage Union, Ness believed that  women should receive the vote in order that their influence might be  felt  on issues such as temperance. Ness supported women’s fight for the vote because they would ‘always be on the side of purity, holiness, and righteousness’ and could shape the character of public life.30 Male debate about the role of women in the Orange Order, then, centred on issues of respectability and religiosity; by joining female lodges, women would improve the moral character of the organisation and, in turn, enhance its public image. The Order was, moreover, responding to broader shifts in Scottish society, tapping into what Callum Brown has described as the ‘pietization of femininity’, in which ‘the ideal qualities of religiosity’ became feminine during the nineteenth century.31 Women, perceived as repositories of virtue, could be used by the Order to bolster their respectable working-class masculine credentials, demonstrating how notions of respectability were thoroughly gendered during this period, with masculine and feminine Orange identities constructed in relation to each other.32 Furthermore, debate about respectability and women’s participation in the Orange Order reflects shifts in broader gender discourses at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Jon Lawrence argues, new conservative political thinking emerged after 1906, replacing the older, populist pub- and sport-centred masculine politics with something more closely focused on ‘hearth and home’.33 The context in which female Orange lodges emerged in Scotland suggests, though, a slightly different analysis of the role of respectability in popular conservative politics. Although Orange public life clearly became more feminised in this period, this research also indicates how a sense of respectable masculinity was reinforced by the emergence of women  in  the Order. Thus, Orange masculinity was defined, paradoxically, by a more prominent role for women, in which female lodges were a useful tool for Orangemen to demonstrate that they were no longer ‘rough’ Irish immigrants but, instead, that they were members of the respectable Scottish working classes. Contrary to Ross McKibbin’s characterisation of women’s politics in the 1920s, the female Orange Order emerges, then, as an organisation in which women could articulate conservative politics without repudiating wider working-class masculinity.34

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Growth of women’s lodges and socioeconomic background

Female lodges grew steadily in the years up to the end of the First World War, after which they grew exceptionally in the early 1920s. Of the 207 female lodges formed in Scotland before 1940, 91 were located within Glasgow, two-thirds being established in the 1920s and 1930s. Outside of Glasgow, the overwhelming majority of lodges were to be found within the west Central Belt of Scotland.35 Eric Kaufmann’s research provides an indication of how rapidly women’s membership increased, especially in comparison to the male Order (see Table 2.1). The number of Orangewomen rose to 8,707 by 1931, exceeding the size of the men’s Order and representing a more than doubling of membership in just ten years. If we examine more precise membership figures for the 1920s, the period 1922 to 1925 saw the greatest increase in members – markedly so, when compared to male membership fluctuations (see Table 2.2).36 From 1921, female membership increased more rapidly than the men’s and, when decline did affect the Orange Order in the late 1920s, the female lodges were less susceptible. Reporting these fluctuations in membership, James Rice, the secretary of the Grand Lodge, argued that any decline was due to ‘industrial depression’, unemployment and the general strike of 1926.37 The marked downturn in male membership in 1921 and its weak recovery in 1924 reflects the severe depression in the shipbuilding industry on Clydeside during this period, a sector in which many Orangemen worked.38 It also indicates the sectional and highly gendered nature of employment in Glasgow between the wars, Table 2.1  Membership figures for the male and female Orange Order in Scotland, 1911–2001 Year

1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001

Female

Male

9,466 7,920 7,379 6,442 4,757 3,256

 9,477  8,667 11,636 12,291 10,053  7,533

  939 3,852 8,707

 7,987  8,642  8,308

Source: Kaufmann, Orange Order Membership Data

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Table 2.2  Changes in female and male membership, 1920–31 Year

1920 1921 1922 1924 1925 1926 1928 1931

Female

  + 806   + 823 + 1,747 + 1,076 + 1,177   + 546    – 79   + 211

Male

+ 1,588   + 711   – 868   + 265   + 950   + 117   – 126   + 172

Source: Reports of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1920–31

described by Annmarie Hughes as offering women little tangible progress in the labour market. The dramatic increase in female Orange membership at the beginning of the 1920s may, however, indicate the marginally increased opportunities for employment that some women had in domestic service, the service and retail sectors, and the textile industry.39 The rise of the female Order and the significant increase in its members at the beginning of the 1920s underlines both the working-class nature of the organisation and how it responded to broader currents in Scottish society that, following the suffrage campaigns of the early part of the century, saw women become more prominent in public life. Rare application forms for the Scotland’s First lodge in Glasgow covering the periods 1920–30 and 1945–57 demonstrate the fundamentally working-class background of most Orangewomen.40 Based in the headquarters of the Orange Order on Cathedral Street, in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland’s First female lodge attracted members mainly from the working-class areas of the East End of the city, with many living in Bridgeton, Springburn and Parkhead. Of the 116 women admitted to the lodge, more than half were in employment, indicating that the female Order was far from being the preserve of married housewives. Table 2.3 confirms that the Orange Order in Glasgow was largely ­working-class, matching the organisation’s social profile in the north of England and Scotland.41 While many would have been unskilled, such as Janet McMoth, a charwoman who joined the lodge in 1922, other occupations undertaken by the women of Scotland’s First female lodge would be classified as semi-skilled or skilled. Reflecting the local economy of the East End of Glasgow, several Orangewomen of FLOL No. 1 worked at Templeton’s carpet factory in Bridgeton, employed as carpet weavers, setters and finishers.42 Therefore, the dramatic increase in

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Table 2.3  Occupations of applicants to Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, Glasgow

Occupation

Textile worker Book binder Clerical worker Cleaner Shop worker Biscuit factory worker Brewery worker Domestic servant Packer Student nurse Aerated mineral worker Nail factory worker Bonded warehouse worker Box maker French polisher Guana worker Tobacco factory worker Print worker Total

Frequency

28  5  4  4  4  3  2  2  2  2  1  1  1  1  1  1  1  1 64

Source: Admission forms, Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, Glasgow District 12, Olympia House

membership at the beginning of the 1920s likely indicates the marginally improved opportunities for employment experienced by some ­working-class women in Glasgow and west central Scotland.43 This connection between women’s entry into the public world of work and their heightened role within the Orange Order was recognised by leading figures in the organisation. Speaking at a social organised by a female lodge in Glasgow in 1917, James Rice argued that ‘in every department of life ladies were taking the place of the men’ and that women’s work for the war effort bolstered their position within the Orange Order, a short-term gain that Orangewomen carried into the 1920s.44 Orangewomen’s public activism

Women’s campaign for the vote and their activism in politics, especially after 1918, enhanced their status in the Orange Order that had been gained through greater wartime economic and social influence, and helps to explain their prodigious growth in early 1920s Scotland. Women were active agents in Orange politics. They played a significant

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role in the Order’s campaigns against Home Rule in 1913–14 and in education authority elections following the Education (Scotland) Act of 1918, which allowed women to play a prominent part in anti-Catholic politics during the 1920s.45 Increasingly, Orangewomen saw themselves as ‘active citizens’, indicating that ‘notions of citizenship, femininity and respectability’46 were not just the preserve of feminists or labour groups in twentieth-century Scotland. Orangewomen embraced the perception that opportunities to become involved in public life were gradually increasing, echoing Diane Urquhart’s analysis of Unionist and Orange women in Ulster.47 After the Representation of the People Act (1918) had been passed, Sister Lendrum, Worthy Mistress of FLOL No. 14 in Thornliebank, urged Orangewomen who qualified to vote to use that vote wisely, hoping ‘that every one of them who was entitled to that privilege would see to it that her influence would be made manifest at the next election’.48 Commenting on the elections for the Glasgow Education Authority in 1925, Sister Lendrum also reinforced the need for Orangewomen to be active citizens, stressing the importance of women’s role in promoting Orange views on education and how this could be done through the ballot box.49 Orangewomen’s political activism first came to the fore during the campaign against the Home Rule Bill in 1913–14. However, prior to this, female lodges had been relatively marginal to Orange and Unionist campaigns against the Papal Ne Temere decree on mixed marriages in 1908 and in the early stages of the Third Home Rule Bill crisis of 1912–14.50 Orangewomen’s low-key engagement with these issues, at least until 1913–14, further indicates the primacy of gender politics in the formative years of the female Order discussed above. As Eric Kaufmann has argued, prominent political events had a relatively limited effect on Orange Order membership in Scotland compared to broader cultural factors51 and ‘cross-cutting cleavages’ of class and gender dampened the political potential of perceived threats to Protestant interests.52 The controversy over the Ne Temere decree, which focused on the McCann marriage case of early 1911, was a key factor in harnessing women’s support for anti-Home-Rule politics in Ireland, inspiring the formation of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Association in January 1911.53 However, in Scotland, we find few female lodges referring to the Ne Temere decree, one of the exceptions being a resolution passed by the Jenny Geddes FLOL No. 20 in Edinburgh and sent to the city’s MPs.54 Equally, Home Rule was little discussed by female lodges until 1913. A small number of Orangewomen in Scotland were clearly involved in Unionist politics and appeared at female lodge meetings to convince their sisters of the need to fight Home Rule, such as Sister Lendrum from Bridgeton,

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who was also President of the local Women’s Unionist Association.55 In addition, we find a handful of references to Ulster Day and the signing of the female Declaration against Home Rule in September 1912.56 The most significant factor in mobilising Orangewomen against Home Rule was, however, the Carson Defence Fund – the main source of income for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).57 Many female lodges raised significant sums of money for the Fund, and were also involved in plans to accommodate refugee Unionist women and children who might flee Ulster in the event of Home Rule being passed.58 Although it would appear that the Orangewomen of Scotland were only engaged in political work that was, in its fundraising and caring nature, highly gendered, these activities were heartily embraced by female lodges, and further demonstrated women’s benefit to the Order. The Carson Defence Fund was launched early in 1913, following the passing of the Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons,59 and from August onwards, female lodges donated money, raised from sales of work, bazaars and cake sales.60 Lodges were urged on to raise more money by stirring anti-Home-Rule speeches, one Worthy Mistress inspiring the Orangewomen with stories of witnessing members of the UVF drilling in Ireland.61 Scotland’s First female lodge was the most successful, raising the grand total of £43 18s, by far the greatest amount by any Orange lodge, male or female, in Scotland.62 The women’s fundraising prowess was appreciated by leading figures in the men’s Order. Br Cloughley congratulated the women of FLOL No. 9, Clydebank, on their ‘noble work … to promote Orangeism in Scotland’ and that ‘their latest endeavour on behalf of the Carson Defence Fund was a standing tribute to their earnestness and sincerity’.63 In total, the female Orange lodges of Scotland gave £127 5s 4d to the Fund, representing twenty per cent of the £625 5s 3d raised, from just fourteen per cent of the lodges who donated.64 By 1913 the Orangewomen of Scotland were clearly committed to the cause of defending Ulster from the perils of Home Rule, exploiting the belief that they were suited to certain types of gendered fundraising activity to promote a strong public role in the Orange Order. Their work supporting the ‘Help the Ulster Women and Children Committee’, while not matching the extent of fundraising for the Carson Defence Fund, further indicates how Orangewomen could articulate their Unionist politics. The committee had been active since the summer of 1913, raising money and organising accommodation for potential refugees from Ulster, escaping any conflict that might arise from the imposition of Home Rule.65 Most support came from Conservative and Unionist political organisations, such as the Women’s Unionist and Tariff Reform League and the Primrose League, decidedly more middle-class groups than the Orange

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Order. However, there is some evidence of Orange support for the efforts to help potential Ulster refugees. As fundraising for the Carson Defence Fund was coming to an end at the beginning of 1914, the women of Victoria FLOL No. 55 in Calton, Glasgow, collected names of members who were ‘willing to take care of children from Ulster in case of war’.66 At a meeting of the Grand Lodge in June 1914, more concrete plans were made in response to a letter from the Glasgow Port committee of the Unionist party. The Unionists had arranged to ‘look after the women and children in case of civil war in Ulster’ but were in need of assistance in caring for these refugees once they had disembarked and before they went on to their accommodation. The Grand Lodge decided that they should offer ‘the use of our halls’, so that the women and children ‘could have breakfast before proceeding to the Homes provided for them’ and to ‘assist by every means in our power’.67 Undoubtedly, given their success in providing hospitality and in other activities which built upon supposed feminine qualities, the women of the Orange Order on Clydeside would have been at the forefront of caring for the women and children of Ulster, had civil war come to Ireland. In addition to their late involvement in Home Rule politics, Orangewomen participated in the local elections that were introduced by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1918. Education authority elections were keenly fought by Orange Order members because of the perception that the new Act gave the Catholic Church undue influence in schools, allowing the transfer of Catholic schools to local authority control while clerical control was retained over religious instruction and worship.68 The Orange Order and other Protestants objected to what they perceived as ‘Rome on the Rates’, and education authority elections acted as a focal point for interwar anti-Catholicism in Scotland,69 with which the Orange Order was particularly engaged during the late 1920s and early 1930s.70 These elections were a further area of activism deemed to be peculiarly suited to women, much like the school board elections which they replaced.71 In education authority elections, Orangewomen largely focused on canvassing support for suitable candidates – those who would promote Protestantism and fight the ‘Papist menace’ in schools. The first election to take place under the terms of the new Education Act was held in April 1919. Sisters and brethren were urged to form committees in each district to ‘secure the return of good, sound Protestants’,72 which resulted in a number of Orangemen being elected in several districts in Glasgow.73 Br Rev. J. Victor Logan singled out the support of Orangewomen as instrumental to his success at the polls, thanking them for all their help and arguing that ‘it was because they love the

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Bible and the Protestant religion for which they all stood that they had been willing to give their time and energy to place him on the new Education Authority’.74 Orangewomen continued to support Orange and Protestant candidates at education elections throughout the 1920s and 1930s, reinforcing the perception that issues surrounding education and schooling were especially suited to women’s activism. However, Orangewomen increasingly became recognised as active citizens in all elections, whose support was to be energetically mobilised. By the end of the 1920s, they were noted as ardent supporters of both municipal and general election candidates who stood for Orange principles, canvassing for members of both the Unionist and Orange and Protestant parties.75 For example, in December 1927 the women of FLOL No. 140 in Possilpark were congratulated by their Worthy Mistress for being ‘busily engaged working for the moderate candidate’ in the recent municipal election, which involved 100 of their 300 members.76 This broadening out of Orangewomen’s political activism was, arguably, a response to the extension of the franchise in 1928 to all women over the age of twenty-one, and reflected the Order’s relative nimbleness in responding to wider changes in society. Br Cloughley, Grand Secretary, was at the forefront of the Order’s recognition that women could be mobilised in all elections for the benefit of Orangeism. Speaking at the founding of a new women’s lodge in Glasgow in May 1929, Cloughley emphasised that women were at the vanguard of the Order’s growth during the 1920s. The extension of the franchise the year before meant that ‘the safety of their country and the safety of their Empire would depend more and more upon the loyal women’.77 One Orangewoman, moreover, was successful in standing for election and sat on the Glasgow Education Authority for the Central and Kelvingrove division from 1922 until 1925. Agnes Smellie was a member of the Orange Order in Glasgow and was also Most Worthy Grand Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic organisation which was open to women.78 Smellie was first elected in March 1922, winning 1,605 votes and coming sixth in the education authority poll for her district.79 In her campaign for re-election in 1925, Smellie urged her Orange sisters to vote for her because of her hard work visiting schools, ensuring that the Bible occupied a prominent place and that ‘the religious lesson was taught in a manner worthy of all praise’.80 While the anti-Catholic focus of Orangewomen’s education authority campaigns was key, of greater importance were the opportunities that these elections gave women, such as Smellie, to be active political agents in public life. Indeed, Smellie’s success points to one of the broader benefits that membership of an Orange lodge could confer on women – by becoming involved in the organisation,

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and through running in office-holder elections, Orangewomen received something of an education in democracy, which they then applied to life outside the lodge hall. Fundraising and charitable activity

During the 1920s and 1930s, Orangewomen came increasingly to be seen as active citizens. As many women did in similar organisations, they proved themselves to be capable of performing valuable, if gendered, work for the Order through their political work, voting, canvassing, fundraising and standing for election.81 Orangewomen’s political capacity, as we have seen, gave them status within the Orange Order in Scotland, which was bolstered considerably by their social activities, organising events, raising money for Orange schemes and becoming increasingly more active in charity work for the wider community. Social events were often used as a means of raising funds for Orange Order causes, most notably to build Orange Halls in which to hold meetings. Women were conspicuous in their success at fundraising, just as we have already seen in the analysis of Orangewomen on Tyneside in Chapter 1. During 1911, the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland sought to raise the sum of £3,000 to pay for the cost of purchasing a new headquarters for the Order in Glasgow.82 Commenting on women’s extensive work for the centrepiece of these fundraising efforts, a bazaar, Br Breen congratulated the women on their progress: ‘As far as their own district was concerned, he could assure them that in the work for the Grand Lodge bazaar the sisters were giving the male adult lodges the lead and showing them how work should be done’.83 During the interwar years, lodges continued to raise money for Orange Halls, with Primrose Ladies’ LOL No. 13 in Glasgow raising £690 for their District Hall in Cowcaddens over a five-year period.84 Scottish Orangewomen’s charitable mission had, in fact, been a key aspect of their foundation in 1909. One of the first tasks of the newly formed organisation was to write the rules and ceremonies of the female Order – the ritual. While different to that of the male lodges, the women’s ritual was also ‘founded on the Word of God, and [is] so framed as to direct the mind and thoughts to things divine, and lead one in the straight paths of piety and virtue’.85 The Scottish Orangewomen’s ritual was, however, based heavily on that of their Canadian sisters, the LOBA. Given the strong philanthropic focus of the LOBA (explored in Chapter 3), it is no surprise that the Scottish women’s ritual laid great emphasis on charity. In the ceremony for the Second Degree, candidates were presented with symbols of ‘faith, hope and charity’:

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Charity is the third important principle. By it we do not mean cold alms-­ giving, but a pure love that sympathizes with suffering, and will bear the severe test of adversity, love which is an imitation of the great Creator. It is faith and trust in God that gives the ground for hope and faith practised, and hope enjoyed, prepare us to exemplify love in the highest and purest degree, they prepare us to be like God, whose love is unfathomable.86

The ritual also emphasised women’s role in the Orange Order as carers and nurturers. In the Worthy Deputy Mistress’s opening address to the lodge meeting, Orangewomen became blessed with almost supernatural powers of care: Refined woman is peculiarly adapted to the work laid out for her by our Order. She can enter a room of sickness, and approach the couch of a sufferer with love beaming in her eye, and the sympathy of her heart marked in every feature. To a sufferer, a kind-hearted and gentle woman will always be recognized as an angel of mercy …   She can softly press the throbbing pulse, and clam the troubled soul, even under the delirium of fever; with a soft hand she can sooth the aching brow, and send a thrill of pleasure all through the failing frame.87

This philanthropic and caring function, inspired by the example of the Canadian LOBA, underpinned the Orangewomen of Scotland’s approach to charitable work, both within the Orange community and beyond. While raising funds for the Orange Order was a key activity for female lodges, during the First World War and after Orangewomen began to spread the reach of their charity to those outside of the Order. As discussed above, the Great War was a key period in which the status of women in the Order was enhanced, largely through their involvement in the war effort. Reporting on the progress of the female section during 1914–15, James Rice commented on how members were ‘working as nurses and Red Cross workers, while almost all have been giving their spare time to making and looking after comforts for our men at the front’.88 Female lodges in Glasgow, in conjunction with the Red Cross, began to organise working parties to knit ‘garments for the sick and wounded soldiers’ shortly after the outbreak of war.89 Soon, several lodges were producing ‘socks and body belts’ to send to soldiers, including relatives who were serving at the front.90 Once wounded soldiers began to return home, female lodges provided social events and entertainment. In March 1917, the Primrose FLOL No. 13 in Glasgow entertained over a hundred wounded soldiers to a concert and dance, providing tea, fruit and cigarettes and, on leaving, ‘each soldier was presented with three khaki handkerchiefs’, echoing our discussion in Chapter 1 about the feminising and domesticating effects of such occasions on returning servicemen.91

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For Sister Salmond, the lodge’s Worthy Mistress, it was a ‘pleasure and privilege’ to do ‘honour to their wounded comrades’ (a phrase which implies a certain amount of equality between the Orange sisters and the soldiers) and she hoped the war would soon be over so that ‘the boys would be able to take their place in the workshop safe and strong when peace was restored again’.92 Orangewomen’s efforts during the war, then, further reinforced their credentials within the public world of Orange activism. In the interwar period, female lodges extended their fundraising activities to include considerable philanthropic work, with many lodges raising money for local hospitals from the early 1920s onwards. In 1923, the Lily of Scotland lodge in Greenock began to raise money for the Glasgow Royal Maternity and Women’s Hospital, granting one guinea as an initial gift.93 A number of female lodges followed suit, such as Brisby’s Daughters of the Covenant Ladies lodge in Glasgow, who raised £2 2s from a social to give to the same hospital, in which a number of their members were receiving care.94 Other institutions that received donations from female lodges included the Elder Cottage Hospital in Govan; the Glasgow Western Infirmary; the Glasgow Eye Infirmary; the Samaritan Hospital; the Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital; and the Blantyre Cottage Hospital.95 Furthermore, the most significant Orangewomen’s charitable activity was undertaken by the Ladies’ Conference of the Grand Lodge, who were first convened in October 1927.96 In April 1934, the Ladies’ Conference decided to focus its existing fundraising efforts for the Glasgow Samaritan Hospital on the endowment of a bed ‘in name of the sisters of the Order’, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of female lodges.97 By the end of 1935, the Ladies’ Conference presented a cheque for £250 to the Hospital, the bed being named the ‘Ladies’ Orange Association of Scotland Jubilee Bed’.98 Given their success in raising funds for the Samaritan Hospital, a year later, to celebrate the coronation year, the sisters decided to direct their charitable efforts towards raising £100 to name two cots in the Glasgow Maternity Hospital. The cots were to be named ‘Ruth’ and ‘Naomi’, after the biblical story from the Book of Ruth, which the female Orange Order adopted as a model of women’s friendship and which featured heavily as an image on female lodge banners.99 In being presented with a cheque, Mrs Baird-Smith from the Maternity Hospital remarked on their close connection with the Orange Order, whose Glasgow headquarters was on the same street as the hospital and whose facilities were used every year for the annual meeting of the hospital’s Ladies’ Auxiliary Committee.100 Two years later, the women’s section of the Orange Order decided to raise £100 to name a bed in the Glasgow Sick Children’s Hospital, presenting them with the money in April 1940.101

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The provision of beds and cots at the Samaritan Hospital (dedicated to the care of women and the training of nurses),102 the Maternity Hospital and the Children’s Hospital in Glasgow were significant acts for the women’s Orange Order. During the interwar years, feminists paid increasing attention to child and maternal welfare.103 In Scotland, organisations such as the Edinburgh Women’s Citizens’ Association considered the provision of maternity care and child welfare schemes as part of their feminist activism.104 While the women of the Orange Order were never openly feminist, they did expand their repertoire of female activism to embrace financial support for women’s and children’s healthcare and, as argued above, to promote women’s political activism in education authority elections. Orangewomen were, therefore, eager to play an active role in the public life of the Order, engaging in activism and fundraising in which they were believed to have gender-specific strengths, what Karen Offen has described as the ‘womanliness as women’ emphasised in some feminist movements.105 Writing about women’s activism in Clydeside, Annmarie Hughes argues that while only some women engaged in the labour and trade union movement perceived themselves as feminists, they did ‘act in a feminist manner’.106 By examining the work of female Orange lodges, we can see how working-class women from a Protestant Unionist background were part of a similar sphere of women’s activism in interwar Scotland. Such activism was also not entirely incompatible with a deeply feminised religiosity, which the Orangewomen of Scotland also used to negotiate and justify their presence in the Orange Order. Orangewomen deployed a similar discourse of religiosity and respectability, emphasising in particular how membership of the Orange Order could enhance women’s Christian mission. Women, too, believed that the religious aspects of Orangeism provided them with a way into public life. Two of the clearest pieces of evidence we have for this are the female ritual adopted by women’s lodges in Scotland in 1909 and the material and visual culture of these lodges. The ritual for women’s lodges (the procedures which governed the running of lodge meetings) was devised by a special committee of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in the autumn of 1909.107 Inspired by the example of Canadian Orangewomen, the Ritual for female lodges drips with religious content and allegory, foregrounding a religiosity that is, of course, present in the male ritual, but which is not given the same degree of prominence.108 The religious aspect of the female ritual is most clearly seen in the procedures for admitting members to the ‘Second Degree’, a higher and more advanced form of Orange status.109 The Second Degree was based upon the Biblical story of Ruth and Naomi, framing the initiation of candidates into this Degree as analogous to Ruth’s leaving her

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own people behind on the death of her husband in order to care for her mother-in-law, Naomi – a story which neatly underlines the importance of sisterly relations in the female Orange Order. The initiation includes an extended piece of role play in which the candidate takes on the role of Ruth and her sponsor that of Naomi, who concludes the ceremony by proclaiming that ‘This is my daughter-in-law Ruth, who has left all her kinsfolk, and desires to become a Daughter of Israel’.110 The Orange sisters would then sing a ‘Reaping Ode’, during which ‘Ruth’ would gather a handful of symbolic sheaves and give them to ‘Naomi’.111 Once the candidate had been initiated to the Second Degree, the Deputy Mistress of the lodge would read a brief ‘Charge’, commenting on the lessons ‘the wives and daughters of Orangemen’ (note – not Orangewomen) could draw from the example of Ruth: She saw the truth of the religion of the patriarch, and renouncing her false gods, she became an ardent votary of truth. Her love and devotion to Naomi may be imitated by women as they tread life’s pathway, in administering to the many Maras, against whom the hand of the Lord has gone out as dark dispensations of Divine Providence.   The important lesson may be learned from her of making sacrifices for the good of others, of ameliorating the wants of the sorrowing, especially of those who are in dire necessity.112

The Second Degree ritual, then, confirms the importance of sisterly associationalism for Orangewomen and how this was framed by a heartfelt religiosity. The story of Ruth and Naomi was also a key part of the visual and material culture of female lodges in Scotland.113 As Neil Jarman has argued, lodge banners were an important part of Orange culture, articulating core components of Orange ideology on a public stage, carried as part of the key events of the Orange calendar, such as the ‘Glorious Twelfth’.114 In his analysis of contemporary Northern Ireland Orange lodge banners, Jarman indicates how images of ‘King Billy’, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the most common, with religious imagery accounting for around twenty per cent of all banners.115 Within those, however, images of biblical figures were relatively rare, comprising just under seven per cent of all banner images in Northern Ireland during 1992.116 In the case of Orangewomen in Scotland at the beginning of the twentieth century, many lodges used the story of Ruth and Naomi to adorn their lodge banners. The first female lodge set the tone, placing an order for its banner in April 1910, with Ruth gleaning on one side, and ‘a painting of the Bible and Crown’, another classic Orange image, on the other.117 A number of other female lodges followed suit, such as the sisters of FLOL No. 30 in

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Bannockburn, whose lodge banner had a picture of Br Rice, the Grand Secretary and sometime champion of women’s lodges, on one side, and on the reverse, ‘a representation’ of Naomi and Ruth.118 We can see, then, that both the content of lodge meetings and their public visual culture were infused with religiosity, which was clearly an important part of female Orange associational culture. The ethnic identities of Orangewomen in Scotland

A key component of Orangewomen’s public activism was the articulation and promotion of an Irish Protestant, and later an Ulster and a Scots, ethnic identity. During the nineteenth century, the Orange Order abroad was the cultural product of Irish Protestant migration.119 From his analysis of data from 1881, Eric Kaufmann has argued that the Orange Order in Scotland was ethnically Irish, with 72 per cent of lodge masters and secretaries being born in Ireland, confirming Elaine McFarland’s earlier findings about the Irish migrant origins of the Scottish Order.120 The foundation of female Orange lodges came at an interesting point in the ethnic evolution of the Orange Order in Scotland. By 1911, the number of Irish-born in Scotland had declined from its mid-nineteenth-century peak of 7.2 per cent of the total population to just 3.7 per cent, which then fell to 1.7 per cent by 1951.121 Evidence about the ethnic background of early female members suggests that Irishness was important. However, the volatile political situation in Ireland due to fears of Home Rule led many Irish Protestants to identify more directly with an Ulster identity. This shift in ethnic identification away from Irishness became more pronounced during the 1920s and 1930s when the Orange Order began to embrace a more explicitly Scottish identity. Orangewomen were thoroughly engaged with this process of ‘mutating’ ethnic identity and their thoughts and activities demonstrate how female lodges were part of an ethnic feminine public sphere. The backgrounds of pioneering Orangewomen indicate that the female Order in Scotland was shaped significantly by an Irish ethnicity. Harriet Wilson was elected as Worthy Mistress of the first female lodge in November 1909.122 A profile of her in the Belfast Weekly News described her as coming from ‘a good Orange family’, whose father was from Lurgan, Co. Armagh.123 A number of other Worthy Mistresses shared this background, having Irish parents but being born in Scotland. Mary M’Roberts, Worthy Mistress of FLOL No. 16 in Greenock, was born in the town but her parents were from Co. Londonderry.124 Furthermore, in Thornliebank, the Worthy Mistress of FLOL No. 14, Agnes Millar, was born in the village, but her mother and father were from Co. Antrim.125

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The admissions forms for Scotland’s First female lodge confirm the largely second-generation Irish Protestant nature of the female Order in Scotland. Of the 116 applicants between 1922 and 1957, only 9.82 per cent were born in Ireland, two-thirds of whom were from Co. Antrim.126 The Irishness of the female Orange Order in Scotland was further problematised by the changing political situation in Ireland and the increasing association of Irish identity with Catholicism in interwar Scotland.127 The crisis over Home Rule and the creation of a self-governing Northern Ireland in 1921 saw the emergence of an Ulster identity, which was readily embraced by female lodges. During the 1920s, Orangewomen began to identify more clearly with Ulster. Following the death of Sister M’Donald from Govan, a funeral notice in the Belfast Weekly News praised her ‘sound Protestant principles’ and for never failing to ‘give strong support to Ulster from which she came’.128 At a social meeting of the St Rollox Truth Defenders FLOL No. 56 in Glasgow, the sisters commended their long-serving treasurer, Sister Auld, for her ‘energetic Orangeism’, proving that she was a ‘worthy daughter of Ulster’ who was doing ‘her duty to the province and the friends she had left behind’.129 The unstable nature of Northern Ireland during the 1920s led Orangewomen in Scotland, moreover, to promote an Ulster Protestant identity. Visiting her old lodge in Glasgow from her new home in Northern Ireland, Lady Bates spoke of defending Ulster and the Empire against the threat of the Free State and argued that the revived Boundary Commission had no power to shrink the territory of the North ‘without the permission of the people of Ulster’.130 While an Ulster identity clearly gained traction with Orangewomen during the interwar period, an increasing number of female lodges began to embrace a more self-consciously Scottish identity, largely through cultural expressions such as Burns suppers and Highland dancing.131 The resonance of a Scottish identity was captured at the opening of a new female lodge in Govan in 1922, at which Br Rev. J. Victor Logan thanked the sisters for naming the lodge in his honour, describing it as ‘a good Scotch name – a good Highland name’, whose influence was also felt in Ulster due to migration.132 A Scottish identity was heartily proclaimed by many Orangewomen. Sister Kennedy, speaking at a meeting of FLOL No. 127 in Govan, declared that ‘she was Scottish to the core’, arguing that ‘as long as there was Covenanting blood in her veins she would stand up for her own country and Protestant principles’.133 This greater identification with Scottishness was most clearly articulated when female lodges held Burns suppers, celebrating an icon of Scottish (and predominantly Lowland) identity.134 The first female lodge to hold a Burns supper was FLOL No. 39 in Glasgow in 1924, at which ‘songs of the bard’ were sung

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and one member was overheard to say that ‘had Burns lived today he would have been a member of the Orange Order, as no one loved liberty more than he’.135 Burns suppers became increasingly popular, and each January the Belfast Weekly News was full of reports of female lodges celebrating the Scottish national poet. In Glasgow, at the annual Burns supper of FLOL No. 32, the haggis was ‘borne aloft’ by the Worthy Mistress, Sister Moore, accompanied by a piper.136 At a Burns supper in 1936 held by FLOL No. 70, the sisters expressed pride in their Scottish identity by wearing ‘Fraser tartan kilts’.137 In Tollcross, the women of FLOL No. 102 celebrated with ‘a real Scotch supper of “Tatties and Haggis”’, after which Sister Helen Kennedy spoke of Burns’s poems as representing ‘an ideal of Scottish home life’.138 In addition to commemorating the Lowland Burns, female lodges also expressed their Scottish identity through cultural activities such as Highland dancing,139 and a number of lodges also began to hold ‘Clan Nights’, reflecting both the impact of members who had joined following their migration from the Highlands and the influence of Highlandism on broader Scottish identities.140 Through cultural activities, Orangewomen helped to shape the ethnic identity of the Orange Order. The hybrid nature of the organisation’s ethnicity was captured by women’s shifting identification from an Irish to an Ulster and Scottish identity during the interwar period. This indicates, then, that Orangewomen’s activism through anti-Home-Rule campaigns, education authority elections and cultural events helped shape a ‘feminine public sphere’ that had a strong ethnic content. Megan Smitley has used the term ‘feminine public sphere’ to describe the public world of middle-class women in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scotland that was engaged in the suffrage and temperance movements.141 Analysing the female Orange Order broadens out the notion of a ‘feminine public sphere’, indicating how working-class women could engage with public activism and how this could be used to articulate a sense of ethnic identity. The activities of female Orange lodges in Scotland may then be considered as constituting an ‘ethnic feminine public sphere’, in which women took part in the construction and modification of the Order’s Irish Protestant identity.142 As we have seen, this was an identity in which diverse versions of Scottish identity were espoused by Orangewomen, from the Lowland Burns, to the paraphernalia of Highlandism, from dances to kilts and clans.143 Migration

The remarkable growth of the female Orange Order in Scotland coincided with a period of intense emigration from Scotland.144 Between 1921 and

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1938, 418,496 people left Scotland to go overseas, with most moving to Canada, the United States or Australasia.145 More remarkably, the bulk of these migrants left Scotland’s shores between 1921 and 1930, with just 13,772 departing during the 1930s. The most prolific year for emigration from Scotland was 1923, ‘an exceptional year within an exceptional decade of migration’,146 which saw 84,572 leave the country. How did Orangewomen’s migration compare to these overall patterns? Historians of the Orange Order have recently noted the organisation’s role in the migration process, speculating whether, for Orangemen, it ‘constituted a network to facilitate migration rather than just a club at the end of the migrants’ road’.147 While direct evidence about the Orange Order’s precise role is scant, newspaper reports and lodge records provide some indication that female lodges did, to varying degrees, support the migration process in the first half of the twentieth century. Just like their male counterparts, women’s lodges functioned as hubs, connecting Irish Protestant women back to their Irish origins, while providing an organisational framework that, in some instances, supported onward migration to Canada, the United States, Australasia and South Africa, both materially and emotionally. Although female Orange lodges certainly did not formally support migration, unlike the Salvation Army,148 the Orange Order was part of the migration process for a number of women in Scotland, giving them a forum in which to exchange information about moving abroad and marking the point of departure through ceremonies at which gifts were given (often money to contribute towards the cost of the journey) and fond farewells exchanged. After migration, the female lodge then continued to connect the migrant and her old friends, through letters and visits ‘back home’. Orange records provide details of 156 members of female lodges who emigrated from Scotland in the period 1909 to 1937. Most left during the 1920s, confirming this decade’s position as exceptional for emigration from Scotland (see Table 2.4). Despite the small size of the sample, the 156 Orangewomen for whom we have records confirm some of the broader trends within Scottish migration during the interwar period. For Scottish Orangewomen, just like the overall Scottish population, 1923 was an exceptional year for migration, in which approximately one-fifth of all Orangewomen migrating in the period 1921–37 left Scotland.149 The pattern of Orangewomen’s migration followed the overall trend, declining dramatically during the 1930s, though not falling away so precipitously in 1924, the second most prolific year for Orangewomen’s migration. Historians have identified the severe depression experienced by heavy industry in Scotland as the principal cause of interwar emigration.150 From their analysis of

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Table 2.4  Migration of Orangewomen and overall Scottish migration, 1921–37 Year

1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 Total

Number of Orangewomen (% of sample)   8   7  20  14   6  13   6  11   6   0   1   3   5   1   2   1   2 106

  (7.55)   (6.60) (18.87) (13.21)   (5.66) (12.26)   (5.66) (10.38)   (5.66)     (0)   (0.94)   (2.83)   (4.72)   (0.94)   (1.89)   (0.94)   (1.89)

Source: McCarthy, Personal Narratives

Overall number (% of total emigration in period)  35,390  35,813  84,572  35,110  33,800  44,278  39,427  34,134  39,231  22,969   3,586   1,433   1,360   1,568   1,380   1,345   1,596 416,992

  (8.49)   (8.59) (20.28)   (8.42)   (8.11) (10.62)   (9.46)   (8.19)   (9.41)   (5.51)   (0.86)   (0.34)   (0.33)   (0.38)   (0.33)   (0.32)   (0.38)

the Scottish Emigration Database for 1923, Harper and Evans conclude that most migrants were skilled labourers, who left Glasgow because of the decline in shipbuilding and before the impending introduction of an immigration quota system in the United States.151 While the ­figures for Orangewomen’s migration would appear to confirm their findings, as most members were from a working-class background and thus most susceptible to economic downturns, it is interesting to note that the period of greatest emigration coincided with remarkable growth in the female Orange Order in Scotland. At the beginning of the 1920s, there were 3,852 Orangewomen in Scotland.152 While there are no available figures for the annus mirabilis of 1923, the female Orange Order grew by 1,747 members in 1922 and 1,076 in 1924.153 The correlation of growing membership and increased migration perhaps suggests that the role of the female Order in the migration process was something that attracted new members, who saw the usefulness of being part of an organisation that could provide job openings and a ready-made social world in their new surroundings abroad. A number of Orangewomen migrants did, indeed, join the Order only shortly before leaving Scotland. For example,

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Table 2.5  Destinations of female Orange migrants Destination Country

Canada USA Australia Ireland/Northern Ireland England South Africa New Zealand No destination given

Number of migrants 56 48 14 10 7 4 3 14

%

35.90 30.77 8.97 6.41 4.49 2.56 1.92 8.97

Source: Belfast Weekly News 1909–37; Membership Roll Books, Attendance Books and Minute Books, Olympia House, Glasgow

in Greenock, Sister M. Gardner joined the women’s lodge in August 1921, only to depart for the United States a month later. In the same lodge, Grace Took joined at the beginning of October 1921 and had set sail for Canada within a week.154 Clearly, for some women, becoming a member of the Orange Order provided information and opportunity for leaving Scotland and moving abroad. Table 2.5 indicates the destinations of these Orangewomen, most of whom left for Canada. While it is likely that many more than the 156 Orangewomen recorded here left Scotland during this period, this sample can be usefully compared to recent research on interwar Scottish migration. Orangewomen’s choice of destination reflected a broader Scottish preference for Canada, which accounted for 35 per cent of emigrants. While Canada was the destination of choice for Orangewomen, the United States was not quite as popular, comprising just under a third of destinations compared to the overall Scottish population’s figure of 38.52 per cent.155 Given its strong Orange profile during the early twentieth century, as the hub of global Orangeism explored in the next chapter, it is perhaps no surprise that many from our sample chose to go to Canada, where their Orange networks would have paid dividends in helping adjust to life abroad.156 The continued preference for Canada as a destination, however, indicates that the migrant decision was based on cultural as well as economic factors.157 Many opted to build a new life in cities such as Toronto or Hamilton, whose Orange culture would have been deeply familiar to those from Glasgow, and would have proved useful in settling in to their new life. While detailed information is unavailable for most of these Orangewomen migrants, newspaper accounts, lodge records and the

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Scottish Emigration Database can be used to construct an impression of the kinds of individual women who left Scotland during this period. The three Orangewomen who left Scotland between January and April 1923 can be found in the Scottish Emigration Database and the details there provide an indication of the background of these migrants.158 Elizabeth Wishart and Alice McCulloch were both single women from Glasgow, who were members of the same female lodge in Govan, FLOL No. 42. Elizabeth was a saleswoman of twenty-one who set sail for New York in January 1923 on the Assyria. Alice McCulloch was a year younger and worked as a domestic servant, and departed for St John, New Brunswick, in March 1923 on the Montrose as part of a group organised by the Salvation Army. Robina Lawrie was from a rather different background, coming from Glengarnock in Ayrshire. She was twenty-nine years old and, while listed in the passenger manifest of Montcalm as a housewife, she travelled to Quebec with only her one-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, for company. These three examples, although limited, demonstrate the broadly young and working-class background of many female migrants from Scotland during the interwar period.159 By further analysing Orangewomen’s migration at the level of the individual it is possible to build up an understanding of the networks of Orange lodges, family and friends that shaped the decision to emigrate. Although evidence is scarce, we do know that a number of Orangewomen during this period emigrated either with family members or to join those who were already abroad. According to the report of her leaving ceremony in the Belfast Weekly News, Elizabeth Lawrie, one of the Orangewomen who appears in the Scottish Emigration Database, was presented with ‘a beautiful collarette and a box of handkerchiefs’ by her lodge in Glengarnock ‘on the occasion of her leaving the district to join her husband in Canada’.160 In 1935, Janet Martin left her lodge in Glasgow to join her husband in Corby, ‘to which place the works in Glasgow had been removed’.161 Sister Salmond, one of the founding members of the first women’s lodge in Scotland, set sail for New Zealand in January 1927 to live with her son.162 In addition to following relatives abroad, a number of Orangewomen left Scotland together as part of a family unit. Many left with their husbands, such as Sister Lowrie from Airdrie.163 Others travelled with siblings. Grace Took, who had joined the women’s lodge in Govan just days before leaving Scotland, set sail for Canada with her sister,164 while the two Sisters Deering said farewell to their lodge in Glasgow to join their parents in emigrating to Toronto.165 Of course, many of the Orangewomen in this small sample of Scottish emigrants would have been single but, clearly, migrating with or to join family members was an important part of the migrant experience during the interwar period.166

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The significance of personal networks to the migration process is further highlighted if we examine the role of individual lodges, in which friendship networks clearly shaped the decision to leave Scotland. Although necessarily speculative, lodge records indicate that members emigrated in ‘clusters’, with many leaving at the same time for similar destinations, suggesting that information about opportunities abroad may have been shared between lodge members and that some may have decided to emigrate together, as friends. The minute books, lodge roll books and attendance records of the Lily of Scotland lodge in Greenock contain considerable detail about members who left Scotland. In the period 1909 to 1937, twenty-eight members left, representing 5.58 per cent of the total lodge membership of 502.167 For the women of this lodge, the favoured destination was the United States, attracting half of those who decided to leave Scotland. In June 1923, three members left their lodge in Greenock to set sail to the United States. Sister Mrs C. Bain, Sister Mrs Currie and Sister Mrs M’Dougall were given a rousing send off by the members of their lodge in Greenock and each was presented with a ‘beautiful purse’, which, it was hoped, would help them ‘to remember their Orange Order when they landed in the USA’.168 The three women all lived in the same area of Greenock, just south of the town centre, and their Orangeism would have functioned as a common social focal point, adding plausibility to the suggestion that they may have shared information and discussed their plans about migration together. In addition to establishing networks that enabled Orangewomen to share information about migration, female lodges often provided emotional and, occasionally, financial support to those who decided to leave Scotland. As we saw in Chapter 1, a member’s departure would often be marked by a small ceremony in which they would be presented with a suitable gift and sent on their way with the best wishes of the lodge. Out of our sample of 156 members, almost two-thirds are recorded as receiving a gift to mark their departure. The most common gift was a Bible, followed closely by the presentation of an Orange collarette or diploma, both of which would function as reminders of the religious and institutional role that the Order had played in migrants’ lives in Scotland. At a meeting of Scotland’s First female lodge in May 1911, Sisters Anderson and Mathieson were presented with gifts before journeying to Vancouver and New Jersey respectively. After tea and songs, Anderson was presented with ‘a beautiful Bible’, while Mathieson was given ‘a beautiful collarette, hoping she would be long spared to wear it with honour to herself and credit to the Order’.169 Sister Mathieson left ‘the old country with the best wishes of all her Orange colleagues for prosperity across the sea’.170 Mathieson’s lodge was clearly sorry to see her leave and through the

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presentation and warm words supplied her with considerable emotional support. This was appreciated by Sister Mathieson, who ‘feelingly replied’ to her sisters’ kind words, saying that the collarette ‘would remind her of Scotland’s First when she was far away in New Jersey’.171 At the women’s lodge in Greenock, a special meeting was held in August 1927 to mark the departure of Annie Livingstone to Canada. The members of the lodge were deeply sorry that Livingstone was leaving them, but wished her well in her new life in Ontario, presenting her with ‘a purse containing £1 Treasury note’.172 While the emotional support given to migrants as they departed was clearly important, giving a member money was a more practical way of supporting their passage abroad. When Sister Watters left her lodge in Glasgow at the end of 1927 to move to Australia with her husband, she was presented with ‘a travelling trunk, a purse with cash and a luck shoe of white heather’.173 The emotional support of Watters’ lodge, wishing her ‘all prosperity in the land to which she was going’ was significant, but this was bolstered by the practical assistance of money and luggage in which to carry some of her belongings. Diaspora

In addition to helping migrant members both emotionally and practically in their journeying abroad, female lodges created networks with members who had left Scotland through letters and visits ‘back home’. Saying fond farewells to departing members was clearly a strong part of women’s Orange lodge life and the ceremonies described above would have had a significant impact on those Orangewomen who stayed in Scotland. The centrality of the migratory process to female lodge life would have been further emphasised by ex-members who wrote back to their ‘mother’ lodge and, in some cases, returned to Scotland to visit family, friends and, importantly, their Orange sisters. The diasporic identity created by these activities was, however, complex and paradoxical. While Scotland provided a physical homeland to which Orange migrants wrote back or returned, these Orangewomen held a much broader and, arguably, deeper connection to an Irish Protestant identity, rooted in the pages of the Belfast-based Orange press. Letters written to female lodges in Scotland by old members constituted the most visible indicator of the networks of communication that were maintained by Orangewomen. Although by no means an everyday occurrence, a number of Orangewomen did communicate with their old lodges in Scotland and we have evidence that, from our 156-strong sample, 17 wrote letters, thanking their old sisters for the send-off they received and telling them about their new lives abroad. Most of these

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letters were reported in the Belfast Weekly News. Sister Millar had left her lodge in Glasgow during the summer of 1913, setting sail for Canada. Once she had arrived in her new home, Millar wrote to her lodge ‘thanking the sisters for the beautiful Bible’ that had been her parting gift.174 Millar ended her letter on a note of reminiscence for the life she had left behind in Scotland, asking to ‘be remembered to all the sisters’ in her old lodge. Furthermore, some Orangewomen kept up a more sustained correspondence over a number of years. Sister Salmond, whom we saw above leaving Glasgow to join her son in New Zealand, wrote a number of letters ‘back home’ and was clearly keen to maintain a sense of connection with her old Orange colleagues. Sister Salmond was unusual in that she chose to send a letter directly to the Belfast Weekly News instead of to her individual lodge, reflecting both her previous wider role in the running of the female Order in Scotland as past Grand Mistress and also the way in which the newspaper functioned as a connective tissue between Orangewomen across the globe. Salmond’s letter was published in the weekly ‘Notes from Scotland’ section of the newspaper that was devoted to all matters Orange. Her letter articulated a notably complex set of feelings about leaving Scotland, letting her readers know that she was ‘getting along nicely’ but also that she was prone to the odd bout of homesickness, when ‘a longing comes over her for an evening in an Orange lodge at home’.175 Six months later, Salmond wrote again to the Belfast Weekly News, asking to be ‘remembered to her former colleagues in the old land’.176 Salmond’s evident longing for her old Scottish ‘home’ was tempered by her continuing Orange activism. By May of 1929, Salmond had opened the first juvenile Orange lodge in New Zealand, naming it the ‘Primrose’ after her old lodge in Glasgow, ‘of which she had many happy memories’.177 Yet despite throwing herself into Orange activities in her new home, Salmond still remarked that she missed ‘the demonstrations and the rousing Orange speeches she was accustomed to in Scotland’.178 The case of Sister Salmond provides an example of a migratory Orangewoman who clearly clung to her Orangeism to counter the negative emotions associated with leaving her old life in Scotland behind. Indeed, Salmond rather poignantly stated her desire to return home to ‘visit the old land within the next two years’, yet there is no surviving evidence to suggest that she made the journey she clearly craved.179 So, here we see the pages of the Belfast Weekly News being used to explore the complex set of emotions experienced by those who left Scotland and evidently continued to feel the emotional ‘tug’ of their old home. The ’old land’ to which Salmond and other Orangewomen referred was, however, more than just a physical location. These Orangewomen’s connection back to Scotland

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was articulated through the pages of the Belfast Orange press, indicating how their diasporic identity was shaped both by the physical experience of leaving Scotland and by the imaginative world of Irish Protestant Orangeism, discussed in greater detail below. Salmond’s experience of leaving Scotland and transplanting her Orange activism to her new home was typical of many migrant Orangewomen, maintaining their Orangeism in a diasporic setting. Joining a lodge abroad was a relatively common practice for the Orangewomen who emigrated from Scotland during the interwar period.180 Out of our sample of 156 Orangewomen, we have evidence that only 15 joined female lodges in their new home, but this figure probably underestimates the number who would have maintained their Orangeism after migration. Sister M’Kerlay left the Primrose ladies lodge in Glasgow in March 1913, emigrating to Australia.181 M’Kerlay’s departure revealed her emotional connection to the female Order, remarking that ‘she would always remember her sisters of the Orange Lodge in Scotland and would be pleased at all times to hear of them’.182 After M’Kerlay had written back to her old lodge to ask for her certificate, she joined the Apprentice Girls of Derry LOL 338 in Sydney a year after she had left Scotland.183 M’Kerlay’s route to Australia was followed a decade later by Margaret Gilmour from the ladies’ lodge in Greenock. Gilmour left for Australia in June 1926 and wrote a year later to ask for the transfer of her certificate to Ladies’ Loyal Orange Lodge (LLOL) No. 44 in South Brisbane. The minutes of her old lodge in Greenock record that the lodge Mistress, Sister McDonald, thought very highly of her, describing her as a ‘hard worker’ who therefore would receive her transfer free of charge.184 Closer to Scotland, England became a destination for emigrating Orangewomen, especially with the growth of industry in the south and east of England during the interwar period.185 During the twentieth century, new areas of Orange activity emerged in towns such as Corby, where the steel firm Stewarts and Lloyds attracted considerable labour from their site at Bellshill, Lanarkshire, who transported their Orangeism to England.186 On moving to Corby in the mid-1930s, ‘following their husbands to the new works there’, Sisters Stewart and Martin from FLOL No. 30 in Glasgow established the first ladies’ lodge in the Northamptonshire steel town, creating a pocket of Scottish female Orangeism that thrives to this day.187 Canada, however, was the most common destination in which Orangewomen from Scotland maintained their Orangeism, such as Sister Stokes from Shettleston, who was granted her transfer to a lodge in Hailybury, Canada, ‘free of charge’, reflecting the high esteem in which she must have been held by her old lodge in Scotland.188 Moreover, of those Orangewomen who migrated but did not join a lodge abroad, there

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is evidence that some women did retain membership of their old lodge in Scotland. Sister Maxwell, for example, had left Glasgow in 1925, settling in Freedom, Pennsylvania, and wrote back to the Scotland’s First lodge enclosing two dollars ‘for lodge dues’, indicating that despite being on the other side of the Atlantic, she wished to retain a tangible link ‘back home’ to Scotland.189 The evident connection many Orangewomen retained with Scotland once they had moved abroad was further reinforced by return visits on holiday to their family, friends and Orange sisters. Transatlantic return visits were most common. In the summer of 1934, Annie Scobbie returned to Scotland on holiday from her new home in America, being given a ‘hearty welcome’ by the members of her old lodge, the Blue Bell FLOL No. 6.190 Annie had been away from Scotland for six years but it was, according to her, ‘a pleasure to be back amongst them’, in a lodge where her mother was once Worthy Mistress.191 A year later, Martha Scobbie, Annie’s sister, made the same journey ‘on holiday from America’.192 While travel from further afield was less common, some Orangewomen did return to visit Scotland from their new homes in Australia, South Africa or New Zealand. For example, in 1933 the women of FLOL No. 188 in Glasgow were honoured to welcome back Sister Ross, who had returned from New Zealand on holiday together with her husband.193 Recent research has demonstrated that such return visits were by no means unusual during the interwar period and while the evidence for Orangewomen’s return to Scotland is limited, it does indicate that at least one of the strategies for maintaining a sense of connection with their homeland, along with letter writing, was to visit their old lodge.194 What is notable, then, is that the lodge and its members were part of these Orangewomen’s network of family and friends and were integrated into the return migrant’s process of ‘homecoming as pilgrimage’, highlighting the important social and emotional support function of female Orange lodges.195 Empire

Lodge meetings at which migrants were given an appropriate send-off and the return visits of former lodge members were only component parts, however, of Scottish Orangewomen’s diasporic consciousness. Through the extensive visits of Orange men and women to Scotland (other than the return migrants discussed above), Orangewomen’s holidaying in the ‘old country’ of Ireland, and in the pages of the Belfast Weekly News, female lodges in Scotland would have felt connected, both physically and imaginatively, to the wider Irish Protestant diaspora. It is important, then, to see Scotland as a ‘diaspora space’ during the

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interwar period, not just in the conventional sense as a ‘contact zone’ between different diasporic peoples, but as a physical and imagined space in which Orangewomen felt themselves to be part of a global, interconnected Orangeism.196 Orangewomen in Scotland thought diasporically and the diasporic connection experienced by these women was also shaped and reinforced by a strong British Empire identity. While the engagement with these concepts was not constant, at key junctures both diaspora and the British Empire shaped these Orangewomen’s lives. At lodge meetings or while reading the Belfast Weekly News on a Thursday night, Orangewomen imagined themselves to be part of an Irish Protestant diaspora that had strong correlations and overlaps with the British Empire. The lodge room was a key site for the formation of Orangewomen’s diasporic consciousness. In addition to the meetings at which migrant members were given a fond farewell or were welcomed back on a return visit, a constant feature of women’s lodge meetings during this period was the presence of visiting Orangemen and Orangewomen from across the globe. In Paisley, for instance, the Purple Star women’s lodge was visited by a Sister Turner from Australia at the end of 1922. After announcing that she was ‘delighted to find herself a visitor from the far-away south’ in the ‘fine’ Paisley lodge, Turner went on to speak to the sisters about female Orange lodges in Australia, giving them an insight into the workings of women’s Orangeism on the other side of the world, where they were fighting a ‘great battle with the Church of Rome’.197 While Sister Turner was struck by the ‘hearty welcomes’ that she received on visiting a number of female lodges during her stay in Scotland, her audience would have been given a further demonstration of how the Orange Order functioned on a global level and how women were just as much as part of this worldwide presence as men.198 A similar impression was created by the visit of Ethel Gilman from LOL No.148, Montreal, who came to Glasgow in the autumn of 1931. Like Sister Turner speaking in Paisley, Gilman informed the Glasgow women about the situation in Montreal, where they sought to maintain their religion ‘against the old foe’ and their ‘connection with the old land’.199 Speaking to the women’s lodge in Clydebank in 1933, Sister Niven from Toronto made a similar point about the strength of the female Order abroad and the connections they sought to maintain, both physical and imagined, with Scotland. Niven told the lodge about the ‘2,000 women lodges’ that had been established in Canada, before recollecting how the ‘Clydebank folk in the great Dominion foregather and discuss the events of the homeland’. Niven’s own, personal ritual of remembering and reconnecting to Scotland involved ‘having a cup of tea with another former Clydebank member on

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the last Tuesday of each month’, the meeting night of her ‘mother lodge’ in Scotland.200 Through such visits, the Orangewomen of Scotland would have been acutely aware of the diasporic connections that tied together their own lodge with those abroad, in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Women’s lodges in Scotland also received visitors from Ireland, who reminded Orangewomen of a further diasporic connection, back to the roots of Orangeism in Ulster, where, as we have seen, many Orange men and women in Scotland had originally come from. At the end of 1923, the women of Scotland’s First female lodge were visited by Sister Mullet from a women’s lodge in Bangor, Co. Down. Mullet conveyed a greeting from ‘the Ulster sisters to their co-workers in Scotland’, who were grateful for the support that ‘the Scottish Orangemen and Orangewomen had always given to loyal Ulster’, working hard to ‘combat the inroads of the Church of Rome’.201 Orangewomen’s sense of connection to Ireland was further strengthened by the frequent visits members often made to Ulster on holiday. In the Belfast Weekly News, each July and August the ‘Notes from Scotland’ column would remark on the quietness of the Scottish Orange scene while ‘sisters and brethren’ visited the ‘old home’ and saw ‘old friends in Northern Ireland’.202 For example, Sister Lendrum, a leading Pollokshaws Orangewoman, articulated a diasporic connection to Ireland in her speeches about returning to Ulster for the Twelfth of July celebrations. Visiting Ulster reinforced Lendrum’s sense of Orangeism, where she was ‘struck with the determination of the people to stand by Britain and never give way to Sinn Fein’.203 For Lendrum and other Orangewomen, spending time in Ireland reminded them of the key principles of the Orange Order, which would then be reinforced back home in Scotland. The importance of Ireland, and increasingly of Ulster, to diasporic Orangeism in Scotland was further emphasised by the pictorial content of the Belfast Weekly News.204 Despite being a newspaper that was read across the globe by Orangemen and Orangewomen, the content of the Belfast Weekly News focused on events in Ireland and, later, Northern Ireland. As the reproduction of photographs became cheaper and easier during the interwar period, the Belfast Weekly News published images of key events and important places in Northern Ireland. The Twelfth of July celebrations featured heavily, often filling a full broadsheet page with images of, for example, Orange Arches in Sandy Row, Belfast, or Orange bands marching through the streets of provincial Northern Ireland towns, such as Groomsport, Co. Down.205 More significant in terms of the cultivation of a diasporic imagination in the minds of its readership abroad, the Belfast Weekly News began to publish photographs of prominent landmarks in Northern Ireland during the 1930s. Featuring such sites as ‘the

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picturesquely situated ruins of Narrowater Castle’ in Co. Down, these photographs functioned as a visual reminder of the Ulster roots of the Orange Order, giving readers in Glasgow or Toronto a glimpse of the ‘old country’, now possible through new print technologies.206 The Belfast Weekly News was, then, a significant factor in the formation of a diasporic imagination for Orangewomen in interwar Scotland. Kevin Kenny’s influential essay on the global Irish and diaspora cautions against taking the writings of the ethnic press as a shorthand for the thoughts and feelings of ‘the mass of ordinary migrants’.207 However, the Belfast Weekly News was an important part of the cultural life of the Orange Order and indicates how a transnational sense of Orangeism could be transmitted across the globe.208 The song discussed at the beginning of this chapter, ‘rendered in dashing style’ by Sister Beattie at a women’s lodge meeting in Glasgow in 1913, illustrates the function played by the Belfast Weekly News in forging a sense of connection to their Orange sisters outside of Scotland. The newspaper played a vital role for those who had left Scotland, informing them of developments ‘back home’ and allowing them a channel of communication with Orangewomen across the globe. Just as Sister Salmond in New Zealand, discussed above, used the pages of the Belfast Weekly News to communicate with women’s lodges in Scotland, other migrant members were conscious of how the newspaper could function in connecting them with their fellow Orange sisters. In 1936, for instance, Sister Gibson wrote back to her old lodge in Govan from her new home in Toronto to congratulate them on becoming the largest lodge in Scotland. Gibson had heard this news through the pages of the Belfast Weekly News, which she had read ever since she emigrated, enabling her to keep ‘in touch with many old friends in Scotland’.209 The Belfast Weekly News was, then, a ‘diaspora space’, not only fostering networks of communication between members across the globe, but also forging a diasporic consciousness ‘at home’ in Scotland, through news of those abroad and through the pictorial content which emphasised the Ulster heritage of the Orange Order. While the full extent of this diasporic consciousness is hard to measure, Orangewomen in Scotland would have entered the ‘diaspora space’ of the Belfast Weekly News ‘each Thursday night’, briefly, but importantly, connecting them imaginatively with their Orange sisters across the globe. Orangewomen’s diasporic consciousness, both at home in Scotland and abroad, was also shaped by the British Empire. Historians have long noted the significance of the British Empire to Orangeism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reflecting on how Unionist politics was infused with a belief in ‘wider Imperial patriotism’.210 However, the role Orangewomen could play in the formation of a British Empire

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identity has been ignored. Orangewomen in Scotland were proud promoters of an imperial identity through both their lodge work and their diasporic connection with Orange sisters across the globe, demonstrating how the work of empire could be accomplished ‘at home’ in Britain by working-class women and how the influence of empire on British life extended into the interwar period.211 Orangewomen in Scotland were aware that the global connections developed by migration, return visits and the pages of the Belfast Weekly News were closely tied to the British Empire. At the twenty-fifth anniversary social of the Primrose women’s lodge in Glasgow, the Worthy Mistress, Sister Irvine, remarked ‘that the Primrose lodge had members scattered over the Empire’, many of whom had joined or formed new women’s lodges abroad.212 Irvine was conscious of the close overlap between patterns of Orangewomen’s migration, their diasporic consciousness and the British Empire. Such an awareness informed Thomas Weir’s comments to the women’s lodge in Govan in 1926. Weir reminded the Govan sisters that ‘the hand that rocked the cradle ruled the world’, but placed this cliché of gender relations within the context of empire, pointing out that the Orange Order ‘had a network of lodges, both male and female, throughout the Empire, that supported a strong and also a high standard of morality, and which were the seed of a world federation for God and mankind’.213 To his female audience, Weir’s message about empire, the Orange Order’s global networks and the role women played in shaping the religious aspects of the Order would have been clear. Orangewomen’s appreciation of their ‘diasporic position’214 in the Empire was further emphasised by the promotion of imperial ideology, through lodge work, the material and visual culture of lodge banners and through imperial activities, such as festivals and celebrations. A belief in the British Empire was central to Orangewomen’s world view. Speaking at a meeting of the Daughters of Derry women’s lodge in Wishaw during the last year of the Great War, Sister Kennedy urged the sisters to support each other ‘for the good of the Order and the welfare of our Empire and country’, intimately connecting activities in their lodge with an imperial patriotism.215 Kennedy’s thoughts were echoed during the 1930s by Frank Dorrian, a leading Glasgow Orangeman and supporter of women’s lodges in Scotland. Dorrian argued that women’s loyalty to the Orange Order was synonymous with loyalty ‘to their country and Empire’, and would be needed to defend the interests of Ulster against the newly elected Republican Taoiseach of Ireland, Eamon de Valera.216 Dorrian argued that the Free State might become ‘an outpost of Moscow’ and that their Orange sisters and brethren in Northern Ireland required their support to maintain Ulster as ‘the key of the Empire’.

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He approved wholeheartedly of the ‘phenomenal growth of the women lodges in Scotland’, which he saw as at the forefront of the battle against Roman Catholic influence in Scotland. Moreover, Dorrian suggested that Orangewomen could push back the ‘Glasgow Roman Catholics’ by buying British and Empire goods, defeating those who ‘had no love for the British Empire’.217 The British Empire, then, was at the heart of Orangewomen’s world view, binding together their support for Ulster, their fight against Catholicism in Scotland and their perception that they were part of a global network of female Orangeism. This belief in empire was articulated further through the material and visual culture of women’s lodges in Scotland. Banners are an important part of a lodge’s identity and, during the interwar period, images of empire became increasingly popular.218 As we saw above, the most popular image to appear on women’s lodge banners in Scotland was the biblical story of Ruth and Naomi, reflecting the female Order’s concern with religiosity. However, images of empire, such as the figure of Britannia, came to account for around ten per cent of female lodge banners during the 1930s. In Pollokshaws, the women of the Sisters of Freedom lodge held a special social to celebrate the unfurling of a new banner, just in time for the summer marching season in 1922. The banner comprised a painting of King William at the Boyne on one side, while the other bore a representation of Britannia, below which were the words ‘For Empire’. Unfurling the banner, Br Logan declared that the banner would remind the sisters ‘of the great traditions of the British Empire’ and their loyalty to the crown.219 While Britannia was a common banner image for female lodges, other scenes of imperial sentiment were appropriated by some Orangewomen. The women’s lodge in Bridgeton, Glasgow, was proud to unfurl its new banner in June 1934, which depicted the biblical story of Rebecca on one side and, on the reverse, ‘a picture of Queen Victoria presenting the Bible to the African chief as the secret of England’s greatness’.220 This lodge banner managed to articulate a female image of empire, just like those of Britannia, while stressing a racial superiority which elided England with the British Empire.221 Patriotic celebrations held by women’s lodges in Scotland also enabled Orangewomen to express their belief in the British Empire. At their annual harvest thanksgiving service, the women of the Ark of Safety lodge in Bellshill, Glasgow, put on a patriotic tableau, entitled ‘Brittannia’s Prayer’, written by the husband of the Worthy Mistress, Sister Black. In addition to playing the part of ‘Brittannia’, other lodge members took the roles of ‘Christianity’, ‘Scotland’, ‘England’, ‘Ulster’, ‘Canada’, ‘Africa’, ‘India’, ‘Australia’ and ‘New Zealand’, all performing

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their parts in ‘an excellent manner’.222 The following year, the ladies of Bellshill reprised their performance of this ‘patriotic cantata’, the sisters expressing ‘their love for the Throne and their loyalty to the Empire’.223 Although the Belfast Weekly News’s reports of this play are frustratingly silent on its content, the names of the parts reveal the interconnection between empire, religiosity and the Orange Order across the globe, which informed Orangewomen’s world view in Scotland. Echoing the way in which the figure of Britannia became ‘a symbol of politeness, Protestantism, and empire’ during the eighteenth century, these Bellshill women were quite literally performing their British identity in the cause of Orangeism.224 Female lodge activities, banners and ideology indicate how the British Empire could function in the lives of ordinary women in Glasgow and the surrounding towns of the west central urban industrial belt in Scotland, adding to MacKenzie’s characterisation of Glasgow as a city of empire. While the impact of the British Empire on everyday life was uneven, it is important to consider the Orangewomen of Scotland as an example of how, at crucial junctures, women would think imperially, whether while participating in a patriotic tableau, listening to a speech about the Empire or reading about the reach of Orangeism throughout the British Empire in the pages of the Belfast Weekly News. Equally, the presence of imperial symbolism in female lodge banners provides an example of the almost unconscious engagement with empire that represented many people’s daily experience.225 The ‘everydayness of empire’ was further emphasised by the built environment in Glasgow, in which street names and architecture would have added to the sense of being part of an imperial city, whose industry and trade along the Clyde provided a tangible connection to the Empire.226 Orangewomen such as Jeanie Mason from Scotland’s First lodge provide an example of the presence of the Empire in daily life. Jeanie, like many Glaswegian Orangewomen in the interwar period, worked at Templeton’s carpet factory in the East End of the city.227 In October 1923 she decided to join the Scotland’s First lodge, who held their meetings in the centre of Glasgow, in the Orange Order’s headquarters on Cathedral Street. To get to her Wednesday night lodge meeting, Jeanie would have left her work and walked across Glasgow Green, passing the Doulton Fountain, built in 1890, an enormous terracotta fountain representing Canada, India, South Africa and Australia, above which presided Queen Victoria.228 This grand architectural statement of Glasgow’s imperial connections would have further reinforced Jeanie’s and other Orangewomen’s belief that the Empire was central to their lives, not just in lodge meetings, activities and the pages of the Belfast Weekly News, but also in

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the everyday act of walking through the physical space of the city itself.229 Conclusion

By the 1930s, women had become a significant force in the Scottish Orange Order. Female lodges were not only numerically superior to men’s lodges, but they also held an increasingly high status within the Orange Order. At the peak of their membership, Br John Quinn praised the Orangewomen fulsomely for their work in the Orange cause, describing them as ‘the backbone of the Orange Order’, leading the brethren.230 While their entry into the Order was contested and their role in the ­decision-making process limited,231 women were at the heart of the activities of the Order, reflecting broader changes in gender relations in Scottish society during the first half of the twentieth century, from the pre-war campaign for the vote to the interwar promotion of women’s citizenship. Orangewomen’s public work – raising money for the Orange Order, campaigning against Home Rule, canvassing for and standing in education authority elections, and engaging in charitable work for maternal and children’s welfare – indicated a strong commitment to women’s activism, which, in turn, gave them power and status in the Orange Order. While anti-Home-Rule and anti-Catholic politics were important, these issues were peripheral compared to women’s desire to participate in the public life of the Orange Order, demonstrating the traction that broader gender discourses had in determining the decision to form female lodges. The work of female Orange lodges demonstrates the diversity of working-class women’s activism in interwar Scotland, emphasising how women from a Protestant and Unionist background could also be active political agents. Moreover, Orangewomen were keen to promote women’s activism in a ‘feminine public sphere’ of charity and education authority work, a sphere that, as a function of shifting ethnicity, became an arena in which Irish, Ulster and Scottish Protestant identities could be articulated. Orangewomen were also engaged with the migration process in interwar Scotland, demonstrating how movement abroad shaped a diasporic consciousness at home that was, in turn, connected to the British Empire. The women’s Orange Order in Scotland played an important role in the migration process itself, providing emotional and, on occasion, financial support to migrant Orangewomen. The networks established between Scotland and migrants abroad, through letters and return visits, were a constant reminder for those left behind of the significance of migration in the activities and culture of female Orangeism. It is possible, then, to

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talk of a diasporic consciousness among the Orangewomen of Scotland, which demonstrates how ‘diaspora space’ is shaped as much by those left ‘at home’ in the migration process as it is by those who move abroad. The print culture of the Belfast Weekly News was key to the formation of a female Orange ‘diaspora space’, complementing the physical experience of migration and return with an imaginative space which connected women’s lodges in Scotland with their Orange sisters in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Although Orangewomen’s diasporic consciousness was unevenly experienced, only coming into focus at specific moments in lodge or the individual’s life, it is evident that Orangewomen in Scotland believed themselves to be part of an interconnected Orange world, which was shaped by the migration process, a strong belief in the British Empire and an overarching commitment to Irish Protestant culture. While these were important characteristics of male Orangeism, it is important to acknowledge that the Orange diaspora did incorporate women during the twentieth century. The Orangewomen of Scotland, and of Glasgow in particular, felt connected to a global Orange diaspora that was firmly imperial, indicating how working-class women could experience the ‘everydayness’ of empire through lodge meetings, patriotic display and the built environment of Glasgow’s imperial cityscape. Scottish Orangewomen’s migration practice and their awareness of being part of a global Orange diaspora that was shaped by Irish Protestantism and the British Empire was echoed across the Atlantic, as we shall see in Chapter 3’s examination of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association in Canada. Notes

1 Belfast Weekly News, 11 September 1913, p. 11. 2 Kaufmann, Orange Order Membership Data. 3 McFarland, Protestants First, p. 148. 4 Second-generation Irish Protestant migrants’ identity is analysed in S. Morgan and B. Walter, ‘“No, we are not Catholics”: illogical intersections of faith and identity’, in M. Busteed, F. Neal and J. Tonge (eds), Irish Protestant Identities (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). 5 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 October 1872, p. 5. Communication between the Orangewomen of Glasgow and Birkenhead is first mentioned in March 1872. See ‘Star of Progress Female Orange Lodge’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 March 1872, p. 5; ‘Birkenhead, England’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 March 1872, p. 5. 6 See, for example, ‘The Twelfth of July’, Glasgow Herald, 13 July 1874. 7 See Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1895 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1895), pp. 10, 14.

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8 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Minutes 1896–1901, 14 December 1900. For women’s lodges in England, see MacPherson and MacRaild, ‘Sisters of the brotherhood’, and MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 131–9. 9 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Minutes 1896–1901, 14 June 1901. The motion was defeated by thirty-three votes to sixteen, indicating that dozens of Grand Lodge members did not vote. 10 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1902 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1902), p. 10; Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1905 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1906), p. 11; Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1906 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1906), p. 16. 11 ‘Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 June 1908, p. 11. 12 Belfast Weekly News, 23 July 1908, p. 10. 13 See ‘Lady Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 October 1908, p. 11, for one such meeting and, for Grand Lodge’s decision to adopt female lodges, see ‘Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 June 1908, p. 9. 14 ‘Ladies’ Orange Association’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 November 1909, p. 10. 15 ‘Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 March 1908, p. 9. 16 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 4 June 1908, p. 10. 17 See, for example, the report of women taking part in the Orange church parade in Pollokshaws in May 1910, ‘Church Parade at Pollokshaws’, Belfast Weekly News, 26 May 1910, p. 10. 18 ‘Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 17 June 1909, p. 9. 19 ‘Female Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 June 1910, p. 11. 20 Belfast Weekly News, 7 July 1910, p. 11. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 23 July 1908, p. 11. 24 ‘Lady Orange Lodges’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 October 1908, p. 11. 25 ‘Orange Social in Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 June 1910, p. 10. 26 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 26 November 1908, p. 9. 27 See McFarland, Protestants First, especially chapter 8. 28 ‘Shotts’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 December 1908, p. 15. 29 For an example of this, see ‘Ladies’ Protestant Auxiliary’, Belfast Weekly News, 6 May 1909, p. 10. 30 ‘New Female Lodge for Temple’, Belfast Weekly News, 27 October 1910, p. 10. 31 C. G. Brown, ‘Religion’, in Abrams, et al., Gender in Scottish History, pp. 84–110. 32 On the issue of respectability and Irish migrant politics, see M. Busteed, ‘Resistance and respectability: dilemmas of Irish migrant politics in Victorian Britain’, Immigrants & Minorities, 27:2–3 (2008), 178–93. 33 J. Lawrence, ‘Class and gender in the making of urban Toryism, 1880–1914’, English Historical Review, 108:428 (1993), 629–52. 34 R. McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain, 1880–1950

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(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 267. For a recent critique of McKibbin’s work, see D. Thackery, ‘Home and politics: women and Conservative activism in early twentieth-century Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 49:4 (2010), 826–48. 35 See Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Reports of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1900–1950. 36 This pattern is confirmed if we examine membership figures at individual lodge level. For example, Lily of Scotland FLOL No. 16, in Greenock, experienced the greatest single increase in its membership during the twentieth century in 1921 and 1922, with 65 and 52 new members respectively in each year. See Lily of Scotland FLOL No. 16, Membership Roll Book, 1910–2005. 37 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Reports of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1922, 1924, 1927. 38 Employment in shipbuilding fell by one-third between 1921 and 1924. See N. K. Buxton, ‘Economic growth in Scotland between the wars: the role of production structure and rationalisation’, Economic History Review, 33:4 (1980), 547, and I. Maver, Glasgow (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 203–4. Don MacRaild has written about the importance of shipbuilding as an employment for Orangemen in the north of England. See MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 128–9. 39 The number of women employed in domestic service increased by fifty per cent between 1921 and 1931 and those employed in the textile industry in Strathclyde increased slightly from 42,008 to 42,366 in the same period, in the context of severe depression in other industrial sectors. See A. Hughes, ‘A Rough Kind of Feminism: The Formation of Working-Class Women’s Political Identity, Clydeside, c. 1919–1936’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Strathclyde, 2001), pp. 61–2. 40 Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, Glasgow District 12, Admission Forms. 41 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 114. 42 See the Admission Forms for Jeanie Mason, Jean Mann, Annie M. M’Lennan and Mary Milligan, Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1. 43 As Hughes argues, however, it is important to recognise that overall growth in women’s employment in interwar Clydeside was ‘slight’ and many remained working in sectors closely associated with their gender. Hughes, ‘A Rough Kind of Feminism’, p. 63. 44 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 3 May 1917, p. 3. 45 T. Gallagher, ‘Protestant extremism in urban Scotland 1930–1939: its  growth and contraction’, Scottish Historical Review, 64:178 (1985), 145–7. 46 V. Wright, ‘Education for active citizenship: women’s organisations in interwar Scotland’, History of Education, 38:3 (2009), 419. 47 Urqhuart, Women in Ulster Politics, pp. 68–84. 48 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 7 March 1918, p. 4. 49 ‘Pollokshaws’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 March 1925, p. 11.

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50 The Papal Ne Temere decree invalidated mixed marriages, unless solemnised by the Catholic Church. 51 E. Kaufmann, ‘The dynamics of Orangeism in Scotland: social sources of political influence in a mass-member organisation, 1860–2001’, Social Science History, 30 (2006), 263–92. 52 E. Kaufmann, ‘The Orange Order in Ontario, Newfoundland, Scotland and Northern Ireland: a macro-social analysis’, in D. Wilson (ed.), The Orange Order in Canada (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), pp. 59–66. 53 The McCann marriage case centred on accusations by Unionist politicians that the children of Agnes McCann, a Belfast Presbyterian, were removed from her care by their father’s Catholic priest. See MacPherson, ‘“Exploited with fury on a thousand platforms”’. 54 ‘Jenny Geddes LOL No. 20’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 February 1912, p. 10. 55 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 September 1912, p. 10. 56 ‘Whiteinch’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 October 1912, p. 9; ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 27 November 1913, p. 11. 57 Sir Edward Carson was the leader of the Ulster Unionist movement during the Third Home Rule Bill crisis. For the use of the Carson Defence Fund to fund the UVF, see T. Bowman, Carson’s Army: The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910–22 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 122. 58 For the ‘Help the Ulster Women and Children’ committee, see ‘Aid for the Women and Children of Ulster’, The Times, 31 July 1914, p. 10, cited in Jackson, Popular Opposition to Irish Home Rule in Edwardian Britain, p. 234. The committee was organised by the Duchess of Abercorn, in conjunction with upper-class English women and, as secretary of the committee, Bertram Cartland, father of the novelist Barbara. See Urquhart, Women in Ulster Politics, p. 63, and ‘Help for Ulster’, The Times, 29 June 1914, p. 10. 59 ‘The Ulster Defence Fund’, The Times, 15 February 1913, p. 10. 60 See, for example, the cake sale announced by FLOL No. 10 in ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 30 October 1913, p. 11. 61 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 11 September 1913, p. 11. 62 Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, District 12, Glasgow, Minute Book, 11 February 1914. 63 ‘Clydebank’, Belfast Weekly News, 8 January 1914, p. 111. 64 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1914 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1914), pp. 21–3. 65 Jackson, Popular Opposition to Irish Home Rule in Edwardian Britain, pp. 137–9. 66 ‘Victoria Female LOL No. 55’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 February 1914, p. 11. 67 Grand Lodge Minutes, 13 June 1914. 68 T. Gallagher, Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 103. 69 Ibid., p. 104. See also the coverage of the 1922 education authority elections in the Glasgow Herald, March 1922. 70 The heightened anti-Catholicism of the Orange Order in Scotland is indi-

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79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86

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cated by the Grand Secretary’s reports given at the annual Grand Lodge meeting. See, for example, James Cloughley’s comments on the education authority elections and the controversial revised Prayer Book in 1928 in Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1928 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1928). For the ‘explicitly gendered platform’ on which most women stood for school board elections in Scotland, see J. McDermid, ‘Blurring the boundaries: school board women in Scotland, 1873–1919’, Women’s History Review, 19:3 (2010), 357–73. ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 20 March 1918, p. 6. ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 April 1919, p. 6. ‘Female LOL No. 18’, Belfast Weekly News, 29 April 1919, p. 6. For the Orange and Protestant Party, and for the limitations of their support (and for the Unionist party as well) see Gallagher, Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace, p. 149, and Walker, ‘The Orange Order in Scotland between the wars’, 187. ‘Notes from Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 1 December 1927, p. 11. ‘New Ladies’ Lodge’, Belfast Weekly News, 9 May 1929, p. 11. ‘Notes on Candidates’, Glasgow Herald, 24 March 1922. There is evidence of some overlap between the female Orange Order and the Masonic Order of the Eastern Star. For example, Sister Mitchelson was both Worthy Mistress of FLOL No. 32 in Glasgow and ‘a prominent worker’ for the Order of the Eastern Star. See ‘Sister Mrs Mitchelson, WM Female LOL No. 32’, Belfast Weekly News, 1 June 1911, p. 10. ‘Education’, Glasgow Herald, 27 March 1922. ‘Notes from Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 March 1926. See, for example, discussion of the gendered fundraising activities that many grass-roots women members of the Labour Party engaged in during the interwar years in J. Hannam, ‘Women and Labour politics’, in M. Worley (ed.), The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900–39 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), p. 188. ‘Glasgow District No. 17’, Belfast Weekly News, 1 June 1911, p. 10. ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 14 September 1911, p. 11. ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 April 1935. ‘Ladies Orange Association’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 November 1909, p. 10. Loyal Orange Institution of Scotland, Ritual for Female Lodges (Glasgow, n.d., c. 1909), p. 21. Ibid., p. 11. Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1915 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1915), p. 95. ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 September 1914, p. 3. ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 10 November 1914, p. 10; ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 4 March 1915, p. 9. ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 15 March 1917, p. 7. Ibid. Unionist women in Ulster engaged in similar fundraising and war work. See Urquhart, Women in Ulster Politics, p. 65.

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93 Lily of Scotland FLOL No. 16 Greenock, Minute Book 1922–30, 7 November 1923. 94 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 27 November 1924. 95 ‘Govan’, Belfast Weekly News, 22 March 1923; ‘Notes from Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 December 1924; ‘Notes from Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 14 May 1923; ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 24 September 1931; ‘Burnbank’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 February 1932; ‘Blantyre Blue Bell FLOL No. 6’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 February 1932. 96 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1927 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1928), p. 7. 97 ‘Grand Orange Lodge Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 19 April 1934. 98 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1935 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1935), p. 15; ‘Grand Lodge of Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 January 1936. 99 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Scotland 1936 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1937), p. 9. For an example of Ruth and Naomi’s appearing on a lodge banner, see the report of the unfurling of the first female lodge’s banner, ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 April 1910, p. 10. The story of Ruth and Naomi also plays a central role in the women’s Second Degree ceremony, framing the initiation of candidates as analogous to Ruth’s leaving her own people behind on the death of her husband in order to care for her mother-in-law, Naomi. See Loyal Orange Institution of Scotland, Ritual for Female Lodges (Glasgow, n.d, c. 1909?), held at Schomberg House, Belfast. 100 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Scotland 1937 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1937), p. 16. One Hundred and Third Annual Report of the Glasgow Royal Maternity and Women’s Hospital, Rottenrow, For Year Ended 31st December, 1937 (Glasgow: Aird and Coghill, 1938), pp. 15, 24. For similar fundraising activities by Scottish migrants in Hull, see A. McCarthy, ‘The Scots’ Society of St Andrew, Hull, 1910–2001: immigrant, ethnic and transnational association’, Immigrants & Minorities, 25:3 (2007), 221. 101 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Report of the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Scotland 1940 (Glasgow: George Watt, 1940), pp. 14–15. For further analysis of Scottish Orangewomen’s maternal welfare, see Butcher, ‘Ladies of the Lodge’, pp. 143–5. 102 ‘Grand Lodge of Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 January 1936. 103 For the broader context of women’s activism during this period, see E.  Breitenbach and P. Thane (eds), Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century: What Difference Did the Vote Make? (London: Continuum, 2010). 104 S. Innes, ‘Constructing women’s citizenship in the interwar period: the Edinburgh Women Citizens’ Association, Women’s History Review, 13:4 (2004), 621–45.

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105 K. Offen, ‘Defining feminism: a comparative historical approach’, Signs, 14:1 (1988), 156. 106 Hughes, ‘A Rough Kind of Feminism’, p. 4. 107 See ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 14 October 1909, p. 10. For discussion of the importance of ritual, see Houston and Smyth’s description of Canadian practice in The Sash Canada Wore, pp. 116–24. 108 See ‘Grand Lodge of Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 16 December 1909, p. 9, for an account of how the Grand Lodge committee was helped by Miss Cullum, Worshipful Grand Mistress of the Ladies’ Orange Association of Canada; Loyal Orange Institution of Scotland, Ritual for Female Lodges. 109 See MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 82–3, for a description of the function of Degrees within the male Order in England. 110 Loyal Orange Institution of Scotland, Ritual for Female Lodges, p. 27. 111 Ibid., p. 29. 112 Ibid. 113 For a brief overview of the use of feminine biblical imagery in Unionist and Loyalist culture, see M. Luddy and C. Murphy, Women Surviving: Studies in Irish Women’s History from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1989), reprinted in A. Bourke et al. (eds), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002), pp. 1608–12. 114 N. Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997). 115 Ibid., p. 172. 116 Ibid., p. 174. 117 ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 April 1910, p. 10. 118 ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 3 April 1913, p. 10. 119 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 36. 120 Kaufmann, ‘The Orange Order in Ontario’, pp. 56–7; McFarland, Protestants First, pp. 103–6. 121 J. A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 11. 122 ‘Ladies’ Orange Association’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 November 1909, p. 10. 123 ‘Sister Harriet Wilson’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 November 1909, p. 10. 124 ‘Greenock’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 June 1910, p. 10. 125 ‘Sister Agnes Millar WM Female LOL 14’, Belfast Weekly News, 12 May 1910, p. 11. 126 Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, Admission Forms. For one of the very few examinations of second-generation Irish Protestant identity, see Sarah Morgan and Bronwen Walter’s analysis in Morgan and Walter, ‘“No, we are not Catholics”’. 127 During the 1920s, Irishness was increasingly identified with Catholicism in Scotland. See, for example, the Church of Scotland’s report The Menace of the Irish Race to Our Scottish Nationality (1923), discussed in Gallagher, Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace, pp. 136–7. For an example of the how members

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of the Orange Order conflated anti-Catholicism with anti-Irishness, see the comments of Digby S. Brown at a meeting in Glasgow, ‘Ladies’ LOL No. 10’, Belfast Weekly News, 24 February 1927, p. 11. 128 ‘Notes from Scotland’, Belfast Weekly News, 16 December 1925, p. 11. 129 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 27 September 1923. 130 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 July 1925, p. 11. 131 For a useful discussion of the connection between Ulster and Scottish identity, see G. Walker, ‘Empire, religion and nationality in Scotland and Ulster before the First World War’, in I. S. Wood (ed.), Scotland and Ulster (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1994), pp. 97–115. 132 ‘Govan’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 May 1922. 133 ‘Govan’, Belfast Weekly News, 6 October 1927, p. 11. 134 For the importance of Burns to Scottish associational culture, see J. A. Burnett, ‘“Hail Brither Scots O’ Coaly Tyne”: networking and identity among Scottish migrants in the north-east of England, c. 1860–2000’, Immigrants & Minorities, 25:1 (2007), 1–21. 135 ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 31 January 1924. Burns was, of course, a Freemason. See D. Stevenson, ‘Four hundred years of Freemasonry in Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, 90:2 (2011), 280–95. 136 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 January 1932. 137 ‘Rev Dr Kane Memorial LLOL No 70’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 January 1934. 138 ‘Ladies’ LOL No 102’, Belfast Weekly News, 2 February 1933. 139 ‘Edinburgh’, Belfast Weekly News, 9 January 1919, p. 6. 140 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 31 January 1935. For Highland migration to the Central Belt of Scotland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see T. M. Devine, ‘Highland migration to lowland Scotland’, Scottish Historical Review, 62:174 (1983), 137–49, and C. W. J. Withers, Urban Highlanders: Highland–Lowland Migration and Urban Gaelic Culture, 1700–1900 (Edinburgh: Tuckwell, 1998). For the increasing importance of Highlandism to a broader Scottish identity, see T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation: A Modern History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999), chapter 11, and, in a migratory context, A. McCarthy, ‘Scottish national identities among inter-war migrants in North America and Australasia’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 34:2 (2006), 201–22. 141 M. K. Smitley, ‘“Woman’s Mission”: The Temperance and Women’s Suffrage Movements in Scotland, c. 1870–1914’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Glasgow, 2002), p. 18. 142 The idea of an ‘ethnic feminine public sphere’ builds on Christiane Harzig’s notion of the ‘ethnic female public sphere’, but with a greater emphasis on the gendered nature of women’s activism. See C. Harzig, ‘The ethnic female public sphere: German-American women in turn-of-the-century Chicago’, in L. E. Murphy and W. H. Venet (eds), Midwestern Women: Work, Community, and Leadership at the Crossroads (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 141–57. 143 For an analysis of competing and hybrid Scottish identities in a diasporic

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context, see T. Bueltmann, Scottish Ethnicity and the Making of New Zealand Society, 1850 to 1930 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). 144 Richards, Britannia’s Children, p. 236. 145 A. McCarthy, Personal Narratives of Irish and Scottish Migration, 1921–1965: ‘For Spirit and Adventure’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 227. 146 M. Harper and N. J. Evans, ‘Socio-economic dislocation and inter-war emigration to Canada and the United States: a Scottish snapshot’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 34:4 (2006), 546. 147 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 148. 148 Harper and Evans, ‘Socio-economic dislocation’, 537. 149 Ibid., 546. 150 Employment in shipbuilding fell by one-third between 1921 and 1924. See Buxton, ‘Economic growth’, 547, and Maver, Glasgow, pp. 203–4. 151 Harper and Evans, ‘Socio-economic dislocation’, 547. For details of the immigration quotas to the US following the passing of the 1924 Immigration Act, see ‘Who was shut out?: immigration quotas, 1925–1927’, History Matters, available at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5078/, accessed 24 June 2015. 152 Kaufmann, Orange Order Membership Data. 153 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Reports of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1922 (Glasgow, 1922), p. 57; Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, Reports of Proceedings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 1924 (Glasgow, 1924), p. 59. While no copies survive of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland proceedings for 1923, newspaper accounts of the Grand Lodge meeting suggest that 1923 saw a similar rise in membership figures, with an overall rise of around 3,000 members, of which women comprised the bulk. See Belfast Weekly News, 14 June 1923, p. 11. 154 Lily of Scotland FLOL No. 16, Membership Roll Book, 1910–2005. 155 McCarthy, Personal Narratives, p. 227. 156 See, for example, W. Jenkins, ‘Views from “the Hub of Empire”: Loyal Orange Lodges in Early Twentieth–Century Toronto’, in Wilson, The Orange Order in Canada, pp. 128–45. 157 McCarthy, Personal Narratives, pp. 223–4. 158 Scottish Emigration Database, available at www.abdn.ac.uk/emigration/ index.html, accessed 11 January 2015. 159 M. Harper, Emigration from Scotland Between the Wars: Opportunity or Exile? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 146–51. 160 Belfast Weekly News, 19 April 1923. 161 Belfast Weekly News, 18 April 1935. 162 Belfast Weekly News, 4 November 1926, p. 11. 163 Belfast Weekly News, 17 April 1913, p. 10. 164 Lily of Scotland FLOL No. 16, Membership Roll Book, 1910–2005. 165 Belfast Weekly News, 24 February 1927, p. 11. 166 Harper, Emigration from Scotland, p. 146. For the importance of personal

146 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186

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family networks to the migration process, see A. McCarthy, ‘Personal accounts of leaving Scotland, 1921–1954’, Scottish Historical Review 83:2 (2004), 196–215. Lily of Scotland FLOL No. 16, Membership Roll Book, 1910–2005; Attendance Books, 1913–23/4, 1924–32, 1932–46; Minute Books, 1920–22, 1922–29, 1936–39. Belfast Weekly News, 21 June 1923. Belfast Weekly News, 18 May 1911, p. 9. Belfast Weekly News, 18 May 1911, p. 11. Belfast Weekly News, 18 May 1911, p. 9. Lily of Scotland FLOL No. 16, Minute Book, 1922–29. Belfast Weekly News, 3 November 1927, p. 11. Belfast Weekly News, 28 August 1913, p. 10. Belfast Weekly News, 23 August 1928, p. 11. Belfast Weekly News, 31 January 1929, p. 11. Belfast Weekly News, 13 June 1929, p. 11. Belfast Weekly News, 31 January 1929, p. 11. Belfast Weekly News, 23 August 1928, p. 11. For the function of Orange certificates in facilitating transfer between one Orange jurisdiction and another, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 76–7. Belfast Weekly News, 27 March 1913, p. 10. Belfast Weekly News, 27 March 1913, p. 10. Belfast Weekly News, 9 October 1913, p. 11; 30 April 1914, p. 15. Lily of Scotland, FLOL No. 16, Minute Book, 23 June 1926, 18 May 1927, 1 June 1927. Harper, Emigration from Scotland, p. 7. K. C. Edwards, ‘Corby: a New Town in the Midlands’, Town Planning Review, 22:2 (1951), 124. For the transfer of Orange lodges from Lanarkshire to Corby, see ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 5 November 1936, and ‘Scotch Orange Notes’, Belfast Weekly News, 18 March 1937. See also M. Harper, ‘“Come to Corby”: a Scottish steel town in the heart of England’, Immigrants & Minorities, 31:1 (2013), 27–47. Belfast Weekly News, 18 March 1937. Belfast Weekly News, 28 May 1914, p. 11. Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, Minute Book, 26 January 1927. Belfast Weekly News, 23 August 1934. Ibid. Belfast Weekly News, 22 August 1935. Belfast Weekly News, 3 August 1933. See the section on ‘homecoming as tourism’ in M. Harper and S. Constantine, Migration and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 333–6. See also McCarthy, Personal Narratives, pp. 204–8. Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire, p. 334. For a conventional application of the term ‘diaspora space’, see J. Herson,

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‘“Stirring Spectacles of Cosmopolitan Animation”: Liverpool as a diasporic city, 1825–1913’, in S. Haggerty, A. Webster and N. J. White (eds), The Empire in One City? Liverpool’s Inconvenient Imperial Past (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 69. 197 Belfast Weekly News, 21 December 1922. For anti-Catholic sentiment in Australia after the Great War, see Fitzpatrick, ‘Exporting brotherhood’, 292. 198 Belfast Weekly News, 18 January 1923. 199 Belfast Weekly News, 24 September 1931. 200 Belfast Weekly News, 8 June 1933. 201 Belfast Weekly News, 6 December 1923. 202 Belfast Weekly News, 23 July 1931. 203 Belfast Weekly News, 23 October 1929, p. 11. 204 For the increasing attraction of an Ulster identity over an Irish one during the 1920s for those of an Orange or Unionist disposition, see McBride, ‘Ulster and the British problem’, pp. 7–11, and Loughlin, ‘Creating “a social and geographical fact”’. 205 Belfast Weekly News, 16 July 1931. 206 Belfast Weekly News, 4 May 1933. For the development of newspaper technology in the interwar period, see A. Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–1978 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 204. 207 Kenny, ‘Diaspora and comparison’, 143. 208 J. B. Thompson, The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 32–6. For an example of how ideas about Britishness and empire were transmitted across the globe via newspapers during the nineteenth century, see A. Lester, ‘British settler discourse and the circuits of Empire’, History Workshop Journal, 54 (2002), 24–48. For the limitations of the notion of a networked web of mass media during the nineteenth century, see S. Potter, ‘Webs, networks, and systems: globalization and the mass media in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century British Empire’, Journal of British Studies, 46:3 (2007), 621–46. 209 Belfast Weekly News, 10 September 1936. 210 Walker, ‘Empire, religion and nationality’, p. 97. For an important study of the role of Orangeism in maintaining an imperial connection across the Atlantic, see Harland-Jacobs, ‘“Maintaining the connexion”’. 211 For the durability of imperial sentiment in interwar Britain, see MacKenzie, ‘Empire and national identities’, 228–9. 212 Belfast Weekly News, 18 April 1935. 213 Belfast Weekly News, 7 October 1926, p. 11. 214 Herson, ‘“Stirring spectacles”’, p. 70. 215 Belfast Weekly News, 21 February 1918, p. 3. 216 Belfast Weekly News, 23 February 1933. 217 Belfast Weekly News, 15 September 1932, p. 1. 218 For the role of banners in Orange culture, see Jarman, Material Conflicts, pp. 171–89.

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219 Belfast Weekly News, 29 June 1932. 220 Belfast Weekly News, 7 June 1934. 221 And, also, a rather ironic elision of Scottish and British identity into an English one. For further discussion about these identity issues in a Scottish context, see G. Morton, ‘Scotland is Britain: the Union and Unionist-nationalism 1807–1907’, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 1:2 (2008), 127–42. 222 Belfast Weekly News, 28 September 1933. 223 Belfast Weekly News, 15 March 1934. 224 E. Major, Madam Britannia: Women, Church, and Nation, 1712–1812 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 1. 225 See Hall and Rose’s discussion of the imperial habitus, the ‘everydayness’ of empire, that informed everyday life in Britain in Hall and Rose, At Home With the Empire, pp. 22–4. 226 MacKenzie, ‘“The Second City of Empire”’, pp. 224–6. 227 Scotland’s First FLOL No. 1, Glasgow District, Olympia House, Admissions Forms. 228 MacKenzie, ‘“The Second City of Empire”’, p. 226. 229 M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 91–110, cited in K. Navickas, ‘Space, place and popular politics in northern England, 1789–1848’, History Working Papers Project (2011), available at www.historyworkingpapers.org/?page_id=220, accessed 11 January 2015. 230 ‘Glasgow’, Belfast Weekly News, 11 May 1933. 231 Women remain excluded from the District Lodge in Scotland, one of the key decision-making bodies, and this is an issue that continues to cause controversy. See, for example, Ladies’ Orange Association of Scotland, Centenary Celebrations 1909–2009 (n.d., n.p.), in which a number of current members complain about their continuing lack of representation and voting rights.

3

Canada Far away across the ocean Is the green land of my birth; There my thoughts are turning ever To the dearest place on earth. Are the fields as green, I wonder, As they were in days of yore When I played in happy childhood By the Blue Atlantic shore?1

This song, penned by Mrs Charles E. Potter from Saskatoon, indicates the complex relationship with the British Isles experienced by many Orangewomen in Canada at the beginning of the twentieth century. As the threat of Home Rule loomed large in 1912, Potter felt the pull of ‘old Ireland’ as she called for Orange ‘brothers and sisters’ to fight the ‘hateful yoke of Rome’. Irish politics and identity were clearly important to Potter and the many thousands of women who were members of Canada’s Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association (LOBA). By the 1920s the ethnic identification of the LOBA had, however, become more complex, reflecting changing migration streams and the political turbulence in Ireland following the establishment of the Free State. During the interwar period, Orangewomen in Canada came from a diverse set of backgrounds, encompassing both recent migrants from Ireland, Scotland, England and elsewhere in the British world together with those with longstanding Canadian roots. From the foundation of the LOBA in 1891 up until the 1930s, this chapter, much like the previous one, focuses in particular on the position of the organisation within the migration process and how Canadian Orangewomen created a diasporic identity within the British Empire. Although this sense of belonging to a global Orange world did include elements of Scottish and English identities, Orangewomen in this period continued to closely identify with an Irish Protestantism, fed both by the continuing physical process of migration and return visits to the ‘old country’, but also through the imaginative connections to Ireland

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f­ ostered by networks of communication, most notably through the pages of the Toronto Sentinel, the ‘voice’ of Orangeism in Canada. Moreover, this chapter explores the remarkable scope of the Canadian Orangewomen’s public activism. During the 1920s and 1930s, the LOBA raised money on a scale that their English and Scottish sisters could only dream of. Throughout this interwar period, the LOBA collected significant funds for both national and provincial orphanage schemes, buying land, constructing buildings and caring for thousands of Canadian children. The LOBA also became significantly involved in Canadian politics during this period. Through their work raising money for child welfare, campaigning politically against Irish Home Rule and for ‘one language, one flag, one nation’ in Canada, the LOBA played an important role in the public life of the Orange community and beyond, using their activism to defend the cultural Britishness of Canada. While these women played a central role in some of the key Canadian political issues of the day, especially during the interwar period, underpinning this activism was a connection to a British Protestant and imperial world that remained tightly focused on Ireland well into the twentieth century. Origins and growth

While not matching their Scottish sisters in terms of numerical superiority over men, the LOBA grew from its origins in the late 1880s to become an organisation with almost 30,000 members by the outbreak of the Second World War. The first ladies’ Orange association in Canada was formed in December 1888 in Hamilton, Ontario. Mary Tulk, the wife of a wheel moulder and local leading Orangeman, sent letters to the members of LOL No. 286 in Hamilton, requesting ‘that they have their wives and daughters attend a meeting … for the purposes of organising in the interests of Protestantism’.2 The meeting was held on 12 December, drawing together ‘a large number of ladies desirous of forming a society of a benevolent character, based on the principles of the Loyal Orange association’, along with many Orangemen, who ‘heartily endorsed’ the scheme.3 Echoing broader Victorian concerns for the welfare of young women in the urban environment, the impetus for the meeting came from the influx of ‘many girls coming into the city from their country homes who had no friends in the city’.4 This focus on public activism that was deemed appropriate for women, with its emphasis on benevolence and charity, would come to define women’s Orangeism in Canada and provide it with a greater institutional coherence than that of their English or Scottish sisters. However, at this first meeting the women of Hamilton were faced with an immediate problem, raised by the County Master of the Orange

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Order, who ‘informed the ladies that they could not organize a Ladies’ Orange Lodge until authorised by the Grand Orange Lodge of British America’, advising them to go ahead without ‘Orange’ in their title.5 The first meeting of the women’s new organisation, the ‘Ladies’ Protestant Benevolent Association’, was held in Hamilton on 9 January 1889, drawing together over forty local women, including Miss Mary Cullum, who was voted President of the new organisation.6 Cullum became a leading figure in the nascent women’s Orange movement in Canada, spearheading efforts to gain recognition from the men’s Grand Lodge. The Hamilton Ladies’ Protestant Benevolent Association immediately drew up a petition to be sent to that year’s Grand Lodge, asking permission to call themselves the ‘Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association’. Cullum and Tulk, emphasising the gendered public role they expected women to play, argued in this petition that women could help the Order uphold the ‘true Protestant religion’, assist members ‘in times of sickness and distress’ and give ‘aid to the orphans of deceased members’. According to Cullum and Tulk, women would ensure that ‘Popish doctrines’ would be resisted by educating the children of Canada ‘thoroughly in the Protestant Christian religion’, but their petition was defeated by ‘a large majority’.7 A year later, a resolution was put to the Grand Lodge meeting in St John, New Brunswick, and a committee was appointed to consider the advisability of allowing female Orange lodges in Canada.8 The committee met the ladies in Hamilton and unanimously recommended that they be allowed to form ‘Lady Orange Lodges’, allowing ‘our Association to perform a work of benevolence and charity hitherto performed in a very imperfect manner’.9 In the meantime, women in London, Ontario, decided not to wait for the approval of the Canadian men and, instead, became a lodge under a charter from the Ladies’ Loyal Orange Association of the United States, a similar tactic to that adopted by women in Scotland, who subverted their own country’s Orange hierarchy by seeking warrants for female lodges through the English Grand Lodge, as we saw in the previous chapter.10 Having gained official Orange recognition, the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association grew steadily in the first twenty years or so of its existence. In 1892, it was reported at the Grand Lodge meeting of Ontario West that five lodges had been founded, in Hamilton, London and Toronto, attracting a membership of around 200 women.11 A year later, the LOBA had grown to eleven lodges, and had been granted its own Grand Lodge, a signal achievement, given that no other women’s Orange organisation has achieved such official recognition of its independence from the male Order.12 At a meeting of Mary Princess of Orange LOBA No. 6 in Toronto in 1895, Mary Cullum (who was now the first

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Grand Mistress of the LOBA’s Grand Lodge) could boast that there were over 800 members in lodges ‘from New Brunswick on the east, to British Columbia in the west’.13 Progress under the leadership of Cullum was, however, modest. In a letter to the Sentinel, Cullum recognised that they had been ‘working slowly and steadily’ since their inception, and it had required considerable effort in the organisation’s early years in gaining official Grand Lodge recognition and in devising the ladies’ ritual (which we saw in the last chapter, inspiring the Orangewomen of Scotland).14 By the time Cullum had retired as Grand Mistress in 1912, a total of 110 LOBA lodges had been formed, comprising 1,907 members.15 Growth in the following two decades was exceptional, reflecting the dynamism of the new Grand Mistress, Mary Tulk, the increase in migration during the 1920s, and the impetus given to Orange organisation by both the First World War and the prolonged crisis over self-government in Ireland. By 1927, the LOBA could boast of 23,665 members across every Province in Canada, comparing favourably to approximately 70,000 Orangemen in the Dominion.16 However, the heartland and birthplace of the LOBA, Ontario, continued to have the greatest membership, comprising over a third of the total number of lodges (see Table 3.1). Indeed, the LOBA’s strength in Ontario reflected the exceptional political clout of the Orange Order in the province. As William J. Smyth highlights, Toronto was a particular stronghold of Orange politics, and the municipal government of ‘the Belfast of Canada’ was dominated by the Order from 1850 to 1950.17 Moreover, the relative strength of the LOBA in Newfoundland, given its small overall population, demonstrates this Table 3.1  LOBA lodges by Province, 1927 Province

British Columbia Alberta Saskatchewan Manitoba Ontario West Ontario East New Brunswick Nova Scotia Prince Edward Island Quebec Newfoundland Total

No. of LOBA lodges 34 32 74 52 201 121 41 24 8 19 26 632

Source: ‘Remarkable Progress of the Ladies’ Order’, Sentinel, 14 July 1927

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Province’s status as the ‘the most Orange spot in the world’ and indicates the continuing traction of a ‘British Protestant’ identity (explored in further depth below) in this largely English-dominated part of Canada.18 The function of female Orangeism in Canada

The work carried out by members of the LOBA was often significantly determined by gender norms, reflecting the emphasis placed upon Orangewomen’s role in bringing up and educating children as good, patriotic Protestants, with a love of both Canada and the British Empire. Rare minute books and reports of lodge proceedings from the little-studied Toronto Sentinel tell us much about the everyday activities of the LOBA, who, much like the men, offered a strong mutualist function of benefits, as well as providing considerable emotional support. The LOBA’s engagement with more public aspects of Orange life was, however, contested, leading to heated debate at the foundation of female lodges in Canada about the presence of women at Orange events such as the ‘glorious Twelfth’. Conforming to gender norms in a more obvious way, Orangewomen in Canada were enthusiastic in their philanthropic work. For many LOBA lodges, raising money for charitable causes became their principal goal, reflecting the emphasis placed upon this at the foundation of the organisation and reaching its height in the LOBA’s war work and its care for orphaned children. The emphasis that Cullum placed on Orangewomen’s role in educating children at the foundation of the organisation continued to inform the activities of the LOBA. In a lengthy letter to the Sentinel, promoting the LOBA within the wider world of Canadian Orangeism, Mary Cullum emphasised the responsibility women had for making children into sound Christian patriotic citizens. The LOBA, according to Cullum, was founded for the ‘general advancement of Protestantism among the young’.19 Cullum argued that women’s role as wives and mothers gave them the necessary moral authority to organise as the LOBA and to look after the religious and patriotic wellbeing of the nation’s children: We believe that as the wives and mothers have more to do with the training up of the young, who are to be the future men and women of our country, they must be trained to be true patriots, loving the old flag in this new land, where but one school, one language and one flag should be.20

While the LOBA’s key role was to educate the young, this had broader implications that justified women’s further participation in public and political life, discussed below in the context of Canadian politics and identity.

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The day-to-day activities of the LOBA revolved around issues of mutuality and emotional support that would have been equally familiar to Orangemen.21 From the very outset of the LOBA, it is clear that the organisation collected funds from its members in order to provide sickness and funeral benefits. LOBA lodges frequently used social events to raise money to cover the costs of providing such benefits to its members. In November 1893, for example, the women of LOBA No. 1 in Hamilton held an ‘Apron and Necktie’ social, with refreshments and dancing, in order to raise money ‘in aid of the benefit funds of the Ladies’ O. B. A.’.22 Reporting on their progress during 1894, the women of LOBA No. 12 in Ottawa revealed that they had spent $22 that year in sick benefits, the result of a generous mutual scheme in which members were given ‘free medical attendance and medicine’, in addition to receiving $2 per week sick benefit.23 The LOBA’s mutualism also extended to helping Orange sisters in more general times of distress, such as the women of the Purple Star lodge No. 104, in Victoria, British Columbia, whose ‘Helping Hand Committee’ ‘made suitable gifts to the needy and deserving sisters of the lodge’.24 From 1897 until 1913, the LOBA also operated its own funeral insurance scheme, which fell into dispute over allegations of financial irregularity.25 It was only in 1927 that the women of the LOBA were permitted to enter the broader Orange Insurance Department, when the then Grand Mistress, Mrs Kennedy, took out an insurance policy.26 While providing funds to cover periods of sickness or funeral costs was an important part of life in an LOBA lodge, perhaps of greater significance was the degree of emotional support provided by the women’s organisation to its members. The LOBA provided a source of sisterly friendship that extended from writing letters of condolence to recently bereaved members to organising impressive Orange funerals, where members would be buried with the full rites and ceremony of the Order. In March 1920, the women of Boyne Jubilee lodge No. 26 in Montreal outlined their progress, highlighting the friendliness and sisterliness of its members, which helped to ‘promote fraternity’.27 These bonds of sisterly affection informed the emotional support lent to members in times of loss, indicating how members of the LOBA used gender norms to help each other. The women of Hamilton lodge No. 1, for example, were reported as having sent ‘letters of condolence … to Sister Potter, Sr., on the death in action of her adopted son, and to Sister Glover, whose fiancé was recently killed in action’.28 Moreover, members of the LOBA who died would often receive lavish Orange funerals, such as Mrs Foley from Smith’s Falls, Ontario, whose funeral was attended by over 600 members of the organisation, who conducted an ‘impressive fraternal service’ at the graveside.29 Outside of the Orange lodge and ritual, members of the LOBA engaged

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in a variety of public activities, from marching in Twelfth of July parades to raising money for the war effort and orphanages. For women in other Orange locations, marching with the male Order on key occasions such as the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne was problematic. In Canada, the situation was no different, yet the different emphasis placed on marching by women of the LOBA compared to their counterparts in Scotland is significant. As we saw in the previous chapter, from the formal foundation of female lodges in Scotland in 1909, women were permitted to march alongside men.30 Despite considerable opposition from some men, the Orangewomen of Scotland were determined and assertive in their right to take part in these public displays of Orange identity. In Canada, however, it was the women of the LOBA themselves who articulated opposition to female participation at Orange parades, especially during the early years of the organisation. In the build-up to the first Twelfth of July march following Grand Lodge’s approval of the LOBA in 1892, the Sentinel carried an editorial that criticised the women of Queen Victoria lodge No. 3 for their decision not to march with the men in Toronto.31 The editorial praised the LOBA for the good work of ‘these loyal mothers and sisters of ours’ but argued that women should take part in a public celebration of the Battle of the Boyne to commemorate the Orange Order’s ‘glorious heritage of civil and religious liberty’.32 A week letter, Mary Tulk wrote to the Sentinel defending the decision of the ladies not to march. Tulk’s argument, while not criticising those women who might want to march, indicated that she felt that women’s efforts in the LOBA were better directed in areas other than Twelfth of July parades: the object for which the Ladies LOBA was organized was not for any outward show or display, but for the right to stand beside our brother Orangemen in upholding the Protestant religion for which our forefathers bled and died; to see that our children are educated in the same faith; to care for sick and distressed members; to help the widows and orphans of deceased brethren and all other benevolent objects which may arise. I have nothing against lady organisations taking part in processions, but I think as loyal women of this fair Dominion we can show our loyalty to the memory of King William III, Prince of Orange in a more fitting way as becomes ladies whose object is charity and benevolence.33

Here Tulk emphasised the gendered public activism of the LOBA, demonstrating how the women were acting in public life for the Orange Order in areas deemed particularly suited to women’s caring mission. Other commentators were rather more forthright in their condemnation of women who wanted to march. John McKenna, the male Order’s ‘Guardian’ of LOBA No. 1 in Hamilton, argued that it was not necessary for the women

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to march and ‘discard their womanly characteristics’.34 One of the founders of the LOBA, Mary Cullum, argued that marching on the Twelfth was all well and good but it was ‘not the proper thing for a lady to do’.35 Although there are examples of the LOBA taking part in local provincial marches,36 it was not until almost twenty years after the formation of the organisation that women appeared alongside their marching brethren at the principal Toronto march.37 Given the LOBA’s foundation as a benevolent organisation, it is unsurprising that Orangewomen’s public work of fundraising and helping others was far less contentious than taking part in Orange marches. Prior to the First World War, the LOBA involved themselves in a number of charitable concerns, most notably by raising funds for local hospitals and orphanages. In 1908, the LOBA in Hamilton raised money to support the building of a ‘hospital for sick children’ in the city,38 while the Orangewomen of St Catharines, Ontario, supplied funds for the upkeep of a room in the town’s ‘Consumptive Sanitarium’.39 It was through raising money for the war effort that the LOBA’s public charitable activism came to the fore. In addition to giving money to the Red Cross and other charitable bodies, such as the Belgian Relief Fund,40 many LOBA lodges made items and arranged for them to be sent to our ‘brave boys in the trenches’.41 In 1916, the women of LOBA No. 1 in Hamilton reported that, in the past year, they had sent $75 to the Red Cross, in addition to making twelve pyjama suits, twenty-two bed shirts, fourteen sheets, eight pillow cases and forty-eight pairs of socks to be sent to the front.42 The members of the LOBA also ploughed money and resources into helping soldiers once they had returned to Canada. The Orangewomen of Unity lodge No. 80 travelled to the Military Hospital in Whitby, Ontario, in November 1917 ‘for the purpose of giving the returned soldiers a good treat on Wednesday, Oct. 31st, when a Hallowe’en supper, concert and dance was given by the ladies’, including ‘Irish Jigs and Highland Flings’.43 At Ladysmith LOBA No. 6 in Toronto, the ladies held a successful social evening in October 1918 as part of their regular winter campaign to raise money for a ward in the Spadina Military Convalescent Hospital.44 While the work of Orangewomen in Scotland and England for the war effort had been considerable (as we saw in Chapters 1 and 2), in Canada the women’s greater financial clout was evident in these fundraising activities, reflecting the superior numbers possessed by the LOBA and the longevity of the organisation. Following the conclusion of the First World War, the charitable focus of the LOBA shifted to raising money to support orphanages across Canada. Prior to the outbreak of war, some LOBA lodges had raised funds for orphanages or proposed that the Orange Order should build their own, such as the Lady Strathcona lodge No. 128 in Edmonton, who suggested

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the establishment of ‘a Protestant home … for the care of wayward girls’ to prevent them being placed in a convent.45 Once hostilities had been concluded, the LOBA threw their charitable efforts into providing funds for and building a number of orphanages. In Manitoba, the LOBA’s Provincial Grand Lodge decided to begin raising money for an orphanage in April 1918, collecting $1,100 at their annual meeting.46 By 1925, the Manitoba Orphanage Fund had reached $25,000 and work was about to begin building their facility.47 In Saskatchewan, the LOBA were at the forefront of raising funds for the Orange Home in the Province. The idea for an orphanage in Indian Head was first raised by the town’s men’s lodge in 1920, but it was the women of Regina’s LOBA who took the initiative in fundraising, collecting almost $1,500 on a ‘tag day’ held in celebration of the Twelfth of July.48 In 1923, the Manitoba committee of LOBA and Orangemen appointed to oversee the building of the orphanage decided to act swiftly to begin construction, as ‘it was found that many Protestant children were being sent to Roman Catholic institutions’, and a ‘cottage’ orphanage had been opened by October 1923.49 The LOBA were also heavily involved in raising funds for the construction of the Loyal True Blue and Orange Home in Richmond Hill, Toronto, which opened in July 1923. The Ladysmith LOBA lodge in Toronto, for example, donated $100, thirty pairs of running shoes and one hundred Christmas stockings to the Richmond Hill orphanage in December 1923.50 While the Richmond Hill home became the centrepiece of the LOBA’s commitment to the care of orphaned children for much of the twentieth century, it is important to place this in the context of Orangewomen’s broader activism. The No Surrender lodge in Vancouver, for example, demonstrates how these Orangewomen fitted into a broader repertoire of women’s activism during the first half of the twentieth century. Throughout the 1920s, this lodge engaged in extensive public work outside of Orange philanthropy, working ‘in connection with the Children’s Aid, the Child’s Welfare Association and the Local Council of Women’.51 Describing this work, a report in the Sentinel argued that these were organisations ‘in which the members can do their part to keep the Protestant banner and the Union Jack of the Empire to the fore’. This domestic public work in defence of the home demonstrated the wide range of activism open to Protestant conservative women, through which the LOBA could operate.52 As we shall see below, the public activism of the LOBA could extend, as with the Vancouver ladies, well beyond the confines of the Orange Order into key issues in local, provincial and Dominion politics. The charitable focus of women’s everyday activism in the LOBA continued throughout the 1930s. Operating at a level and scale that their

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sisters in England and Scotland could only envy, the LOBA raised thousands of dollars for their principal philanthropic endeavour: the provision of Orange orphanages for Protestant children, both at a national level through their Richmond Hill, Toronto, facility and in the Provinces, where most provincial LOBA Grand Lodges managed to organise homes for local orphans. Raising funds to provide for the care of orphans clearly fitted well with the LOBA’s gendered mission to care for others and nurture future generations. Yet this seemingly altruistic process of providing for orphans was heavily shaped by Orange ideology. Clearly, it enabled women to also fulfil the religious aspects of the Order’s mission – as we have seen, this was a key part of Orangewomen’s activism in all jurisdictions. Furthermore, the LOBA’s fundraising had the broader aim of securing the future for Protestant orphans and was part of their fight against the Orange perception that Catholic institutions and practices were ever encroaching into Canadian life. And this was, of course, closely related to Canadian Orangewomen’s campaign to keep Canada British: by caring for orphans, the LOBA could ensure that they were brought up as good Protestant British Canadians. The LOBA continued to raise significant amounts of money for ­non-Orange causes during the 1930s. Individual lodges took the lead in donating funds to various charities across Canada. Often, local organisations were the recipients of the LOBA’s charity. Following a successful financial year in 1929, the women of the Daughters of the Boyne LOBA No. 698 in Prince George, British Columbia, decided to give a donation to the local hospital, providing them with ‘a quantity of fruit, candy and tobacco’.53 The Queen Alexandra LOBA No. 470 in Brampton, Ontario, also reported a fine year, and began 1930 with a similarly large donation to their community. The lodge had ‘150 members on the roll’ and a substantial financial balance of $300, enabling them to send ‘a bale, valued at $50 … to the Orphanage’, together with ‘72 boxes of cheer for the inmates of the house of refuge’ and a donation of $50 to the Peel Memorial Hospital.54 Similarly, the Queen Victoria LOBA No. 843 in Toronto used its burgeoning membership to finance local charity. The sisters organised a ‘Christmas treat for 100 orphans from the True Blue and Orange Home at Richmond Hill, taking them to see ‘Mother Goose’ at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, in addition to raising $400 to spend on ‘benevolent work’ in their neighbourhood.55 Raising such large sums was not unusual among the private lodges of the LOBA. In 1929 at Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, the women of the Lady Derry LOBA No. 484 in Truro raised $660 for the orphanage, having ‘very materially assisted the lodge in raising over $2,500 in cash for the Home’.56 Such was the success of individual lodges that many competed

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to be the biggest donor to provincial orphanage schemes. The Lady Strathcona LOBA No. 138 in Edmonton used a ‘Tag Day’ to raise $336 in aid of the ‘proposed Home’ in Alberta, winning the ‘banner presented by the Provincial Grand Lodge for the largest amount donated to the Home Fund last year’.57 As we have seen, the Saskatchewan Orangewomen took the greatest lead in fundraising for their provincial orphanage at Indian Head. Outstanding amongst these lodges was the Excelsior LOBA No. 418 in Moose Jaw, which raised over $5,000 in the ten years following its inception in 1921.58 While the depression of the early 1930s did have an effect on the LOBA’s fundraising capacity, women’s lodges continued to raise money throughout the decade, albeit at a reduced level. Reporting on their progress during 1933, the Grand Mistress of the LOBA in Manitoba told the Provincial Grand Lodge of their financial woes. The Protestant home ‘had suffered more perhaps than any other department during the last year, caused by lack of funds’. Some Manitoba LOBAs had been unable to give any money at all and the Grand Mistress appreciated ‘the efforts and sacrifices which these sisters made in order to submit the little they did’.59 Equally, the economic hardship experienced in Canada was also a stimulus for the LOBA to redouble their charitable efforts. At the end of 1930, the Toronto LOBA decided to organise a scheme to ‘assist those in distress’, asking each lodge to donate $5 in order to provide financial relief to Orangemen and Orangewomen in the city.60 The sheer scale of the LOBA’s financial giving becomes apparent at Grand Lodge level. Emphasising the centrality of charitable work to the LOBA, the Grand Mistress spoke at the 1930 Grand Lodge to outline  the  women’s great success in raising money for the orphanages: ‘Since the LOBA has taken up this work we have something definite to work for, as well as our religious principles.’ Sister Taylor focused her praise on the Orangewomen of New Brunswick, highlighting their remarkable success in raising $1,500 in just one year, in addition to providing their local orphanage with ‘clothing and bedding amounting to nearly $300’ that contributed to the care of 235 children in the two Orange homes in St John.61 In Alberta, the LOBA aimed to establish ‘a home for Protestant children in the city of Edmonton’. The Orangewomen of the Province raised money both for their own orphanage and for the Wood’s Christian Home at Bowness and Calgary, including a tag day which raised an extraordinary $11,000, with the women of the Lady Strathcona lodge in Edmonton raising the most.62 The success of the Alberta LOBA was replicated across the rest of Canada. At the Prince Edward Island LOBA Grand Lodge, Sister M. McLean reported on the benevolence of the sisters in the Province, giving $1,614.55 to ‘our

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orphanage … towards the ­building fund, besides funding the girls’ dormitory’.63 As we have seen, the Saskatchewan LOBA was at the forefront of charitable work. The 1932 Grand Lodge began with a presentation of the ‘Margaret Moffat trophy’ for the LOBA which had donated ‘the largest amount to the Orange Home at Indian Head’, won by the Prince Albert lodge with a donation of ‘$8.13 per capita’. The Grand Mistress, Sister Torbet, then went on to remind the Saskatchewan Orangewomen that fundraising for the provincial orphanage was at the heart of their activism. Money raised at a tag day in 1920 ($1,334) provided the impetus for a further $16,000 collected by the LOBA during 1923. And by the end of the following year, there was sufficient ‘accommodation for more than sixty children and staff and creating a monument to the Orange Association such as any member might well be proud of’.64 Charitable work for Orange orphanages clearly continued to play an important part in the LOBA’s activism and corporate identity during the 1930s. Raising money for such causes also helped to underpin the religious and ideological aspects of the Canadian Orangewomen’s work. Once more, the Saskatchewan LOBA took the lead in promoting the broader value of their work raising money for children. In creating the orphanage at Indian Head, the Orangewomen were performing invaluable work, as ‘every hour and every dollar we spend on child welfare is invested in guilt-edged securities and will repay a hundred fold’. Sister Campbell went on to stress the religious mission that this charitable work fulfilled, arguing that ‘the caring for these children to our Home is a work which is in keeping with our Heavenly Master’s Command: “Feed My Lambs”’.65 In Ontario West, the Grand Mistress, Sister Scott, also emphasised the religious duty Orangewomen had to provide for children: ‘By giving freely of your time and money to this work, you are rendering a real service to the cause of Protestantism, in the maintenance and education of these little ones who will be the future citizens of our country’.66 Here, Scott was bringing together two of the great concerns of Canadian Orangewomen, focusing on the necessity of ensuring the future dominance of Protestantism in Canada. Such sentiment was also linked to the LOBA’s desire to retain the Britishness of the Dominion. Speaking at the LOBA’s Grand Lodge in 1934, Sister Roe stated that charitable work was the defining feature of the organisation’s activism. In the twenty years in which Roe had been a member, raising money for orphanages had become the LOBA’s principal focus ‘throughout the Dominion of which the keenest interest is shown’. And it was this charitable work – with a specific focus on children – which underpinned Orangewomen’s ­engagement with the broader political campaigns to retain the Britishness of Canada:

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Now in nine Provinces, comprising the jurisdiction, considerable attention is given to this work by the women of our lodges who are particular fitted for that part that comes under the head of Benevolence, an object worthy for which it stands. Little children of deceased Orangemen and others are taught to be loyal in every respect to our Flag (The Union Jack), and the Empire, and to be good citizens and able to take their place in the world today.67

Here, the Grand Mistress of the LOBA summed up the aims of her organisation: as women, they were suited to the caring and nurturing of children, which could be best achieved through raising money for orphanages; in doing so, the LOBA could ensure that the future generation could be brought up Protestant, British and Orange. Canadian identity and politics

The flipside of the LOBA’s concern for the British Empire (examined below) was an increasing focus on domestic Canadian politics. While English-speaking Canadians reaffirmed their commitment to the connection with Britain during the 1930s, a number of other elements within Canadian society had a less straightforward relationship with the ‘mother country’. Certainly, French Canada was at the forefront of efforts to widen the remit of the Canadian state to include funding of Catholic schools, the creation of a distinctively Canadian flag, and the wider use of bilingualism. While the French and largely Catholic minority had experienced a relative degree of integration within Canada during the nineteenth century and beyond Confederation in 1867, the issues of schooling, the flag and the language became increasingly hotly debated during the 1930s. Moreover, these issues were further underlined by the nature of immigration during the interwar period. Following a significant spike in migration from England, Scotland and Ireland at the beginning of the 1920s, Canada drew an increasingly diverse range of migrants to its shores as the twentieth century progressed. The LOBA’s support for the British Empire also enabled them to engage in a number of aspects of Canadian politics, suggesting that women’s participation in the Orange Order could also foster a Canadian identity. At the height of concerned Unionist debate about the Boundary Commission in Ireland, Lucy Weir spoke at a Twelfth of July demonstration in support of an overarching imperial identity that linked both Canada and Ireland with the British Empire. Weir argued that it was essential to retain the British Union Jack flag across the Empire: If I had my way, I would send some of the people, advocating a new flag for Canada, and particularly some Orangemen I know, to Ireland and let them

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find out for themselves what suffering meant under a new flag, and when they came back to Canada, they would not want anything but the good old Union jack, and they would be better citizens.68

The flag was a key issue in Canadian politics during the first half of the twentieth century and Orangewomen entered the debate with gusto. Responding to rumours that the Union flag was to be replaced as the Canadian flag, a Mrs E. E. Miller wrote to the Sentinel to protest. Miller saw the ‘dear old emblem that has braved so many battles’ as essential to Canada’s identity as a Protestant nation, adding that ‘every Protestant woman should use her franchise’ in order to ensure the Union Jack remained.69 Connecting defence of Canada’s Protestant identity with women’s new status as ‘active citizens’ also informed their opposition to Catholic education and bilingualism in public schools, just as we saw in the previous chapter’s examination of Orangewomen and education authority elections in Scotland. In Manitoba, the Grand Mistress of the LOBA, Annie Nixon, reminded the Orange sisters about the dangers of ‘Denominational Schools’, where the Catholic Church could exert control over public schooling. Nixon was heartily opposed to these schools, arguing that ‘we don’t want to see the priests and nuns going around our so-called Public Schools, even though, in order to prevent them, we may have to prevent some of our own Protestant clergy from doing likewise’.70 Campaigning against Catholic education in public schools was part of the Orange Order’s commitment to ‘one school, one language, one flag’ during the interwar period. At the Grand Lodge session of the LOBA in Ontario West, Premier Ferguson spoke in defence of his decision to repeal Regulation 17, which restricted the use of French in Ontario schools.71 Although Ferguson was sent on his way with a rousing chorus of ‘He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ ringing in his ears, the LOBA passed a resolution opposing Ferguson’s actions and supporting the use of English as the sole language of instruction in schools. As Sister Kennedy, the Grand Mistress, argued, seeing that Canada was a British Dominion ‘there should be no question as to the official language’.72 Thus, we can see how the LOBA’s engagement in Canadian political debate was framed by the British Empire, an overarching identity that reconciled their position in Canada with Orangewomen’s overlapping Irish Protestant, Scottish and English identities. The issue of state funding for separate Catholic schools was one which animated the political activism of Canadian Orangewomen. Education policy brought to together two key features of Orangewomen’s ­ideology. First, it highlighted the Protestantism of the Order, and how women should campaign for the retention of the essentially British Protestantism

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of the Canadian state. Second, it emphasised the gendered nature of Orangewomen’s activism, taking on a public role that reflected women’s supposed nurturing and caring qualities. During the 1930s, the LOBA were concerned with the issue of public money being used to fund Catholic education. For these Orangewomen, Canadian schools should be non-segregated and Protestant in their religious teachings. However, since Confederation in 1867, the state had supported denominational education, allowing Catholic schools to thrive. There was considerable tension, then, between those who believed in the principle of separate schools and those who wished to use public schools as a means of religious assimilation.73 Following on from their opposition to Prime Minister Ferguson’s decision to repeal Regulation 17, restricting the use of French in Ontario schools in 1928, the LOBA focused their enmity on the use of taxation to fund Catholic schools. At the beginning of 1930, the Orange Order was concerned by Catholic attempts to dissuade its flock from giving money to the public school system and, instead, concentrate their efforts on financing the faith through denominational schools. This issue roused Orangewomen into action. At their meeting in March 1930, the Victory LOBA No. 746 in Port Colborne, Ontario, passed a lengthy resolution on the issue of separate schools and taxation. Claiming that the issue of separate schools had been set in stone by the 1863 Separate School Act, the women condemned any further extension of money or privileges to Catholic schools, being ‘utterly and entirely opposed to any change in the proportion of moneys levied by Taxation and paid over for the support of Separate Schools; that we are utterly and entirely opposed to the granting of any further concessions to the Roman Catholic Church’.74 The women of the LOBA in Ontario East were equally forthright, passing resolutions at their Grand Lodge meeting in April 1930 against the proposed changes to the way taxation funded public schools. The Ontario East women affirmed the principle of mixed public schools: ‘Let us have all children educated under one system and go out with the same training and have no more of this separation condition that is some day going to do great injury’. The Roman Catholic schools, according to the LOBA, should be maintained by the Roman Catholics themselves, who ‘should have no call upon the Public School supporters for any assistance’.75 Thus, for the LOBA, maintaining mixed schools was essential, in order to deny the Catholic Church any growing influence over the care and upbringing of Canadian children. Separate schools continued to campaign to extend their ability to raise more taxation, and the LOBA remained steadfast in their opposition. In her Grand Mistress’s speech at the Ontario West Grand Lodge in 1932, Sister Margaret Scott protested against ‘any further diversion of Public

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School taxes going to support of Separate Roman Catholic schools, or any other separate institutions’. For Scott, it was part of Orangewomen’s duty as active citizens to oppose such measures: ‘Every member should realise their responsibility and their privileges as members of this Protestant organisation and endeavour by her vote and influence to elect men and women in our Municipal Halls and our Provincial and Federal Parliament who will be true to the principles of the Orange Order.’76 At the end of 1932, the separate schools issue drew the attention of the Toronto City Council, where Catholic members proposed the election of separate school trustees.77 The Toronto County LOBA strongly opposed this, demonstrating that ‘the Orange women of Toronto are alive to the importance of the necessity of defending the revenues of the Public School from the attack being engineered by the supporters of the Separate Schools’. Elizabeth Kennedy made it clear that the LOBA would exercise their rights as public citizens on this issue: ‘Orange women never waver in their devotion to the principle of Public non-­sectarian schools, and we are determined to make our influence felt against those how would betray us by granting favours to Separate Schools to which they are not entitled’. For Kennedy, this was a matter in which Orangewomen’s public and political abilities could be deployed: ‘We will vote and work with the Orange men to place in the City Council next year men whom we can trust as friends of the Public Schools.’78 The power of separate schools to mobilise Orangewomen as Canadian citizens was stressed at the Ontario West Grand Lodge in 1935. Commenting on the recent election in Ontario and the apparent willingness of the new government to concede ground on separate schools, Sister Stewart urged the LOBA to fight through the ballot box. According to Stewart, this was the ‘first time since receiving our franchise that we have been able to participate in an issue of this kind … Now to the task and let us show that we have earned the title “The female of the specie is more deadly than the male”’.79 The LOBA also linked separate schools to the broader debate about British identity and the Empire. The Ulster Star LOBA No. 865 in Warsaw, Ontario, stated their objection to any further ‘concessions being granted to the Roman Catholic schools’ in patriotic terms, protesting against ‘any change being made in the British flag, the Union Jack, as we stand for one flag, one language, and one school’.80 While this issue did tap into a broader British identity, the debate over separate schools was fundamentally about Canadian politics, and, specifically, demonstrated how Orangewomen could intervene in the public sphere. Speaking at the LOBA’s Grand Lodge in August 1938, Sister Beaven was proud to report that their efforts campaigning and in the polling booth had paid

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off. Beaven told the sisters that the school question in Ontario appeared to have been resolved and it was now up to the LOBA ‘to see that no similar legislation is introduced in the future which will in any way encroach upon our rights’. Despite being visibly in the public sphere, women were to act in an appropriately demure, ‘feminine’ fashion: ‘May our attitude not needlessly antagonize or irritate, but rather attract by the quiet carrying on of what we know to be right, leaving the future to Him, whose providence has hitherto so manifestly and wonderfully blessed us.’81 The issue of separate schools, then, brought together the LOBA’s concern with religion and Canadian identity, framed by a gendered discourse about women’s acceptable role in public life. Canadian Orangewomen were also concerned about the spread of bilingualism in schools and public life, reflecting once more their desire to defend the cultural Britishness of Canada. In her speech to the Ontario East Grand Lodge in 1933, Sister Gillespie spoke at length about the ‘School Question’. Delving deeply into the complexities of the proposed ‘division of taxes of incorporated companies and public utilities and the special concessions asked for by the Church of Rome’, Gillespie reaffirmed the LOBA’s belief in using their power as enfranchised citizens to ‘mould public opinion’ and defend the principle of non-denominational schools. Gillespie linked this debate over separate schools with what she interpreted as the latest ‘scheme afoot’ to dilute the Britishness of Canadian schools. The use of both English and French on official (and symbolic) state documents, such as stamps and bank notes, had begun in 1927, when the Post Office issued bilingual stamps to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Confederation. When the Macmillan Commission was appointed in 1933 to investigate the possibility of a central Bank of Canada, the LOBA were attuned to the likelihood of bilingual currency.82 For Gillespie, French stamps were the thin end of the wedge, and Canadian Orangewomen had to mobilise to prevent non-English banknotes. The Constitution of Canada provided for the use of dual language in Quebec, but Gillespie claimed that the ‘Post Office Department [is] saturated with bilingual postcards, stamps, and most of all printed matter pertaining to that department’. It was up to the LOBA ‘to bring pressure to bear on those in authority and to make it plain that we will not tolerate any more encroachments on constitutional rights’.83 As the currency debate intensified in the spring of 1934, the Toronto County LOBA restated their opposition to any form of concession to French Canada.84 Once more referring to the British North America Act which established Canada in 1867, the Toronto women argued that if the new Bank of Canada printed currency in French and English, it would be ‘an extension of privileges to the French language in Canada beyond the

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terms’ of Confederation. They resolved to lobby the English-speaking members of Parliament ‘to use their votes and influence to prevent the adoption of bilingual currency’.85 The adoption of bilingualism in schools was also heartily opposed by the Canadian Orangewomen. In her message to the Ontario West LOBA for 1934, the Grand Mistress of the Province declared that there was ‘a well-organised campaign in which subtle up-to-date propaganda has invaded our schools (especially in large centres) introduced under the name of culture’. According to Sister Stewart, allowing Ontario pupils to study French ‘for conversational purposes after school hours is only the first step to placing it on the School curriculum’. It was up to the LOBA, then, to use its influence in the neighbourhood and in community organisations to oppose what Stewart described as an attack on their ‘faith, loyalty to King and Country and a love for all mankind’.86 Migration

In addition to their considerable benevolent work and public activism, the LOBA also played a key role in the migration process, creating important transnational bonds across the Atlantic. The membership of the LOBA continued to be shaped by migration well into the interwar period, reflecting the heightened levels of immigration to Canada during the interwar period, especially from Scotland.87 By the end of the 1920s, the Orange Order in Canada was playing an explicit role in organising transatlantic migration. The LOBA were interested in migration largely because so many of its members were the product of mobility and movement from the British Isles. We have seen that the 1920s saw significant numbers of Scottish, English and Irish women travelling to Canada and bringing their Orangeism with them. Despite the significant decline in migration to Canada during the 1930s, the LOBA continued to play a role in the migration process at an individual level and migrant women persisted in joining the LOBA once they had arrived in Canada.88 Equally, many Canadian Orangewomen travelled ‘back home’ to the British Isles, either as tourists or return migrants, while some travelled further afield across the globe. Either way, the experience of migration continued to shape the individual and associational lives of Orangewomen up until the Second World War and beyond. While not matching the many who left Scotland in the interwar period that we saw in the previous chapter, there were a number of LOBA members who left Canada for other parts of the globe. And in their leaving rituals, we see once more the importance of migration to the Orange Order. Members of the LOBA often just migrated within the vast Dominion of

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Canada. The Lady Strathcona LOBA No. 138 in Edmonton bade farewell to Sister Elliott in October 1930. Presented with ‘a lovely silver casserole’, Elliott was sent on her way to Jasper, Alberta, with the best wishes of her lodge.89 A couple of months earlier, the women of the Lady Strathcona lodge had said their fond goodbyes to Mollie Martin, travelling to a new life in New Zealand, where she ‘expects to be married on her arrival’. Mollie was given ‘a beautiful silver vase, also a sum of money placed in a lovely handkerchief satchet embroidered by Sister Girvar, Chaplain of the Lodge’. Thanking her for being one of the lodge’s ‘most enthusiastic workers’, the sisters sent Mollie on her way with wishes for ‘good luck in her new home in a new country’.90 Equally, migration within other parts of the British Empire was evident. In 1931, the sisters of the Garner LOBA in Regina, Saskatchewan, gathered to hold a memorial service for Annie Jordan Reid. Annie had been an ‘active member’ of the Regina lodge until 1922, when she married. Her husband was a civil engineer for the British colonial government in Burma, so Annie left to travel to this particular outpost of empire.91 Return migration was also a feature of LOBA lodge life. As we saw in the previous chapter, coming back home was a significant part of the migration process during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.92 The Canadian Orangewomen were no different in their propensity to return to the British Isles and, just as with migration to any other part of the world, their leaving was marked by ceremonies and emotional farewells. At their monthly meeting in November 1931, the women of the Edith Cavell LOBA in Sudbury, Ontario, gathered to say goodbye to one of their sisters. Mrs A. Mechan had decided to return to Scotland, to ‘make her home’ with her husband. Mechan was ‘pleasantly surprised’ by the sisters’ gift of ‘a silver cake plate as a remembrance from her friends’ and was sent on her way with a farewell address from Mrs Nelson Taylor.93 Mrs E. Morgan from the London LOBA lodge also headed back across the Atlantic to Scotland a year later, being presented with ‘a handkerchief bouquet’ by her sisters to mark her departure.94 The Englishness of Canadian women’s lodges was also underlined by return and other forms of migration. Gathering in their lodge room in July 1934, the women of the Lady Strathcona lodge bade farewell to their past Mistress, Sister Lord. The sisters presented ‘a lovely purse’ to Lord, bidding her a ‘pleasant voyage’ as she embarked on ‘taking a trip indefinitely to her old home in Lancashire, England’.95 Alice Macintosh was an English member of the LOBA whose migration story reflected the broader imperial context of the Orange Order. Macintosh had been a stalwart of the LOBA in Cornwall, Ontario, but had been born in Camberley, Surrey. On marrying her husband, James Macintosh, in 1891, she left for India with him, where

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he served as an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Alice and James then brought their family to Canada to start a new life, where Alice became a key figure in the Ontario East LOBA during the 1920s, being elected Chaplain of the Provincial Grand Lodge in 1927.96 Return migration was also a feature of life for LOBA members from an Irish background. The women of the Niagara LOBA held a ‘farewell party for their sister’, Elizabeth Bloomer, in May 1939. Bloomer was heading with her husband back across the Atlantic, where they were ‘leaving to make their home in Belfast’. The occasion was marked by an emotional ceremony and presentation of ‘a lovely silver tray, suitably engraved from the lodge’, together with a ‘travelling clock and a gold broach’.97 The LOBA also became active in encouraging more British migrants to cross the Atlantic during the interwar period. Conscious of the economic problems of the depression, Orangewomen were eager to urge English, Scottish and Protestant Irish migrants to make a new life in Canada. During the 1930s, the changing demographic profile of Canadian immigrants helps to explain this concern. Following the boom in British-born migrants coming to Canada during the 1920s, the 1930s were a fallow decade, with arrivals dropping from almost a quarter of a million people to 36,560, partly a reflection of some of the problems associated with the Empire Settlement Act.98 For the LOBA, immigration was firmly connected to their concern with schools and bilingualism. Both were part of the LOBA’s desire to expunge ‘foreign’ influence from British Canada and reflected longstanding debate about immigration going back to Clifford Sifton’s policy, as Minister of the Interior from 1896 to 1905, of actively encouraging Ukrainians and Poles to come to Canada, much to the chagrin of the Orange Order and others.99 The Nova Scotian Grand Mistress, Sister I. Macdonald, argued in 1932 that the Britishness of the country was under threat, largely from non-British non-white immigrants: ‘In all parts of Canada today we are facing the great evil of those in our midst who claim no country and no religion’.100 Speaking at the Ontario West Grand Lodge, Sister Scott urged the Canadian Government to deliberately favour migrants from the British Isles. Once the economic depression had lifted, she hoped that ‘preference will be given to British subjects’, who would be ‘worthy citizens, settlers of British blood, British traditions and British ideals all of which are of great importance to this Dominion’. It was only with an influx of good British stock that Canada could fulfil ‘the destiny which is rightfully hers within this century’.101 A year later at the same Province’s Grand Lodge, Sister Scott made the explicit link between the economic depression and the need for British migrants, in order to ‘carry the national debt’. Scott contrasted the ‘British’ qualities of these migrants with those of migrants from elsewhere: ‘we want the newcom-

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ers to be from the British Isles, those who understand our institutions and speak our language … Too many people of other races in proportion to British born have been encouraged to settle in our lands. The result is that we now have foreign Colonies in the west that practically refuse to assimilate with Canadians.’102 The LOBA’s approach was shared by some of the other female imperialist organisations in Canada during the interwar period. The Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) was founded in Canada in 1900 at the height of the Boer War. As part of its mission to promote the British Empire, the IODE sought to encourage educated women from Britain to settle in Canada.103 The Orange Order formed its own Immigration Committee, which organised for ‘Protestants from the British Isles’ to come to Canada. Founded in April 1928, the Committee had attracted 159 recruits to be ‘placed on farms’ by the end of the year. The scheme appeared to have been appreciated by the migrants themselves, who ‘had been taken from a position at home where their opportunities are limited, and have been given a chance in life in this new and promising Canada of ours, which we are anxious to keep British and Protestant’.104 The LOBA gave support and help to this scheme, as made clear by their Grand Lodge meeting in 1929. Laura Adrain, the Grand Mistress, made a stout defence of British immigration as essential to the future of Canada: In so far as Canada is concerned, immigration is not merely a problem of numbers, it is a problem of the advisability of mixing Old World and New World characteristics. It is a problem of what Canada will be, and the part Canada will play in world history and progress. From the standpoint of employment our general aim should be to bring in people of the right class and type until Canada’s population is fairly well balanced in terms of occupation and production. There are many indisputable facts which threaten to change the character of this Dominion as a dominantly British and Protestant country. It behooves us, therefore, to guard carefully the portals of our Dominion to see that none be admitted who will not make good citizens, loyal to our British institutions and to the grand old Union Jack.105

The LOBA, then, were involved in the migration process itself, shaping the Orange Order’s scheme to bring migrants from England, Scotland and Wales so as to preserve the ‘British’ character of Canada. Once more, Orangewomen’s involvement in Canadian affairs was shaped by the desire to retain a Canadian British identity that was intimately linked to the Empire.

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Orangewomen on the move: visits to and visitors from the British Isles

In turn, visits to the ‘old country’, across the Atlantic back to Ireland, Scotland and England, had a profound effect on the diasporic identities constructed by Orangewomen in Canada, as we saw in the context of the Scottish sisters discussed in the previous chapter. Through return visits, Orangewomen in Canada maintained important physical and imaginative connections back to the ‘motherland’, creating a ‘diasporic imagination’106 not just for those who travelled but also for those who remained in Canada to hear of these transatlantic adventures at lodge meetings or through the pages of the Sentinel. Recent research has demonstrated that such return visits were by no means unusual, especially during the interwar period, and indicates that at least one of the strategies for maintaining a sense of connection with their ‘homeland’ was to visit Orange lodges in Britain and Ireland.107 An English diasporic identity was maintained by a number of Canadian Orangewomen who made return visits to England.108 In May 1919, the women of the Britannia lodge in Cabri, Saskatchewan, bid a fond farewell to Sister Baldwin, who was leaving Canada ‘on a visit to friends in England’.109 Other Orangewomen made journeys to the ‘motherland’ to visit women’s Orange lodges. Ethel Easton, for example, travelled to London in the spring of 1924 from her lodge in Winnipeg to visit Lady Carson’s women’s lodge in the ‘World’s Metropolis’.110 In the ‘capital of the Empire’, Easton was welcomed enthusiastically by the London Orangewomen and was granted membership of the Westminster lodge.111 Easton’s visit was framed by the Sentinel very much in imperial terms, stressing the bonds created by the Orange Order throughout the British Empire by visiting members from across the globe: The widespread extension of the Orange Order throughout the Empire was further emphasized by the presence of Sister Miss Prangnell, a visitor from LOL No. 2, New Zealand. Her lucid and interesting address on the activities of Orangeism in the Antipodes was listened to with close attention, after which a profitable few minutes were spent in question and answer respecting the work of the Order in England, Canada and New Zealand.112

Orangewomen’s mobility continued to reinforce an English ethnic identity during the 1930s. In 1932, the Lady Strathcona lodge sent their Worthy Mistress, Sister Spicer, on her way for a visit to England ‘with a lovely purse, a token of good wishes of the members for a pleasant trip’.113 Equally, a member’s leaving to pay a visit to England was marked by the Cullum LOBA No. 46 in Ottawa in 1935, when Mrs Balderston was

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presented with a parting gift ‘on her leaving for a trip to England’.114 Such gifts reflected not only the esteem in which these travelling members were held, but also the importance of such trips abroad to the Order in Canada. Irishness remained, however, a significant identity within the LOBA up until the Second World War, and visits to Ireland emphasised the continuing Irish Protestant character of many Canadian Orangewomen. Travelling to Dublin in 1923, Sister Williams from the No Surrender lodge in Vancouver was presented with an ‘emblem LOBA pin’ and a letter of introduction, to ‘enable her to visit some of the lady lodges in her “Homeland”’.115 The frequency with which Canadian Orangewomen returned home to visit Ireland underlines the persistence of the LOBA’s Irish ethnic identity. A meeting of the Excelsior LOBA No. 418 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, was entertained to Irish songs by Miss McCammon, who also regaled the sisters with an account of ‘her recent visit to Ireland’.116 At the Christmas meeting of the aptly named Daughters of Portadown LOBA in Toronto, the women listened to Sister McIntosh’s reflection, having ‘just returned from a visit to Ireland’.117 By retuning to Canada and entertaining their sisters with tales of Ireland, McCammon and McIntosh connected their lodges with their Irish roots across the Atlantic. Sailing back across the Atlantic could also take place in the context of the Orange Order’s Triennial Conference. Established in 1865, this event drew Orange men and, on occasion, women from across the Orange world to key sites of Orangeism, such as Belfast, Toronto, Glasgow and other locations.118 The Triennial Council held in London during 1926 attracted a number of senior members of the LOBA (see Figure 3.1). At a meeting of the Daughters of Portadown lodge in Toronto, the Grand Mistress, Sister Kennedy, spoke fondly of her visit to the ‘Old Country’ for the Triennial, where she visited lodges in England, Scotland and Ireland and went to the Twelfth of July parade in Belfast.119 Kennedy was accompanied by her successor as Grand Mistress, Mrs Stewart Adrian, from Craik, Saskatchewan, who spoke of her official role in representing the LOBA at the London Triennial.120 After the Triennial meeting, Adrian joined her ‘Scotch brothers and sisters’ for a parade on 10 July and the Twelfth celebrations in Belfast two days later.121 The Triennial Council meeting was, then, one of the most visible expressions of the Orange Order’s diasporic nature and it is important to recognise that Canadian women took part during the 1920s and felt connected to their Orange sisters across the globe through such an event. In 1932, we find the Grand Mistress of the LOBA, Grace Darracott, also travelling to the Triennial Council in Belfast. The event itself was clearly

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Figure 3.1  Members of the LOBA at the Twelfth of July Celebrations in Belfast, 1926 (The Sentinel, 27 July 1926)

important, both to Darracott and to the LOBA, in establishing this diasporic link. However, Darracott retold the story of both her time in Ireland and her travelling across the Atlantic at LOBA meetings throughout Canada for much of the next year, emphasising how valuable these connections were to all Orangewomen, regardless of whether they visited other parts of the Orange world or not. By examining Darracott’s travels in more detail we gain more insight into how important a diasporic world view was to members of the LOBA. The 1932 Triennial took place during July in Belfast, attracting delegates from across the globe (see Figure 3.2). As we can see from the photograph, Sister Darracott was not the only woman present, being joined by Sister Scott from Ontario West in Canada; Sister Henry, Past Grand Mistress of the US; Sister Harvey, District Grand Mistress of the US; and Sister Sloan, Past State Mistress of Pennsylvania, who were all ‘cordially welcomed’ by the President of the Council, T. R. Lavery.122

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Figure 3.2  Delegates at the Triennial Council in Belfast, 1932 (Belfast Weekly News, 21 July 1932)

Typically, Darracott replied in a confident and proud manner, emphasising both the enduring importance of the Orange Order’s Irish connection and the key role played by women in the organisation. Darracott had ‘received great inspiration’ from coming to Belfast, ‘from the sights she had seen, the words she had heard, and the crowds her eyes had lighted upon’. For Darracott, Belfast was the centre of her Orange world, where ‘Orangeism was in the very atmosphere they breathed in Ulster’. Importantly, Darracott then reflected explicitly on how this experience of visiting Ireland would be of equal importance to her Orange sisters back home in Canada, saying that she would ‘take back with her memories of her stay in the North of Ireland which would be a great stimulus to her and her people across the seas, memories of a wonderful Order’. Darracott concluded her speech by reflecting on the centrality of female Orangeism to the Canadian Order – the biggest Orange Institution in the world was also the most significant centre of the women’s Order. Darracott pointed out the sheer size of the LOBA (‘37,000 women in 1,000 lodges’) and how they used the organisation to become politically active, ‘promoting social reform, as well as in safeguarding their political and religious freedom’.123 On her return to Canada, Darracott was good to her word. She enthusiastically threw herself into her Grand Mistress’s duties, touring the country to tell her fellow sisters all about her trip and the importance of the

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diasporic connection to Ireland. Grace Darracott began her grand tour in the Maritimes. Her first meeting following her return was in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, where she spoke to both the men’s and women’s lodges in the town. A ‘crowded hall’ greeted her and listened with ‘rapt attention’ as Darracott described ‘her visit to Ireland, her resume of the work of the Triennial Council being of deep interest to all present’.124 Darracott then made her way north, to Prince Edward Island, where enthusiastic crowds of Orange men and women came to see her at meetings in Summerside and Charlottetown. After regaling the Summerside LOBA with tales of visiting an ‘Indian lodge … composed wholly of squaws’, the members listened to Darracott’s stories of the Triennial and the Twelfth in Belfast. In Charlottetown, Darracott talked of her adventures in the ‘Mother Country’ and how privileged she felt to have taken part in the ‘July celebration and walk in Belfast, where she [took] a prominent part’.125 Moving westwards, Grace Darracott continued her busy tour by visiting New Brunswick. At Moncton, she was given a ‘right royal welcome’ by a crowd who found her tales ‘amusing and engaging’. Having reflected on the strength of the women’s Order in Canada, Darracott once again talked at length about visiting Belfast and ‘witnessing … a most inspiring sight, over 100,000 men marching in the parade’.126 On 21 September, Darracott arrived in Fredricton, New Brunswick, where she once more ‘spoke interestingly about her trip to Ireland’ and her role in the Triennial Council. Darracott’s activities in Ireland had clear resonance and importance to the members of the LOBA in Canada, as ‘her talk of the events on that occasion was interesting and instructive to all who gathered to hear her’.127 Not surprisingly, Darracott’s fervent touring around the eastern Provinces of Canada brought on a bout of ill health, but once she had been ‘released from the doctor’s attention’, the Grand Mistress was once more on the road. Starting in her home Province, Winnipeg, Darracott again took up the theme of the Triennial and the importance of links to Ireland. The brethren of LOL No. 325 in Winnipeg ‘enjoyed her talk on Ireland’ and thought it ‘unfortunate that the Grand Mistress is not an Irish woman by birth’, given the enthusiastic way in which she promoted the Order’s diasporic links with Ireland.128 Despite her illness and more modest travelling schedule, Darracott’s enthusiasm for talking about Ireland and sharing her memories of the Triennial were unabated. Speaking at the Liberty LOBA No. 248 in Winnipeg, Darracott ‘reviewed her experiences’ with the sisters in expansive style. For an hour an a half, Darracott took her audience with her ‘through entrancing scenery, the celebration in Belfast, Londonderry Walls, the Diamond, Dan Winter’s Cottage, etc., all touched upon in a manner that thrilled every one present’. In sharing her

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experience of visiting these important sites of Unionism, Orangeism and empire, Darracott was emphasising the centrality of the Order’s diasporic connection to Ulster, which ‘was an inspiration and gave courage to face 1933 undaunted’.129 In her final speech about her visit to Ireland, Darracott spoke in even more detail about the importance of the Irish connection to Orangewomen in Canada. In March 1933, Darracott addressed a large audience at the Trianon Hall, Calgary, ‘describing scenes of great historical significance’ to the assembled Orange crowd. Darracott was effusive about the key Orange sites that she had visited: After comparing the celebrations of the ‘Glorious Twelfth of July’ in Belfast, which she had witnessed in 1898 and again in 1932, Mrs Darracott told the interested listeners of her visit to Diamond Hill, of Dan Winter’s Cottage where the first Orange charter was signed with the blood of the Orangemen; she described her visit to the famous fortress, Carrickfergus, and spoke also of the siege of Derry and its famed walls.

In addition to reflecting on these key Orange locations and her memories of them, Darracott also told her audience about ‘interesting incidents which occurred during her travels’. While on her way to Belfast, Darracott held an ‘impromptu LOBA meeting on board ship in mid-ocean’, indicating that she was not the only Orangewoman for whom sailing back to the ‘Mother Country’ was important.130 Darracott’s travelling across the Atlantic, touring around Canada and talking to her Orange sisters tells us much, then, about how central the diasporic experience was for Orangewomen in the Dominion. While visits to Ireland and Britain were clearly important for fostering a diasporic consciousness among the LOBA, receiving visitors from abroad helped to underline the interconnectedness of the organisation for members of the Canadian Orange Order. As we have seen, many Orangewomen visited Canada before returning home. The visits of their Scottish sisters would have impressed further on the LOBA the diasporic nature of their organisation, giving them an acute awareness of their connections across the Atlantic. At the beginning of 1930, the LOBA No. 1 in Hamilton received an ‘interesting letter from the Land of the Thistle’. The first ladies’ lodge in Canada had exchanged letters with the first ladies’ lodge in Scotland, largely as a result of the visit of Sister Jean Brown, as we saw in the previous chapter. Brown had returned to Scotland to pay a visit to her old lodge, where her mother had been Worshipful Mistress for the past nineteen years. Isa Simpson, the Secretary of Scotland’s First FLOL, wrote that ‘we were glad to hear Sister Jean Brown had found so kind friends in the

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land of her adoption’, adding that ‘we will be very sorry when she goes back to Canada and would like to keep her here, but, of course, her mind seems made up to go back again’.131 So, for the ladies of LOBA No. 1 in Hamilton, hearing about their sister, Jean Brown, on her visit to Scotland was an important way of reinforcing their connection with their Orange counterparts across the ocean. Equally, welcoming visitors from the British Isles was important to Canadian Orangewomen’s sense of diasporic identity. At a meeting of the Lady York LOBA No. 558 in Toronto at the end of 1933, the lodge welcomed ‘a visitor from Scotland’. Sister S. Sutton came to the lodge from FLOL No. 23 in Clydebank, which gave the Canadian Worshipful Mistress ‘great pleasure … as this sister was a member of her own mother lodge in Scotland’.132 Orange visitors from England also helped to underline the diasporic nature of the LOBA. In September 1936, the women of the Excelsior LOBA No. 162 extended ‘a hearty welcome’ to Sister Norris, Worshipful Mistress of the Protestant Reformers FLOL in Liverpool. Norris was presented with a ‘lovely bag’ and then she was sent on her way with a rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, with the members forming ‘a circle with Sister Norris, who is returning to the old country’.133 We have seen, then, that travelling back to the British Isles, telling Orange sisters in Canada about these journeys and hosting visitors from ‘back home’ helped to reinforce the LOBA’s diasporic position. This was an organisation that was well aware of its interconnections with the British world, and this was a world view that was underpinned by migration and mobility. Irish, Scottish and English identities

The background of many LOBA members indicates the importance of Irish, Scottish and English migration to the women’s Orange Order in Canada. The Irish heritage of Orangewomen in Canada remained prominent well into the twentieth century, indicating the continued traction of the Irish ‘homeland’ in the Orange world. While certain elements in the Canadian Orange Order took on a ‘pan-Protestant’ identification,134 the Irishness of many members of the Orange Order continued to be central to both male and female lodges in Canada well into the twentieth century. While Houston and Smyth acknowledge the importance of Irish immigration to the establishment and growth of the Orange Order in Canada, they argue that this Irish element declined in importance as the nineteenth century progressed.135 The growth of the Orange Order in Canada was closely connected to the ‘emergence and consolidation of the Second British Empire’, attracting Scottish and English migrants

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to its ranks under the organisation’s pan-Protestant British umbrella.136 Equally, a number of women’s lodges in Canada continued to articulate English and Scottish identities through their activism and associationalism. The LOBA, however, remained closely tied to an Irish identity, at least in particular parts of Canada, which reflected the enduring traction of Irish politics during the turbulent interwar period. Certainly, as William Smyth’s most recent work has confirmed, Toronto was a key centre for both Irish Protestant migrants and for an Orange organisation which valued an Irish identity more than many lodges across Canada. Reflecting on the growth of the Order in Toronto during the interwar period, Smyth remarks that continued migration from Ireland and a focus on Irish affairs ‘revealed an enduring intimacy with the Irish, British, and imperial worlds’, arguing that Toronto had experienced a ‘progressive estrangement from the social and political values of small-town and rural Canadian lodges that had evolved over several generations and whose experience remained Canadian and local rather than transnational’.137 While Smyth’s analysis holds fast for Toronto, the extent to which Irish matters could also be important to Orangewomen across the Dominion is born out by a number of examples below. The Irish background of a number of members of the LOBA was given prominence by the coverage of Orange affairs in the Toronto Sentinel. One of the founders of the LOBA, Mary Cullum, was frequently noted as coming from a good Irish family. Cullum was born in the village of Alma in Wellington County, Ontario. Her father, David Cullum, had come to Canada in 1834, leaving his boyhood home in Co. Longford, Ireland, to settle in Guelph, Ontario. David soon joined the Orange Order in Canada, like many of the Irish Protestant migrants identified by Houston and Smyth as comprising the most significant ethnic element of the organisation during the nineteenth century.138 Other members of the LOBA had a closer connection to Ireland, having only emigrated recently to Canada. In Ottawa, Sister Dawson, the Worshipful Mistress of LOBA No. 12, had emigrated from Coalisland, Co. Tyrone, in the 1880s. Described as a ‘true-bred Orangewoman’ her Orange credentials were deemed to be first-rate, having escaped from the clutches of a ‘Roman Catholic mob’ who attempted to drown her on a Sunday school outing.139 Sister Weir had moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 1906, emigrating with her husband and family from Belfast to take up farming as one of the pioneers in the district. Weir became Worthy Mistress of the local Maple Leaf LOBA and, according to her obituary, did good work for Orange causes, raising money for the orphanage at Indian Head and speaking proudly of her loyalty to the British Crown and her Irish Protestant heritage:

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With the proud strain of the ‘Dalardic chiefs of Ulster in her veins,’ a liberal education, and a clear foresight, she did much to cement loyalty in Canada to the British Crown. She was ever ready to help a good cause, more especially if it was in support of Protestantism. Veneration for the land of her birth, love for her adopted country, and the welfare of mankind was her motto. A worthy Daughter of Ulster.140

The Ladysmith lodge in Toronto, in particular, attracted a large number of Irish-born migrants, reflecting the city’s status as the Irish-Protestantdominated ‘Belfast of Canada’.141 At an entertainment held following a meeting of the Ladysmith lodge, a rendition of ‘Where the River Shannon Flows’ was given by one of the members, a Sister Poole, described as ‘a lady Unionist, formerly of Belfast’.142 A Worshipful Mistress of the Ladysmith lodge, Mrs Bruce, had come to Toronto in 1912 together with her daughter Elizabeth. Described by the Sentinel as ‘Born Orange and in Ulster’, Elizabeth, now Mrs Kennedy, had risen through the ranks of the LOBA to become Grand Mistress, the highest office in the organisation.143 While the Ladysmith lodge and others appeared to attract many Irishborn migrants, a number of LOBA lodges had members from a Scottish background. One of the founders of the LOBA, Mary Tulk, was born in Ontario, but had an Irish mother and a Scottish father.144 One of the leading figures in the LOBA in Toronto, Jeanie Gordon had been born in Glasgow in 1865 and emigrated to London, Ontario, with her parents. On moving to Hamilton after her marriage, Jeanie became one of the founding members of the LOBA in the city, before rising to become Grand Mistress of the organisation.145 During the 1920s, a period of intense emigration from Scotland, a number of newly landed migrants joined LOBA lodges in Canada. In Toronto, a new lodge, Lady Wilson No. 718, was founded in May 1926 with a Miss M. Miller as Worshipful Mistress. Miller, together with her mother and her sister, had recently arrived from Scotland, where they were members of FLOL No. 10 in St Rollox, Glasgow.146 A year later, the Canada lodge reported having ‘two affiliations of sisters from Scotland’.147 Clearly, a number of Scottish women became members of the LOBA during this period. Some of these would have been from an Irish background, but the paucity of evidence makes tracing this connection back to Ireland hard to achieve. However, many LOBA lodges in Canada had a role to play in the migration process, not just as ‘a club at the end of the road’ but also as a means of maintaining what for many of these women was a heartfelt connection back to their Orange roots in the ‘old homeland’ of Ireland or Scotland.148 Demonstrating their commitment to the promotion of Orange politics and affairs in public life, members of the LOBA combined an interest in

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Irish politics and identity with a broader belief in the British Empire during the first half of the twentieth century. Centring on the Home Rule crisis of 1912–14 and concern during the 1920s over the future of Protestantdominated Ulster within a partitioned Ireland, Orangewomen in Canada promoted a strong diasporic Irish Protestant identity through their public political activism. However, promoting an Irish Protestant ethnicity was only one part of Orangewomen’s ‘diasporic imagination’ and, increasingly, we find members of the LOBA articulating English or Scottish identities through their participation in the Orange Order. In particular, the multiple and shifting sets of identities embraced by the LOBA became more complex during the 1920s, when many Canadian Orangewomen began to celebrate their Scottishness in more obvious and visible ways, reflecting the heightened levels of migration from Scotland.149 The crisis in Irish and British politics over the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill in 1912 provided a significant focal point for the expression of LOBA members’ diasporic Irish Protestant identity, emphasising the enduring transnational links that bound Orange members across the Atlantic. In Ireland, women mobilised in significant numbers to demonstrate their opposition to Home Rule. The Ulster Women’s Unionist Council had been formed in January 1911, attracting a mass membership estimated at up to 200,000 women from across all classed in the Province.150 While the response of Orangewomen in Scotland to the Ulster crisis was relatively muted, as we saw in the previous chapter, the LOBA were rather more vocal in their support for their Protestant sisters in Ireland. Speaking at a meeting of the No Surrender lodge in Vancouver, Mary Tulk discussed her recent visit to the ‘Old Land’ of Ireland.151 Tulk had taken part in the Twelfth of July celebrations in Belfast, addressing a crowd of ‘eleven thousand good Protestants’, a significant arena in which to perform her Orange identity.152 Demonstrating her commitment to the anti-Home-Rule cause, Tulk had joined the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council, whom she praised for their ‘grim determination … never to accept Home Rule’.153 Other LOBA lodges across Canada echoed Tulk’s commitment to Ulster. To commemorate the signing of the Ulster Covenant on 28 September, the women of Boyne Jubilee lodge in Montreal decided to hold an ‘Ulster Day’ church service.154 As the Ulster crisis intensified, a number of lodges used their meetings to pass resolutions against Home Rule and suggest practical ways of helping their Orange sisters in Ireland. In Winnipeg, for example, the women of Rising Star LOBA No. 62 declared their support for ‘the male members of the Orange Association in the fight against the ascendancy of the Home Rule party in Ireland’, adding that they were prepared to supply a nurse ‘in the event of a regiment or regiments being sent from Winnipeg to Ireland’.155 At the end of 1913, the

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Sentinel carried an extensive article by Irene Clare, a member of the LOBA, exhorting each Orangewoman to fight for the Protestant cause against the threat of Home Rule and undergo medical training ‘in case her nursing services and ministrations should be needed at home or abroad’.156 As William J. Smyth argues, the Home Rule crisis was represented in Canada as constructing ‘a successful union of Irish and Canadian political interests’, and the LOBA played a role in this.157 When the question of Ulster’s status within Ireland rose again in the early 1920s, Orangewomen in Canada once more demonstrated their commitment to Irish Protestant politics. As the newly founded Free State plunged into civil war in 1922, Unionists in the equally novel Northern Ireland feared that partition was merely a temporary precursor to being subsumed within a Catholic Irish state.158 In Canada, members of the LOBA raised funds to provide for potential refugees from any conflict that might break out in Northern Ireland. At a meeting of the Britannia lodge in Winnipeg, Sister McKee presented a ‘plea for the assistance on behalf of distressed Loyalists in the Emerald Isle’, to which the sisters responded by raising $10.159 A number of other LOBA lodges also raised funds to support their Orange brethren and sisters in Ulster, such as the McCormack lodge in Toronto collecting money ‘to add to the fund being sent for the orphans in Ireland’.160 While members of the Beeton LOBA donated $20 to the Ulster Relief Fund, this figure is relatively insignificant compared to the lodge’s raising over $225 for the Orange Orphans Home in Richmond Hill.161 This suggests that, while Irish political issues continued to have traction among many members of the LOBA during the 1920s, their priority lay with benevolent work and fundraising for charitable causes. The relative unimportance of Irish issues among the LOBA echoed the experience of other Orange associations outside of Ireland, where politics was less ‘red in tooth and claw’ and less of an everyday issue.162 As we saw in the previous chapter, identification with an Irish Protestant identity was also becoming more problematic, given both the emergence of a firmly Ulster Unionist identity and the growing strength of Scottish identity within the Canadian Orangewomen during the 1920s. The contested nature of an Irish Protestant identity was made clear at a meeting of the Daughters of Portadown lodge in 1922 where, during an evening’s entertainment, the Worthy Mistress was praised for making everyone feel at home ‘in her usual Irish (I mean Ulster) style’.163 Both an Irish and a Scottish identity, however, remained important to members of the LOBA during the 1930s. What is noteworthy, though, is that celebrations of Irishness, intriguingly, became more frequent and gained greater prominence, reflecting, perhaps, the continued contested nature of Irish politics. The 1930s was a period of intense change and flux

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in Ireland, both north and south. Far from ‘copperfastening’ the constitutional issue, the Boundary Commission settlement of 1925 had simply set the scene for a further decade of mistrust and fear, on both sides of the border.164 De Valéra’s election as Taoiseach in 1932 and subsequent design of a new Constitution for Ireland in 1937, together with serious rioting in Belfast during the summer of 1935, all served to put the Protestant Unionist community in the north distinctly on edge.165 This unease was diasporic, spreading throughout the world of Orangeism and indicating, once more, the durability of Orange connections back to the ‘mother country’, Ireland. The multi-ethnic nature of the Canadian Orange Order was, of course, longstanding. For example, we just have to look at the annual celebration of the Maple Leaf LOBA No. 620 in Fort William, Ontario, during April 1930 to see such diversity in action.166 At this event, the women performed a special tableau in which various sisters took the roles of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Canada.167 However, the separate roles for each country in the Fort William sisters’ tableau indicate the continued traction of these individual ethnic identities as separate and distinct. During the 1920s, many Canadian Orangewomen proudly proclaimed their Scottish identities. The Liberty LOBA lodge in Winnipeg took the lead in holding Burns Nights, being the first women’s lodge in Canada to organise an event that symbolised Scottishness for many Scots abroad.168 Aptly taking place in Scott Memorial Hall, over 300 people sat down for ‘a menu entirely Scottish in which the Haggis played a prominent part’.169 This event was, though, far more than simply a straightforward expression of the Scottishness of the LOBA in Winnipeg. After feasting and music, various Orange men and women delivered ‘anecdotes on the Scotch and Irish’, while one speaker recognised the multi-ethnic nature of their entertainment and the LOBA in Winnipeg: ‘Although this is Burns’ Night, I gather there are a good many Irish present, but we Irish are generous sometimes, and honor the Scotch’.170 Other expressions of Scottish identity by the LOBA took on a similarly cultural imprint. At an evening’s ‘whist drive and dance’ at the Ulster lodge in Vancouver, the Orange sisters were entertained by ‘a selection of Highland dance in costume’ given by one of the ladies.171 At a meeting of the Ladysmith lodge in Toronto, the Scottish entertainment was connected directly to the activities of Orangewomen in Scotland. Inspired by ‘the Highland dancing of the lassie, Miss Marion Smith’, Jeanie Gordon talked at length about the success of the women’s Order in Scotland, where ‘in Glasgow alone there are sixty Orange lodges’.172 Having gained a heightened importance during the 1920s, expressions of Scottish cultural identity continued to be important to Canadian

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Orangewomen. During 1933, for example, Burns Night was celebrated with gusto by members of the LOBA.173 At the Rising Star LOBA No. 42 in Winnipeg, the Grand Mistress, Grace Darracott, was guest of honour at ‘their “Haggis” supper on Scotch night’.174 In Toronto, the women of the Lady Russell LOBA No. 190 held ‘a most successful Scotch night’, with the haggis being ‘piped in by Piper Duguid’ and addressed by Mrs Cummins of the Lady Nairn lodge.175 While Burns Nights and other expressions of the LOBA’s Scottish ethnicity continued to be important, Irish cultural events became more prominent occasions at women’s lodges during the 1930s. Following their celebration of Burns earlier in the year, the women of the Imperial LOBA No. 3 in Toronto held ‘another National Night’, attracting over 350 members to their St Patrick’s Day event. Following a suitably Irish-centric speech by Br F. Dane (focusing on ‘the prominent role of women in the upbuilding of the Orange Order from the days of Derry siege up to the present time’), the sisters sat down to refreshments and entertainment in their appropriately decorated lodge room, covered in ‘streamers, shamrocks, daffodils, and green carnations’.176 A year later, the Ulster Lodge in Calgary, Alberta, also held a ‘successful Irish night’. After beginning proceedings with the rather more Canadian and British Empire song, ‘The Maple Leaf’, the evening took an Irish turn, with Miss Sadie Dick ‘dancing an Irish jig’ and the Rev. James Dorrian giving ‘an interesting lecture on “Ireland, Its Romance, Wit and Humor”’.177 In 1933, the LOBA in Calgary once more took to the fore in organising a St Patrick’s Day event, putting on a tea for the local juvenile lodge. The celebration was bedecked with symbols of Irish identity: ‘Shamrocks and St Patrick’s motifs were used in profusion in the reception rooms, and on the attractive tea table centred a doll dressed as an Irish colleen surrounded with Irish novelties; the tea room assistants in green and white added to the festive air’.178 Meanwhile, in Paris, Ontario, the women of the Jean Gordon LOBA celebrated St Patrick’s Day by singing Irish songs and eating a cake ‘appropriately decorated with green shamrocks’.179 Given how St Patrick’s Day celebrations have become associated with expressions of a distinctive Catholic Nationalist Irish identity during the course of the twentieth century, it may seems a little odd that Orangewomen in Canada celebrated this national day.180 However, it demonstrates the continuing importance of Irishness – both cultural and political – to the Canadian Order during the 1930s. The interest of the LOBA in Irish politics may be seen in the speech of the Grand Mistress of Nova Scotia, Pear Matheson, at their Grand Lodge meeting in 1938. Following the election that year in Ulster, Matheson noted their relief that Craigavon had foiled De Valéra’s efforts to bring a united Ireland closer:

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‘I am sure that every true Orangeman and Orangewoman must have been proud of the result of this election, whereby the people of Ulster showed by an overwhelming majority their desire to remain part of the British Empire, and that they do not want any union with the South’.181 It is also worth reflecting on where in Canada the LOBA were more likely to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. It would appear that the LOBA in Calgary, Alberta, was particularly keen on holding these events, in a city where there had been a notable lack of sectarian conflict between Irish Catholics and Protestants, unlike in Toronto. So, for some members of the LOBA at least, in specific locations, St Patrick’s Day remained a more inclusive celebration of Irishness, rather than the more Catholic Nationalist occasion that it had become in more divided cities such as Toronto.182 While Irish and Scottish ethnicities were clearly prominent within the LOBA and informed a strong sense of diasporic identity, some Orangewomen in Canada also articulated an attachment to a sense of Englishness, as we have seen above. Some members of the LOBA combined their Orange commitments with involvement in the associational culture of the English diaspora in Canada. In Toronto, for example, Lillian Collins was not only Mistress of the Lady Russell LOBA lodge, she was also an active member of the Maids of England and the Daughters of England, two groups dedicated to the maintenance of an English diasporic culture in Canada.183 Moreover, the Imperial LOBA lodge held an ‘English Night’ in March 1927, the members enjoying ‘a programme of a strictly English character’.184 The multi-ethnic character of the LOBA during the 1930s is captured by obituaries published in the Orange press. Many of the LOBA members who died during the 1930s had emigrated from England, Ireland and Scotland at the beginning of the twentieth century and earlier. The continuing importance of English migrants as a distinctive ethnic group in Canada can be seen in these obituaries in the Toronto Sentinel, an under-studied source that, much like the Belfast Weekly News, tells us much about the activism and ideology of the Orange Order.185 Kate Vinen died in May 1932 at the age of 59. She was a ‘prominent’ member of LOBA No. 238 in London, Ontario, but had moved there in 1903 from England. Revealingly, in a very active associational life, she was also a member of the Daughters of England, who met at the St George’s Club in London.186 Kate’s commitment to both the LOBA and the Daughters of England was underlined by her funeral arrangements, held ‘under the auspices’ of both.187 Ellen Rogers, a native of Yorkshire, also died in 1932. Ellen had emigrated to Canada in 1913 and was an active member of the Edith Cavell LOBA No. 282 in Sudbury, Ontario. Like Kate Vinen, Ellen was also heavily involved in English diasporic associational culture, being a

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founding member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Canadian Legion and of the Anglican Mothers’ Union. Intriguingly, Ellen was also a double return migrant: during the Great War, she went back to England (where her brother still lived, in Leeds) to work in a munitions factory, coming back to Sudbury at the war’s end.188 For members of the LOBA in Canada, then, their Irish Protestant diasporic consciousness was tempered by both Scottish and English identities. However, the Orange Order gave these women an institutional framework within which to reconcile these multiple identities. The Orange Order across the globe articulated a deep commitment to the British Empire that was also entirely compatible with an Irish or Scottish identity in Canada. The women of the LOBA certainly identified their Orangeism with the aims of the British Empire, frequently using the rhetoric of working under an imperial flag to make sense of their activities in Canada. In the midst of the First World War (in itself, interpreted as an imperial war by many in Canada and elsewhere in the Empire), Mary Tulk spoke about the women of Princeton, British Columbia, who wrote to her requesting to set up an LOBA lodge ‘to rally under the banner of Orangeism and stand together for our Flag and Empire’.189 Furthermore, as we have already seen, at the No Surrender LOBA lodge in Vancouver, the women framed their considerable public activism, on municipal authority committees and the like, in imperial terms.190 Empire

The Orange cause is booming strong, Since ladies joined the Order O; They gain large numbers all along From centre to the border O; Long live the lasses O; Long live the lasses O; Our British girls shine bright as pearls Arrayed in Blue and Orange O; … Each lodge is a centre of light, Of loyalty and progress O; To work ’gainst those who love the night And hate the British Empire …191

As the Orange Order in Canada celebrated another successful Twelfth of July celebration in 1933, the Toronto Sentinel published a selection of Orange songs, making sure that the vibrant and numerically buoyant LOBA was represented. ‘The Ladies Orange Lodges O!’ we have seen

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before, at the very beginning of this book, in a Scottish context. Yet, transposed across the Atlantic, the song takes on a greater British and imperial aspect. Indeed, a British Empire identity was central to the beliefs and function of the LOBA in Canada during the 1930s. Through everyday lodge work and engagement with public activism and politics, female Orangeism in Canada was shaped by the rituals, ideology and symbols of empire. Private lodge meetings, monthly meetings and special celebrations were festooned with emblems of the British Empire. The LOBA’s Grand Lodge was frequently an occasion for reaffirming Orangemen’s ideological commitment to empire, through speeches and resolutions which stressed the Protestantism, the liberty and the democratic ideals of Britishness. During the 1930s, the LOBA’s imperialism was most clearly articulated in the heated debates about the use of the Union Jack as the flag of Canada. Orangewomen’s unflinching belief in the flag of empire also served to underline their robust involvement in debate about broader Canadian politics and identity. As domestic political concerns became more contested during the interwar period, the LOBA’s support for a distinctively British Canadian identity became more pronounced. During the fevered debates about Canada’s schools, language, immigration policy and, indeed, flags, Orangewomen played a key role in defending the Britishness of the Dominion. The LOBA’s heartfelt Britishness was, however, far from being an anachronism in the Canada of the 1930s. Recent research has modified the accepted orthodoxy that Canada’s connection to the British Empire was fatally undermined by the First World War.192 Philip Buckner has argued that loyalty to the Empire remained a cornerstone of Canadian society, promoted in part by organisations such as the 400,000-strong Canadian Legion. English-speaking Canadians were proud imperialists who saw Canada as an increasingly independent nation in Prime Minster Mackenzie King’s ‘Cooperative Commonwealth’.193 John Herd Thompson has identified the 1930s as the height of Canada’s Britishness. It was during this decade that Canadian ‘affection for the Crown’ reached its height, reinforced by numerous royal visits.194 Moreover, immigrant groups, such as Poles and Ukrainians, eagerly adopted the trappings of Britishness during the 1930s, flying the Union Jack proudly at ethnic associations to demonstrate their loyalty and status as ‘good Canadians’.195 Private lodge meetings were prime occasions at which Canadian Orangewomen could articulate their Britishness. Each and every regular meeting of an LOBA lodge would begin with an affirmation of the Orange Order’s connection with Britain. Minute books held by the Grand Lodge of Canada reveal some details of Orangewomen’s ritual activities. For example, at their monthly meeting in January 1930, the women of the

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Queen Mary LOBA No. 204 in Aurora, Ontario, opened their meeting in the usual style, under the Union Jack: Test was taken and all were entitled to remain in lodge room. Blest be the tie that binds was sung. Flags were presented to the singing of ‘God Save the King’ and lodge duly opened for transaction of business.196

The British flag was also frequently given as an inauguration present to new LOBA lodges, further emphasising the importance of the Union Jack to Canadian Orangewomen. When the Guardian Star LOBA was instituted in Musquash, New Brunswick, in August 1930, the Grand Mistress of New Brunswick, Sister J. Donner, ‘presented to the lodge two Union jacks’.197 These flags had also been used by the women’s Grand Lodge of New Brunswick to decorate their parade float ‘during the recent celebration of the 12th at Fredericton’. LOBA lodges often used such British symbols to underline their belief in empire. During May 1939, the LOBA in Paris, Ontario, marked St George’s Day with a suitably patriotic social event. Following a ‘spirited selection’ of songs such as ‘The Red, White, and Blue’, the Paris sisters put on a show. Members performed a ‘patriotic sketch “Miss Britannia”, in which the symbols of British democracy were cleverly presented’, a key aspect of Canadian Britishness to which we shall return later.198 Other lodges held ‘Empire Teas’, such as that organised in June 1933 by the Ulster LOBA No. 220 in Calgary, Alberta. The sisters’ imperial sentiment was expressed through the lodge decorations: ‘The attractive tea table was centred with a miniature May-pole, from which streamers in red, white and blue were held by dainty dancers in costumes of the Empire’.199 Individual private lodges also affirmed their British identity through their names. Many were called after imperial heroes or the symbols of empire. For example, the ladies of the Queen Victoria LOBA No. 843 in Toronto were eager to recall the imperial foundations of their lodge during celebrations of the centenary of Canadian Orangeism in 1930: ‘The founders thought they could do nothing more effective in perpetuating the Imperial side of Orangeism than to name the lodge after the “Good Queen Victoria” whose deep Protestant convictions prompted her in stating to some Indian Princes at one of her memorable levees, “the secret of the British Empire’s greatness has been the open Bible”’.200 The commitment to empire demonstrated by private lodges was echoed in the rhetoric and ideology of the LOBA’s Grand Lodge. As we have seen in both Scotland and England, Orangewomen were just as keen as their brethren to stress how the British Empire was founded on the Protestant faith and held together by the religious bonds of their

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organisation. The Grand Mistress of British Columbia, Florence Williams, praised the Orange sisters in the Province for another fine year’s progress at their Grand Lodge meeting in Harrison Hot Springs during February 1930. Williams dwelt on the vitality of the British Columbia lodges, emphasising the broad connection between the Protestant faith and the British Empire: ‘the wonderful gatherings have given evidence of their interest in such vital questions as membership, leadership, the fundamental duties of a true Orange person, the Protestant cause and its preservation, and the integrity of the British Empire’.201 Further east, the Toronto LOBA lodges gathered in the summer of 1932 to hear the Grand Mistress of British America address them. Sister Darracott urged the Toronto sisters to co-operate better with their Orange brothers, in order to ‘make the organisation strong in righteousness, loyalty and Protestantism’. Linking the religiosity of the Order with Victorian notions of race, Darracott argued that ‘Wherever the Anglo-Saxon race is found there is also found the Orange Order.’202 This rather broad rhetoric was also linked to the more specific attributes of the LOBA. At the beginning of 1934, the women of the Jeanne Gordon LOBA in Kitchener, Ontario, were the proud hosts of the Grand Mistress, Sister Lavinia Roe. Given that the meeting fell the day after the forty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the LOBA, Roe spoke to the sisters about some of the underlying principles of the Order, laying stress on religiosity, empire and women’s role as nurturers of the next generation: ‘Let us instil into the minds of our children the great principles of British prestige and British power only made possible by British respect for the teachings of the Bible’.203 Roe concluded by making connections to more domestic Canadian issues, restating the old Orange slogan ‘one flag, one school, one language, an open Bible and a united Empire’. Such gendered ideas about women’s role in the Orange Order were further underlined at the LOBA Grand Lodge meeting in 1936. While giving her valedictory Grand Mistress’s speech during the meeting in St John’s, Newfoundland, Sister Roe reflected on the loyalty of the Canadian Orangewomen to the British Empire. For Roe, this had been most clearly demonstrated by the founding of a women’s Imperial Conference in 1926, fulfilling ‘the prophesy of the Bible … and “A Nation and a Company of Nations” was finally accomplished’: ‘Thus upon the “Stone of the Covenant” was this our glorious Empire founded, and upon the same stone the whole’.204 While maintaining that the Protestantism of the British Empire was key to the women of the LOBA, Canadian Orangewomen also stressed the Order’s role in upholding British notions of democracy and liberty. Gathering in Brockville, Ontario, for their annual Grand Lodge meeting, the sisters of the LOBA heard their Grand Mistress, Mrs J. Taylor, remind

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them of the work and principles of the Orange Order. Taylor emphasised the imperial nature of their Orangeism and how their ‘loyalty to the throne and to the Union Jack, the flag of the Empire’ was all in the cause of preserving ‘British Democracy in the Dominion’. For Taylor, the virtues of Britishness were symbolised by the ‘beloved Union Jack’, which stood as an ‘emblem of British Justice and Freedom’.205 The Britishness of such democratic qualities was made clear at the Grand Lodge meeting of the Ontario East LOBA in 1933. The Grand Mistress, Sister Gillespie, concluded her speech by reflecting on ‘British values’: ‘My wish is that as we return to our homes we will take away some inspiration that will enable us to become better members of this glorious order and better citizens of this British Canada of ours, thankful always that we are under the Grand Old Union Jack, the emblem of Righteousness and Liberty the world around’.206 For Gillespie and her fellow Orangewomen, the connection between the British flag and the freedoms of British democracy were clear. Indeed, it was the iconography of the Union Jack which animated Canadian Orangewomen’s British identity the most. Debate about Canada’s flag raged fiercely during the 1930s, as we saw earlier in this chapter. For Orangewomen, maintaining the symbols of empire was vital – through outward displays of patriotism such as the national anthem and the Union Jack, the Britishness of Canada could be maintained. The two were often yoked together. So, at the 1932 Grand Lodge of Ontario East, we find the Grand Mistress advocating the slogan ‘Keep Canada British’. The only way to ensure that the LOBA remained thoroughly British, according to Sister Gillespie, was to campaign for ‘no change in the flag or the National Anthem’.207 Equally, the Grand Mistress of the Saskatchewan LOBA prefaced her defence of the Union Jack by promoting the virtues of the national anthem. Sister R. Torbet argued vehemently against attempts to replace it with other songs: ‘The weird version of “O Canada” is little more than a blatant boast of man’s prowess in guarding our country, ignoring entirely Divine Providence and uttering not a breath of imperial loyalty.’208 After affirming the truly British nature of frustrating one’s enemies’ ‘knavish tricks’ in the second verse of the national anthem, Torbet emphasised how the Union Jack symbolised the unity of the British Empire. Torbet dismissed the Canadian ensign as a ‘merchant marine flag’ whose usage had been encouraged as a result of a Papal plot, and that there was no need ‘to have a distinctive flag to use on solid ground in any part of the Empire’. For Torbet, flying the flag was a clear way of demonstrating Canadian loyalty, proclaiming ‘us proud to be a part of the great Empire which stands and has so long stood firm for liberty and justice’. Indeed, Canada’s recent history only underlined the need to retain a British iden-

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tity and ­symbols. For Margaret Scott, Grand Mistress of Ontario West, the Union Jack was the flag under which so many Canadians had fought during the First World War: ‘As a loyal, imperialistic society, we assure those in authority that the flag of our forebears, and the flag of our British troops fought for in France is good enough for the Orange women of Canada.’209 For many Canadian Orangewomen, the Union Jack was laden with symbolism that reinforced its imperial function. The women attending the Ontario West Grand Lodge in 1934 were treated to a lengthy exposition on the meaning of the British flag. The Grand Mistress, Sister Mary Stewart, emphasised the British nature of both their organisation and Canada by analysing the composition of the Union Jack: The blue reminding one of the waves of the ocean; the red suggesting the sacrifice of the British people down through the ages, marking the pathway for the ships of commerce, leading to every harbor throughout the world, not only for military glories, but the glories of peace; the white standing for the honor of our nation, like a beacon light before the world, and entrusted to you as the symbol of Civil and Religious Liberty to preserve.210

Gathering for their Grand Lodge meeting in 1934, the LOBA linked the symbolism of the Union Jack to the Protestant ideology of both the Orange Order and the British Empire. Responding to attempts by ‘weakkneed legislators’ to change the British flag, the Grand Mistress, Lavinia Roe, marshalled a stout defence of the Union Jack. Roe argued that the flag could be ‘read’ as a history of their membership of the ‘great British Empire’ and that this should be seen in distinctly biblical terms: ‘the British flag contains most of the characteristics of the Tribe of Israel and that era that saw the founding of our revered Christian religion. The growth of empire, and the spreading all over the world of Christ’s teaching, are coincidental with the event of the flag.’ Roe surveyed how the flag developed, first gaining the imprint of Scotland (‘under which the beginnings of our Empire was laid in India, Canada, etc.’) and then Ireland (‘And it is under this flag that the miraculous growth of the British Empire has taken place’). For Roe, the colours of the Union Jack were redolent with religious symbolism. Red was the symbol of blood and Christ’s sacrifice; white signified purity; while blue, according to the book of Exodus, was ‘the symbol of Service in Holy things’. The Canadian nation was coterminous with the British Empire, in the mind of Roe and her LOBA sisters, and was intimately linked with the biblical destiny of the British Empire as God’s ‘chosen people’. Roe concluded her reflection on the Union Jack by invoking the names of the Marian English Protestant martyrs:

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Up for the glorious struggle If British hearts be yours. If Cranmer’s honoured name be dear Or Ridley’s memory endures. If the fire of Heaven-born truth Is glowing in your breast Stand for your Bible, and your Faith And God defend the rest.211

The religious and imperial meaning of the Union Jack was stated in similar terms at the LOBA’s Grand Lodge meeting in Winnipeg just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Mrs J. L. Wheatherby spoke of the importance attached to Orangewomen’s continued loyalty to the British flag ‘because it reminds us of our allegiance to God, King and Country’. The sections of the flag, clearly, represented the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, but Roe, intriguingly, designated Scotland as the ‘foundation’ whose biblical roots proved the righteousness of the Orange cause: ‘that famous Blue Blanket of Scotland, a sacred relic supposed to have been a portion of the curtain veiling the Holy Place in the Temple of Jerusalem, on which is imposed the White Cross of St Andrew. Tradition informs us that this emblem was shown to the kings of the Picts and Scots in the heavens as they passed the night in prayer before the battle, and, in faith, was taken by them to be a portent of victory’.212 At the end of the Grand Lodge meeting, Sister Scott passed a resolution underlining the importance of the Union Jack to Canadian Orangewomen: This symbol of British liberty and justice has been the flag that Orangewomen have felt proud of; their husbands and sons willingly fought and died for its protection. In these days of stress and uncertainty we believe there should be no question raised of Canada’s loyalty or Imperial connection, which a Parliamentary discussion on such a subject would inevitably raise, and we feel that the Union Jack should not be lowered at the behest of French Nationalists or to please foreigners in Canada as was suggested at the last session of the House of Commons.213

For the Orangewomen of Canada, the flag was everything, embodying their religious belief and their ideological support for the British Empire and, as we have seen, their resistance to any changes to the Union Jack as Canada’s national ensign was part of their engagement with broader Canadian politics during the 1930s. Canadian Orangewomen’s Britishness was also underlined by their commitment to the royal family. This was most clearly demonstrated through celebrations of royal events and during visits by members of the royal family to Canada. During the 1930s, jubilees and coronations were

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a chance for Canadian Orangewomen to reaffirm their broader British identity. At a special meeting of the Toronto County LOBA in May 1935, the women enthusiastically celebrated George V’s silver jubilee. In one of the largest gatherings held by the County LOBA, the women passed a resolution of congratulations to the King and underlined the loyalty in charitable terms, giving a donation to the King’s Jubilee Cancer Fund. The resolution was confirmed by the members ‘rising spontaneously and singing the National Anthem’, which ‘reaffirmed and declared the traditional loyalty and wholehearted devotion of the members of the LOBA to the person and throne of His Majesty and expressed the sincere wish that the King and Queen may be long spared to health and happiness to continue their benevolent reign over Britain and the Empire’.214 Of course, such hopes were in vain, and the following year, Edward VIII succeeded to the throne. The new King was welcomed in distinctly imperial terms by the ladies of the Saskatchewan Grand Lodge. Edward was particularly commended for his frequent visits to the various outposts of empire: ‘Not only can he bridge the gaps of Empire with his personal acquaintances but because of his numerous trips as good-will ambassador he might also bridge the gulfs between the Empire and the world’.215 Fate once more intervened to dampen this particular Orange prophecy, yet the LOBA’s enthusiasm for the royal family was reinvigorated by the King’s visit to Canada in 1939.216 At that year’s Grand Lodge meeting, the Grand Mistress argued that the royal visit highlighted the Britishness of the LOBA and of Canada itself: Their Majesties’ progress throughout the Dominion engendered feelings of deepest patriotism, loyalty to the Crown, and affection on the part of everyone and, not least, upon the members of the Loyal Orange Association, to whom their Royal visit has been most gratifying, as it has given us a real opportunity to openly express our loyalty to the Crown of Canada and the British Empire which we consider is vitally important to the maintenance of our cherished liberty and freedom.217

Fundamentally, the royal visit in 1939 served to underline the importance of the Empire to Canadian Orangewomen – their identity was British and loyalty to the Crown was a key part of their attachment to the Empire. As we have seen, though, increasingly these issues of British and empire identity were defined in the distinctly domestic terms of Canadian politics, through debate about separate schools, the Canadian flag, bilingualism and immigration. As Sister Kirkham argued at the Ontario East LOBA Grand Lodge meeting in 1936, all these issues made defending the Britishness of Canada all the more urgent: ‘Let us safeguard our civil and religious liberties, see to it that the tie that binds us to the Motherland

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does not be broken. Keep in mind “equal rights to all and special privileges to none”, standing firm for one flag, one school, a united Canada.’218 Conclusion

By the 1930s, the LOBA in Canada had, then, become a more ­multi-ethnic organisation, encompassing a pan-Protestant identity. Canadian Orangewomen, however, still retained a strong sense of Irish identity, reflecting the Irish background of many of the Orange Order members and the continuing importance of migration, if not at the levels of the nineteenth century. The women of the LOBA maintained an Irish Protestant identity that was diasporic, engaging in efforts to support their Orange sisters and brethren during the Home Rule crisis and the debate about the status of Ulster following partition in 1922. Moreover, return visits to the Orange ‘homeland’ were vital in creating a sense of ‘diasporic consciousness’, not just to those who physically travelled but also to Orangewomen who remained in Canada to hear about these events through the pages of the Sentinel. Orange jamborees such as the 1926 Triennial Conference in London and Twelfth of July parades in Glasgow and Belfast were at the heart of this Orange diaspora. While a Scottish identity became increasingly important during the 1920s, reflecting renewed migration streams from Scotland, Canadian Orangewomen’s diasporic thinking was shaped by the Irish Protestant background of many LOBA members. The Orange diaspora, focused on an Irish Protestant identity, retained its traction in Canadian society well into the twentieth century and, as the LOBA demonstrates, it had a strong gender dimension, in which women connected with their Orange sisters ‘back home’ in Ireland and Scotland. On the eve of the Second World War, then, the Orangewomen of Canada used local political and religious issues to reaffirm their commitment to a British and imperial identity. This chapter has demonstrated that the LOBA played a significant role in the Canadian Orange Order. These were women who focused much of their associational life on charitable affairs. While the LOBA’s sheer size enabled them to raise money on a scale way beyond anything managed by their sisters in England and Scotland, the Canadian Orangewomen’s greater benevolent focus marked them out as different. Raising money for good causes, especially those designed to aid Orange and Protestant children, provided the LOBA’s rationale. In turn, the LOBA’s philanthropic focus built upon and reinforced certain gender norms, portraying the Orangewomen as the principal carers in their community (and beyond) and the nurturers of the next generation. Equally, the LOBA’s charitable activities underlined that these

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women were good, upstanding Protestants. However, their religiosity and defence of Protestantism also took these Orangewomen firmly into public and political life, subverting the very gender norms on which the organisation was founded. By defending Protestantism and the use of English in schools, the LOBA engaged in much broader discussion about Canadian politics. While this focus on education echoed aspects of their Scottish sisters’ activism, the LOBA’s interest in schools placed it at the heart of the debate about Canadian identity and the Dominion’s relationship to Britain. We have seen how Irish politics and an Irish Protestant cultural identity retained traction among Canadian Orangewomen, but it is the promotion of an overarching connection with the British Empire that marks out the LOBA’s activism. So much of their public campaigning was done in the name of Britain and Britishness. And this imperial dimension was strengthened through the persistence of migration during this period (especially the 1920s) and the diasporic connections created through return visits to the ‘motherland’ (such as Sister Darracott’s trip to Belfast during 1932) and through the pages of the Toronto Sentinel. The women of the LOBA were instrumental, then, in maintaining the cultural Britishness of Canada, an identity which persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century. Notes

1 Mrs C. L. E. Potter, ‘What We Have, We Hold’, Sentinel, 3 October 1912. 2 ‘Ladies Orange Benevolent Association’, Sentinel, 3 July 1923; Library and Archives Canada, RG31, Census of Canada, 1891, District 72, Hamilton, Ontario, p. 29. 3 ‘The Orange Order’, Hamilton Spectator, 14 December 1898. 4 ‘Ladies Orange Benevolent Association’, Sentinel, 3 July 1923. For similar work performed by other women’s organisations in Canada, see the account of the Girls’ Friendly Society (formed in Canada in 1882) in L.  Chilton, Agents of Empire: British Female Migration to Canada and Australia, 1860– 1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), and M. Kohli, The Golden Bridge: Young Immigrants to Canada, 1833–1939 (Toronto: Natural Heritage, 2003), p. 335. 5 ‘Ladies Orange Benevolent Association’, Sentinel, 3 July 1923. 6 ‘A New Society’, Hamilton Spectator, 11 January 1889. 7 Grand Orange Lodge of Ontario West, Report of the Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Right Worshipful and Provincial Grand Orange Lodge of Ontario West 1889 (Toronto, 1889), p. 27; ‘Ladies Orange Benevolent Association’, Sentinel, 3 July 1923. 8 Grand Orange Lodge of British America, Report of the Most Worshipful Grand Orange Lodge of British America 1890 (Toronto, 1890), p. 33. 9 Grand Orange Lodge of British America, Report of the Sixty-Second Meeting

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of the Most Worshipful Grand Orange Lodge of British America 1891 (Toronto, 1891), p. 61. 10 Mrs T. Davidson, ‘The Ladies Heaven Bless Them’, Sentinel, 30 June 1892. 11 Grand Orange Lodge of Ontario West, Report of the Proceedings of the ThirtySecond Annual Meeting of the Right Worshipful the Provincial Grand Orange Lodge of Ontario West 1892 (Toronto, 1892), p. 39. 12 ‘Ladies Orange Benevolent Association’, Sentinel, 3 July 1923. 13 ‘Ladies’ Orange Association’, Sentinel, 21 March 1895. 14 ‘Ladies’ Orange Association’, Sentinel, 28 March 1895. 15 ‘Grand Lodge Meeting’, Sentinel, 6 June 1912; ‘Remarkable Progress of the Ladies’ Order’, Sentinel, 14 July 1927. 16 ‘Remarkable Progress of the Ladies’ Order’, Sentinel, 14 July 1927. Based on membership subscription data for 1929, Eric Kaufmann estimates there were 68,904 active Orangemen in Canada, comprising almost 50% of the world’s entire Orange membership. See Kaufmann, Orange Order Membership Data. 17 Smyth, Toronto, the Belfast of Canada, pp. 8–9, 117–53. 18 Kaufmann, ‘The Orange Order in Ontario’, p. 45. 19 Mary Cullum, ‘Ladies’ Orange Association’, Sentinel, 28 March 1895. 20 Ibid. 21 For the role of mutuality in the Orange Order in England, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 200–41. 22 ‘Hamilton’, Sentinel, 23 November 1893. 23 ‘A Successful Ladies’ Lodge’, Sentinel, 10 January 1895. 24 ‘Purple Star Lodge No. 104’, Sentinel, 4 January 1917. 25 ‘Grand Lodge Ladies’ Benevolent Association’, Sentinel, 3 June 1897; ‘Hamilton’, Sentinel, 17 September 1908; ‘Ladies Orange Benevolent Association’, Sentinel, 3 July 1923. 26 ‘Grand Mistress Has the First Insurance Policy’, Sentinel, 6 January 1927. The Orange Insurance Department became the Grand Orange Lodge of British America Benefit Fund, which is still in existence, based at the Orange headquarters in Toronto, indicating the highly developed nature of Canadian Orange mutualism, discussed in MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 311. 27 ‘Boyne Jubilee Lodge No. 26, Montreal’, Sentinel, 4 March 1920. 28 ‘Hamilton Lodge No. 1’, Sentinel, 17 May 1917. 29 ‘Mrs Frank Foley a Heavy Loss to Smith’s Falls’, Sentinel, 29 September 1927. For details of the women’s Orange burial service, see Loyal Orange Institution of Scotland, Ritual for Female Lodges, pp. 34–6, which is based on the LOBA ritual. 30 See, for example, the report of women taking part in the Orange church parade in Pollokshaws in May 1910, ‘Church Parade in Pollokshaws’, Belfast Weekly News, 26 May 1910, p. 10. 31 ‘Orange Ladies’, Sentinel, 9 June 1892. 32 ‘“The Ladies – Heaven Bless Them”’, Sentinel, 9 June 1892.

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33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

‘“The Ladies – Heaven Bless Them”’, Sentinel, 16 June 1892. ‘“The Ladies – Heaven Bless Them”’, Sentinel, 23 June 1898. Ibid. See, for example, the presence of LOBA lodges at Twelfth of July parades in London, Ontario, in Sentinel, 9 August 1894; ‘At London’, Sentinel, 18 July 1895. See, for example, ‘Toronto Orangemen Held the Grandest Celebration on Record’, Sentinel, 16 July 1914. ‘Hamilton Ladies’, Sentinel, 6 February 1908. ‘St Catharines’, Sentinel, 2 April 1914. ‘The $40 Forwarded’, Sentinel, 10 December 1914. ‘Johnston Lodge No. 19’, Sentinel, 19 October 1916. ‘Hamilton Lodge No. 1’, Sentinel, 6 April 1916. ‘Unity Lodge, No. 80’, Sentinel, 22 November 1917. ‘Ladysmith No. 6 Social Evening’, Sentinel, 17 October 1918. ‘A Splendid Move’, Sentinel, 23 October 1913. ‘Manitoba Ladies Annual Session’, Sentinel, 4 April 1918. ‘Manitoba Orphanage Fund Reaches $25,000’, Sentinel, 27 April 1926. ‘Magnificent Home for Saskatchewan Orphans’, Sentinel, 28 August 1923. Ibid. ‘Ladysmith Lodge’, Sentinel, 18 December 1923. ‘No Surrender’, Sentinel, 3 February 1925. P. G. Mackintosh, ‘Scrutiny in the modern city: the domestic public and the Toronto Local Council of Women at the turn of the twentieth century’, Gender, Place and Culture, 12:1 (2005), 30–1. ‘Daughters of the Boyne’, Sentinel, 16 January 1930. ‘Queen Alexandra, 470, Honors Past Mistress’, Sentinel, 23 January 1930. ‘Lodge 843 Boasts Unique Record’, Sentinel, 6 February 1930. ‘Truro Lodge 484 Continues Work for Orphanage’, Sentinel, 27 February 1930. ‘Lady Strathcona, 138, Spent Active Month’, Sentinel, 28 May 1931. ‘Active Members of the LOBA’, Sentinel, 3 July 1930. ‘Mrs E. J. Muirhead Again Heads LOBA of Manitoba’, Sentinel, 19 April 1934. ‘Toronto Ladies Organize Scheme to Help Distressed’, Sentinel, 4 December 1930. ‘Mrs Taylor Re-elected LOBA Grand Mistress at Brockville Gathering’, Sentinel, 19 June 1930. ‘LOBA in Alberta Shows Fine Progress’, Sentinel, 19 March 1931. ‘Grand Lodge of PEI Had a Splendid Year’, Sentinel, 21 May 1931. ‘MW Sr. Darracott Visits Grand Lodge of Saskatchewan’, Sentinel, 31 March 1932. ‘Sr. Campbell, Regina, Heads Sask. LOBA’, Sentinel, 2 April 1931. ‘Ontario West LOBA Had Successful Year’, Sentinel, 2 April 1931. ‘LOBA Told of Progress by GM’, Sentinel, 19 April 1934. ‘Obituary’, Sentinel, 23 February 1926.

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69 Mrs E. E. Miller, ‘The Dear Old Flag’, Sentinel, 7 July 1925. 70 ‘Manitoba Ladies Will Build Home’, Sentinel, 8 May 1919. For the development of denominational education in Manitoba, see J. C. Lehr and B. McGregor, ‘The geography of bilingual schools in Manitoba’, Manitoba History, 61 (2009), 33–6. 71 For Regulation 17 and its impact on bilingual schooling, see M. Prang, ‘Clerics, politicians, and the bilingual schools issue in Ontario, 1910–1917’, Canadian Historical Review, 41 (1960), 281–307. 72 ‘Ontario West Ladies Reject Bro. Ferguson’s Bilingual Proposals’, Sentinel, 29 March 1928. 73 See K. Mazurek, ‘Passing fancies: educational changes in Alberta’, in T. Harrison and J. L. Kachur (eds), Contested Classrooms: Education, Globalization, and Democracy in Alberta (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1999), p. 5. 74 ‘Victory Lodge, 746, Issues Protest’, Sentinel, 13 March 1930. 75 ‘RW Sis E. Gillespie Elected Grand Mistress of Ontario East GL’, Sentinel, 10 April 1930. 76 ‘Mrs Margaret Scott Re-Elected as Grand Mistress Ont. West’, Sentinel, 31 March 1932. 77 ‘Toronto is Urged Return Supporters of Public Schools’, Sentinel, 29 December 1932. 78 ‘Sisters of Toronto Are Behind Brethren in School Tax Battle’, Sentinel, 29 December 1932. 79 ‘LOBA of Ont. West Elects Mrs L. Morgan Grand Mistress’ Sentinel, 18 April 1935. 80 ‘Warsaw, 865, Defends Public School Revenues’, Sentinel, 26 January 1933. 81 ‘Vital Issues Are Outlined by MW Sister Mrs Beaven’, Sentinel, 5 August 1937. 82 M. D. Bordo and A. Redish, ‘Why did the Bank of Canada emerge in 1935?’, Journal of Economic History, 47:2 (1987), 409. 83 ‘Ontario East Elects Sister Wright as GM’, Sentinel, 6 April 1933. 84 ‘Bilingual Currency Bill Killed Again for this Year by Mr Turnbull’s Strategy’, Sentinel, 15 March 1934. 85 ‘Many Attend First Meeting County Lodge’, Sentinel, 17 May 1934. 86 ‘Grand Mistress, Ont. W., Issues Call to Order’, Sentinel, 1 March 1934. For more on the debate about bilingual education in Ontario, see R. Mougeon and M. Heller, ‘The social and historical context of minority French language education in Ontario’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 7:2–3 (1986), 199–227. 87 For the extensive migration from Scotland to Canada during the interwar period, see McCarthy, Personal Narratives, p. 227; Harper and Evans, ‘Socioeconomic dislocation’; Harper, Emigration from Scotland. 88 For the decline of emigration to Canada during the 1930s, see J. Schultz, ‘“Leaven for the lump”: Canada and Empire settlement, 1918–1939’, in S.  Constantine (ed.), Emigrants and Empire: British Settlement in the

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Dominions between the Wars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 150–73. 89 ‘Lady Strathcona Lodge No. 138’, Sentinel, 16 October 1930. 90 ‘Lady Strathcona Lodge Makes Presentation’, Sentinel, 31 July 1930. 91 ‘Hold Memorial Service’, Sentinel, 22 October 1931. 92 See Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire, pp. 306–37. 93 ‘Mrs Huffman Heads Sudbury Lodge’, Sentinel, 19 November 1931. 94 ‘Harmony, 568, London Welcomes Visitors’, Sentinel, 12 May 1932. 95 ‘Lady Strathcona Lodge, No. 138’, Sentinel, 19 July 1934. 96 ‘Obituary’, Sentinel, 6 May 1937. 97 ‘Farewell Party’, Sentinel, 25 May 1939. 98 M. Harper, ‘Rhetoric and reality: British migration to Canada, 1867–1967’, in Buckner, Canada and the British Empire, pp. 175–6. 99 Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire, pp. 18–19. 100 ‘LOBA in Nova Scotia Had Progressive Year’, Sentinel, 5 May 1932. 101 ‘Mrs Margaret Scott Re-Elected as Grand Mistress Ont. West’, Sentinel, 31 March 1932. 102 ‘Miss Stewart Heads Ontario West LOBA’, Sentinel, 6 April 1933. 103 Pickles, Female Imperialism and National Identity, pp. 54–93. 104 Grand Orange Lodge of British America, Report of Proceedings of the Ninety-Ninth Meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge of British America, Held at Westmount, Montreal, Quebec, Tuesday and Wednesday, June 24th and 25th, 1929 (n.p., 1929), p. 23. 105 Grand Lodge of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association of British America, Report of Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Session of the MW Grand Lodge of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association of British America, Held in Westmount, Quebec, June 24th to 27th inclusive 1929 (n.p., 1929), p. 14. 106 Jacobsen, Special Sorrows. 107 See the section on ‘homecoming as tourism’ in Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire, pp. 333–6. See also McCarthy, Personal Narratives, pp. 204–8. 108 On the ‘English Diaspora’ see T. Bueltmann, D. T. Gleeson and D. M. MacRaild (eds), Locating the English Diaspora, 1500–2010 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), and T. Bueltmann and D. M. MacRaild, ‘Globalizing St George: English associations in the Anglo-world to the 1930s’, Journal of Global History, 7:1 (2012), 79–105. 109 ‘Farewell to Sister Baldwin’, Sentinel, 29 May 1919. 110 ‘Miss Ethel Easton Given Reception’, Sentinel, 29 April 1924. 111 ‘Miss Ethel Easton Honored in London, Sentinel, 4 March 1924. 112 Ibid. 113 ‘Edmonton, 138, at Home to Camrose Sisters’, Sentinel, 12 May 1932. 114 ‘Cullum Lodge No. 46’, Sentinel, 15 August 1935. 115 ‘No Surrender, Vancouver’, Sentinel, 3 July 1923. 116 ‘Excelsior LOBA 418’, Sentinel, 10 April 1930.

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117 ‘Daughters of Portadown Re-elect Mrs Lord’, Sentinel, 20 December 1934. 118 For the functioning of the Triennial Council, see MacRaild, ‘Networks, communication and the Irish Protestant diaspora’, 317–18. 119 ‘Daughters of Portadown Observe 11th Anniversary’, Sentinel, 30 September 1926. 120 ‘Saskatchewan Ladies Elect Mrs J. L. Spence R. W. Grand Mistress’, Sentinel, 17 March 1927. 121 ‘M. W. Grand Mistress is Honored by Toronto Past Mistresses’, Sentinel, 21 July 1927. 122 Lavery was also MP for Co. Down, 1921–29. See A. O’Day and N. C. Fleming, Longman Handbook of Modern Irish History Since 1800 (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 235. 123 ‘The Women’s Movement’, Belfast Weekly News, 21 July 1932. 124 ‘Grand Mistress at Glace Bay’, Sentinel, 8 September 1932. 125 ‘Grand Mistress Had Fine Receptions in Prince Edward Island’, Sentinel, 29 September 1932. 126 ‘Five Lodges Greet Grand Mistress’, Sentinel, 6 October 1932. 127 ‘Sister Darracott at Fredricton, N.B.’, Sentinel, 6 October 1932. 128 ‘Grand Mistress is Busy Again After Resting’, Sentinel, 8 December 1932. Grace Darracott was born in England and had come to Canada in 1913 with her husband. See 1916 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, Saskatchewan, Regina, 03H, roll T-21943, p. 24, family no. 204. 129 ‘Grand Mistress Tells Her Experiences’, Sentinel, 26 January 1933. 130 ‘Mrs Darracott Tells Memories of Irish Visit’, Sentinel, 16 March 1933. 131 ‘Premier Lodges of Canada, Scotland, Send Greetings’, Sentinel, 9 January 1930. 132 ‘Lady York’, Sentinel, 2 November 1933. 133 ‘Excelsior LOBA No. 162 Presents Bag to English Visitor’, Sentinel, 17 September 1936. 134 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, pp. 14, 293. 135 Houston and Smyth, The Sash Canada Wore, p. 91. 136 C. J. Houston and W. J. Smyth, ‘The faded sash: the decline of the Orange Order in Canada, 1920–2005’, in Wilson, The Orange Order in Canada, pp. 171, 175. Houston and Smyth do, however, recognise that most members were of ‘Irish stock’, without exploring this facet of twentieth-century Canadian Orangeism in any great depth. 137 Smyth, Toronto, the Belfast of Canada, pp. 229–30. 138 Houston and Smyth, ‘The faded sash’, p. 171; C. J. Houston and W. J. Smyth, Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990). 139 ‘A Successful Ladies’ Lodge’, Sentinel, 10 January 1895. 140 ‘Worthy Daughter of Ulster Passes’, Sentinel, 23 February 1926. 141 For a critical discussion of Toronto’s nickname ‘Belfast of Canada’, see W. M. Jenkins, ‘Social and Geographical Mobility Among the Irish in Canada and the United States: A Comparative Study of Toronto, Ontario, and

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Buffalo, New York, 1880–1910’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Toronto, 2001), and W. Jenkins, ‘Identity, place, and the political mobilization of urban minorities: comparative perspectives on Irish Catholics in Buffalo and Toronto 1880–1910’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25 (2007), 170. 142 ‘Ladysmith’, Sentinel, 25 September 1913. 143 ‘Honors and a Birthday’, Sentinel, 8 December 1925. 144 Library and Archives Canada, RG31, Census of Canada, 1891, District 72, Hamilton, Ontario. 145 ‘Thousands Mourn for Grand Mistress L.O.B.A.’, Sentinel, 16 October 1923. 146 ‘Another New Ladies Lodge’, Sentinel, 18 May 1926. 147 ‘Canada Lodge Ladies Paid a Visit to Oshawa’, Sentinel, 2 June 1927. 148 MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 148. 149 For the multiple and overlapping sets of ethnic identities held by Orangewomen during the twentieth century, see D. A. J. MacPherson, ‘Personal narratives of family and ethnic identity: Orangewomen in Scotland and England, c. 1940–2010’, Immigrants & Minorities, 32:1 (2014), 90–114. 150 Urquhart, Women in Ulster Politics, pp. 57, 61. 151 ‘No Surrender Lodge, Vancouver’, Sentinel, 28 November 1912. 152 ‘British Columbia’, Sentinel, 23 January 1913. 153 ‘No Surrender Lodge, Vancouver’, Sentinel, 28 November 1912. 154 ‘Boyne Jubilee Lodge, No 26’, Sentinel, 31 July 1913. Over half a million people signed the Ulster Covenant (for men) or the Ulster Declaration (for women). Most of these were in Ulster and, according to the Public Record Office Northern Ireland’s database of signatories, only fifty-six people signed the document in Canada. See PRONI, ‘The Ulster Covenant’, available at www.proni.gov.uk/index/search_the_archives/ulster_covenant.htm, accessed 19 February 2012. For the limited success of the Ulster Volunteer Force in Canada, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, p. 317, and Smyth, Toronto, the Belfast of Canada, pp. 31–2. 155 ‘L.O.B.A. Urges a Strong Public School Policy’, Sentinel, 23 October 1913. 156 I. Clare, ‘A Stirring Call to Protestant Women’, Sentinel, 25 December 1913. 157 Smyth, Toronto, the Belfast of Canada, p. 28. 158 For Northern Ireland Unionist fears over partition, especially concerning the Craig–Collins pact in 1922, see P. Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 426. 159 ‘Britannia Lodge, Winnipeg’, Sentinel, 28 March 1922. 160 ‘McCormack No. 191’, Sentinel, 10 October 1922. 161 ‘Beeton Ladies Gave Over $225 to Orphanage in Year’, Sentinel, 15 January 1924. 162 For a discussion of the lesser importance of Irish politics for Orangemen in the north of England, see MacRaild, Faith, Fraternity and Fighting, chapter 7. 163 ‘Daughters of Portadown, 212’, Sentinel, 17 October 1922. 164 For the constitutional implications of the Boundary Commission, see M.  O’Callaghan, ‘Old parchment and water: the Boundary Commission

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167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180

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of 1925 and the copperfastening of the Irish border’, Bullán, 4:2 (2000), 27–55. For the impact of the Boundary Commission, with a specific focus on the northern Nationalist community, see C. Abbott, ‘The Irish Boundary Commission Episode: Northern Nationalist Narratives and Political Culture 1924–1939’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Bristol, 2013). For the 1935 riots, see A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast riots of 1935’, Social History, 15:1 (1990), 75–96. For De Valéra during the 1930s, see B. Kissane, ‘Éamon de Valéra and the survival of democracy in inter-war Ireland’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42:2 (2007), 213–26. Fort William, Ontario, had significant Scottish connections, being named in 1807 by William McGillivray, chief superintendant of the North West Company. See J. Morrison, ‘Fort William’, in The Canadian Encyclopedia, available at www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/fort-william/, accessed 7 January 2015. ‘No. 620 Holds At Home’, Sentinel, 1 May 1930. ‘Honor Scotland’s Immortal Bard’, Sentinel, 4 March 1924. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Ulster L. O. B. A. No. 121’, Sentinel, 14 December 1920. ‘Ladysmith No. 8 Had a Great Night’, Sentinel, 5 October 1920. For a nuanced examination of diasporic Burns Nights, see T. Bueltmann, ‘“The image of Scotland which we cherish in our hearts”: Burns anniversary celebrations in colonial Otago’, Immigrants & Minorities, 30:1 (2012), 78–97. ‘Grand Mistress Busy in January’, Sentinel, 9 February 1933. ‘Hold Scotch Night’, Sentinel, 9 February 1933. ‘Imperial Lodge Holds Irish Night’, Sentinel, 13 March 1930. ‘Ulster Lodge Stages Successful Irish Night’, Sentinel, 12 February 1931. ‘Hold St Patrick’s Tea’, Sentinel, 13 April 1933. ‘Hold Irish Night’, Sentinel, 15 April 1937. For the development of St Patrick’s Day events across the globe, see M. Cronin and D. Adair, The Wearing of the Green: A History of St Patrick’s Day (London: Routledge, 2002), and in an English context, M. Scully, ‘Whose day is it anyway? St Patrick’s Day as a contested performance of national and diasporic Irishness’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 12:1 (2012), 118–35. For the development of St Patrick’s Day in Canada, see M. G. McGowan, The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), pp. 94–5. ‘Nova Scotia Grand Lodge Had Fine Year’, Sentinel, 16 June 1938. For the lack of sectarian conflict in Calgary, see D. Bright, The Limits of Labour: Class Formation and the Labour Movement in Calgary, 1883–1929 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), pp. 47–8. ‘Youngest Orange Mistress Married’, Sentinel, 19 July 1921. For the activities of an English diaspora in Canada, see B. S. Elliott, ‘Community life’,

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187 188 189 190

191 192 193 194

195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202

in Multicultural Canada, available at http://multiculturalcanada.ca/ Encyclopedia/A-Z/e3/11, accessed 19 February 2012. For the utility of the concept of ‘diaspora’ to English-speaking Canada, see D. H. Akenson, ‘The historiography of English-speaking Canada and the concept of diaspora: a sceptical appreciation’, Canadian Historical Review, 76 (1995), 377–409. ‘Imperial L. O. B. A. No. 3 Hold an English Night’, Sentinel, 24 March 1927. For discussion of the English as an ethnic group in Canada, see Harper and Constantine, Migration and Empire, pp. 13, 33–5; G. I. Leitch, ‘The importance of being English: English ethnic culture in Montreal, c. 1800–1864’, in Bueltmann, et al., Locating the English Diaspora, pp. 100–17. For the Daughters of England society in Canada, see F. Swyripa, ‘The monarchy, the mounties, and ye olde English fayre: identity at All Saints’ Anglican, Edmonton, 1875–1990s’, in P. Buckner and R. D. Francis (eds), Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration, and Identity (Vancouver, UBC Press, 2011), p. 334. For St George’s societies in a global context, see Bueltmann and MacRaild, ‘Globalizing St George’. ‘Mrs Vinen Passes At Home in London’, Sentinel, 19 May 1932. ‘Mrs Ellen Rogers’, Sentinel, 22 September 1932. ‘Mrs G. O. Akerly, St John, Grand Mistress, L. O. B. A.’, Sentinel, 5 August 1915. ‘No Surrender, Vancouver, a Flourishing L. O. B. A. Lodge’, Sentinel, 20 April 1926. For the operation of pan-British Protestant identity in the context of nineteenth-century Newfoundland, see W. G. Keough, ‘Contested terrains: ethnic and gendered spaces in the Harbour Grace Affair’, Canadian Historical Review, 90 (2009), 53. ‘The History of the Orange Order Wrapped in its Songs’, Sentinel, 6 July 1933. For this older historiography, see, for example, C. Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), p. 5, 264. Buckner, ‘Canada and the end of Empire’, p. 108. J. H. Thompson, ‘Canada and the “Third British Empire”, 1901–1939’, in Buckner, Canada and the British Empire, p. 102. For an earlier, less successful, example of a royal visit to Canada and the Orange Order, see I. Radforth, ‘Orangemen and the Crown’, in Wilson, The Orange Order in Canada, pp. 69–88. Thompson, ‘Canada and the “Third British Empire”’, p. 102. Grand Orange Lodge of Canada, GOLC 75, Aurora LOBA No. 204, Minute Book, 8 January 1930. ‘Another Lodge is Instituted in New Brunswick’, Sentinel, 7 August 1930. ‘St George’s Day Marked in Paris’, Sentinel, 4 May 1939. ‘Hold Empire Tea’, Sentinel, 15 June 1933. ‘Queen Victoria LOBA’, Sentinel, 3 July 1930. LOBA in BC Showed Marked Advance in 1929’, Sentinel, 6 March 1930. ‘Toronto Lodges Pay Fine Tribute to Mrs Darracott’, Sentinel, 30 June 1932. For the connection between race, Anglo-Saxon-ism, and the British Empire,

202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212

213 214 215 216 217

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see C. Kidd, ‘Race, Empire, and the limits of nineteenth-century Scottish nationhood’, Historical Journal, 46:4 (2003), 873–92. ‘Sister L. Roe Visits Lodge in Kitchener’, Sentinel, 4 January 1934. ‘Mrs L. Roe’s Address to LOBA’, Sentinel, 1 August 1935. ‘Mrs Taylor Re-elected LOBA Grand Mistress at Brockville Gathering’, Sentinel, 19 June 1930. ‘Ontario East Elects Sister Wright as GM’, Sentinel, 6 April 1933. ‘Keep Canada British’, Sentinel, 24 March 1932. ‘MW Sr Darracott Visits Grand Lodge of Saskatchewan’, Sentinel, 31 March 1932. ‘Mrs Margaret Scott Re-elected as Grand Mistress, Ont. West’, Sentinel, 31 March 1932. ‘RW Sister M Stewart Re-elected GM of Ontario West LOBA’, Sentinel, 19 April 1934. ‘Forty-first Annual Meeting of Grand Lodge of LOBA’, Sentinel, 16 August 1934. Grand Lodge of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association of British America, ‘Tribute to Flags’, Report of Proceedings of the Forty-Sixth Annual Session of the MW Grand Lodge of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association of British America, held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th June, 1939 (n.p., 1939), p. 19. Ibid. ‘Toronto Ladies Pledge Loyalty’, Sentinel, 16 May 1935. ‘Saskatchewan LOBA Elects Mrs L Powell GM’, Sentinel, 2 April 1936. For more on the royal visit to Canada, see S. J. Potter, ‘The BBC, the CBC, and the 1939 royal tour of Canada’, Cultural and Social History, 3:4 (2006), 424–44. Grand Lodge of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association of British America, ‘Address of the Grand Mistress’, Report of Proceedings of the FortySixth Annual Session of the MW Grand Lodge of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association of British America, held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th June, 1939 (n.p., 1939), p. 17. ‘LOBA of Ontario East Held Successful Session at Prescott’, Sentinel, 16 April 1936.

Conclusion I’m British, but I’m English of Scottish descent and Irish descent and I only need a little bit a Welsh now and I then would be happy!1

Jean Simpson was born in Corby, Northamptonshire, of Scottish parents in 1950. Jean’s mother came to Corby as a child during the 1930s when her father moved the family from their home in Airdrie to begin work in the town’s emergent steel industry. Jean’s father came to Corby much later as an adult, leaving Scotland to work as an engineer in the town’s steelworks. While strongly conscious of her Scottish background, Jean was also deeply proud of her family’s origins in Ireland, with her mother’s family coming from Donegal and her father’s from Ballymena, Co. Antrim. Jean felt a strong connection to both Scotland and Ireland, a bond that was strengthened by her own and her family’s membership of the Orange Order, connecting her to family roots in Scotland and Ireland and giving her a powerful sense of overlapping multiple identities. The testimony of Jean, a member of the women’s Orange lodge in Corby since 1965, at the beginning of this chapter demonstrates the complex set of identities held by female members of the Orange Order in England, Scotland and Canada during the twentieth century. What emerged from the reflections of Jean and other interviewed Orangewomen was a sense of how Irish Protestant identity interacted with, and was shaped by, Scottish, English and British identities. Although all born in Scotland or England, several had maintained strong connections to Ireland, mostly to Ulster. Moreover, this ‘mutative’ sense of ethnic identity was part of a broader set of identities that comprised these Orangewomen’s sense of self.2 Membership of the Orange Order, then, not only shaped their Irishness, Scottishness, Englishness, Canadian-ness or Britishness, it also helped to focus their religious, social and emotional subjectivities – a constant refrain in all the interviews was that the Orange Order was ‘my life’.3 The story of Jean Simpson is echoed in the narratives of identity, activism, migration and diaspora explored through the lives of Orangewomen

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in England, Scotland and Canada. By looking at the women’s Orange Order, this book has examined much broader questions about women’s activism and identity in the British world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Orangewomen became active agents in the public life of their immediate communities and beyond. Working for the Orange Order, women subverted the ‘tea and buns’ stereotype that characterised many men’s perception of their role in the organisation. While raising money for Orange causes, such as maternity ward cots in Glasgow or the orphanage for Protestant children at Indian Head, Saskatchewan, Orangewomen were also engaged in important public activism. The Orangewomen of England, Scotland and Canada were adept, then, at performing seemingly conventional gender roles in their Orange activism, caring for and nurturing future generations, while playing a significant, and public, role in the life of their community. This performance of gender norms also characterised Orangewomen’s activism outside of the Order. Orangewomen’s intervention in education authority elections in 1920s Scotland, or in raising money for an ‘Orange Hut’ for wounded servicemen during the First World War, or campaigning against Catholic education in interwar Canada, demonstrated how these women could perform a particular version of femininity (caring for others, especially children). Yet this activism gave Orangewomen access to public and political life, and demonstrated that they were ‘active citizens’ in local and national affairs. Fundamentally, this public activism demonstrates that politically conservative working-class women could have considerable agency, both in lobbying to be involved in the Order – like the Wilson family in Scotland, explored in Chapter 2 – and in using their Orangeism to promote their public activism. Orangewomen’s public and political work also nearly always involved some aspect of identity politics. In opening an Orange ward at the Trent Bridge hospital for wounded soldiers, the Orangewomen of England underlined both their commitment to the war effort and their belief that the war was being fought in defence of a Protestant British Empire. In Scotland, women used their Orange activism to raise money for potentially besieged Ulster Unionist women and children during 1913, emphasising their commitment to Ireland’s position within the Empire. Meanwhile, Canadian Orangewomen fought for ‘one language’ in schools in order to defend a culturally British Canadian identity. The stories of a number of individual Orangewomen have been important to this book. In Chapter 1, we saw how the promotion of a certain type of popular Protestantism was central to the rise of female Orangeism in England. Often linked to quite localised issues (such as campaigns against Ritualism in specific Anglican parishes in Liverpool),

CONCLUSION205

we found that female lodges were often inspired by the example of key individuals. In Portsmouth, Sister Aldwell stood out as the driving force behind the success of women’s lodges on the south coast. The daughter of the Irish Protestant minister at St Luke’s Anglican Church in Southsea, Mary Aldwell founded the first female lodge in the district in 1882 and she used her Orange activism to fight against ‘the errors of Ritualism and Romanism’.4 Equally, the work of Lady Ellen Maud Bruce in raising funds for and organising the Orange ward and hut at the Trent Bridge wartime hospital demonstrated the continuing importance of Irish Protestantism and Unionism in British politics. The prominent role of Scottish Orangewomen in public and political life was exemplified by Sister Agnes Smellie. A member of the Orange Order in Glasgow, Smellie served on the city’s education authority board for a number of years during the 1920s, using her political position to promote the religious work of the organisation. Narratives of individual women also tell us much about how Orangewomen used the Order to travel across the globe and create diasporic networks. Sister Salmond set sail for New Zealand in January 1927 to live with her son and took her Orangeism with her, opening a lodge there just two years after her arrival. Salmond’s continuing Orange activism helped her to counter some of the negative emotions associated with leaving her old life in Scotland and, through correspondence in the pages of the Belfast Weekly News, Salmond was able to retain a diasporic connection ‘back home’. Migration and diaspora were also at the heart of women’s Orange activism in Canada. In Chapter 3, we saw how adept the LOBA were at raising money for charitable causes, demonstrating how they, like their Scottish sisters, focused much of their efforts on the gendered work of helping children. Grace Darracott’s leadership of the LOBA during the 1930s indicates the centrality of diaspora to Canadian Orangewomen during this period, while also highlighting the importance of the British Empire to their sense of identity. For Darracott, the most significant act of her tenure as Grand Mistress was to visit Belfast in 1932 for that year’s Orange Triennial Council. While Darracott was delighted to be welcomed at the centre of world Orangeism, it was in the retelling of her participation in this event that her visit took on a much broader significance. From Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, to Calgary, Alberta, Darracott entertained her Orange sisters with tales of visiting the ‘mother country’, emphasising how valuable these connections were to all Orangewomen, regardless of whether they visited other parts of the Orange world or not. A diasporic world view was central to Canadian Orangewomen’s associational life, indicating how an overarching identification with the British Empire (of which Ireland was key) remained vital to these women well into the twentieth century.

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This study of the Orange Order is important, then, for what it tells us about the nature of both women’s activism and women’s identity across the British world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And it is the longevity of imperial sentiment, especially in Scotland and Canada, which marks the broader significance of this study. As a number of historians have established, the decline of the British Empire did not become an accepted fact until well into the second half of the twentieth century. Since the First World War, tales of the Empire’s demise were commonplace. However, as Philip Buckner and A. G. Hopkins have argued, belief in the Empire as a cogent political, economic and cultural system remained in place for many citizens of the Commonwealth well into the 1950s and 1960s.5 What this book demonstrates is that women from England, Scotland and Canada (and frequently from working-class backgrounds) were central to maintaining this belief in empire. At the conclusion of the intense political debate over the position of Scotland within the Union in September 2014, Orangewomen once more played a key role in making a case for their world view, indicating the longevity of some of these sentiments (imperial and otherwise) long after the period covered by this book. Taking to the streets of Edinburgh in their thousands, Orangemen and Orangewomen marched to make the case for a ‘No’ vote in the Scottish referendum.6 As a number of commentators remarked at the time, this seemed to be the ‘last gasp of a dying Empire’. Sir Tom Devine, in famously ‘coming out’ as a supporter of Scottish independence, drew on recent history to argue that a British identity had been eclipsed in Scotland, not least of which because the institutions which had supported it – the British Empire and Protestantism – no longer held their traditional sway in society.7 However, the seemingly lost world of Orangeism on display in Edinburgh in September 2014 continued to have some relevance for sections of Scottish society, given the narrow ‘No’ vote. And it is this world, of Protestantism and empire, of conventional gender ideologies and women’s public activism, which came to prominence through the women’s Orange Order in England, Scotland and Canada between the mid-Victorian era and the beginning of the Second World War. Notes

1 Interview with Jean Simpson, Corby, 9 December 2010. 2 O’Day, ‘A conundrum of Irish diasporic identity’. 3 Interview with Agnes Pyper, Glasgow, 21 October 2010. For a more detailed analysis of these interviews, see MacPherson, ‘Personal narratives of family and ethnic identity’.

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4 ‘Sheerness’, Belfast Weekly News, 25 October 1890. 5 A. G. Hopkins, ‘Rethinking de-colonisation’, Past and Present, 200 (2008), 211– 47; Buckner, Canada and the British Empire. 6 ‘Scottish Independence: thousands of Orange Order supporters march through Edinburgh’, The Independent, 13 September 2014. 7 T. M. Devine, ‘How history turned against Tory-voting Scotland’, The Guardian, 14 September 2014.

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Index Adrain, Laura 82, 169 Airdrie 124, 203 Aldwell, Mary 29, 32, 33, 36, 53, 54, 205 Aldwell, Rev. Basil Duckett 32, 47, 53, 65 Anglicanism 11, 26, 32, 34, 39, 53, 83, 184, 204, 205 Prayer Book controversy 39 anti-Catholicism 2, 5, 25, 28, 32, 37, 56, 109, 111, 112, 136 Antrim 52, 118, 119, 203 Argyll 2 Armagh 2, 118 associational culture 2, 6, 8, 10, 118, 183 Association of Loyal Orangewomen (Ireland) 3, 81 Australia 10, 79, 80, 123, 126, 128, 129, 130, 134, 135 Auty, Squire (of Bradford) 24, 26 Ayrshire 2, 124

Bacup (Lancashire) 25, 56, 64 Bangor, Co. Down 131 Barrow 46, 48, 49 Belfast 3, 9, 24, 52, 65, 77, 78, 79, 100, 152, 168, 171–5, 177, 178, 179, 181, 192, 193, 205 Belfast Weekly News 8–10, 11, 24, 27, 45, 53, 60, 69, 80, 100, 103, 118, 119, 120, 124, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 137, 183 Belgravia 20, 29, 36, 44, 53, 57 Birkenhead 22, 27, 34, 52, 58, 65, 80, 102 Birmingham 24, 32, 37–8, 51, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 81 Blackburn 27, 54, 59 Blanytre 102, 115 Bolton 39, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78 Boundary Commission, Ireland 74, 119, 161, 181 Bradford 26

Brah, Avtar 8, 10 Bray (Wicklow) 3 Bridgeton 100, 107, 109, 134 British Columbia 152, 154, 158, 184, 187 British identity 2, 6, 11, 13, 101, 130, 133–6, 137, 153, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 169, 177, 184–92, 193, 203–6 British world 1, 2, 5, 9, 12, 82, 100, 149, 176, 204, 206 Bruce, Lady Ellen Maud 19, 68–71, 205 Burns, Robert 1, 119–20, 181–2 Butler, Judith 6–7

Calgary 159, 175, 182, 183, 186 Canadian Confederation (1867) 161, 163, 165, 166 Canadian identity 9, 11, 13, 153, 161–6, 169, 177, 185, 188, 191, 193, 203, 204 Carson, Sir Edward 19, 69, 71, 110 Catholicism, Catholics 2, 21, 22, 34, 37, 39, 63, 75, 111, 119, 157, 158, 161–4, 177, 182, 183, 204 Cavan 31, 75 Clydebank 102, 110, 130, 176 conservatism 1, 2, 6 English Orange Order 21, 34, 66, 67, 73–4 Scottish Orange Order 105 Corby 124, 128, 203 Crimean War 64, 65 Cullum, Mary 151, 152, 153, 156, 177 Dan Winter’s Cottage, Armagh 174–5 Darracott, Grace 171–5, 182, 187, 193, 205 diaspora 2, 6, 7–10, 11, 12, 205 Canadian Orange Order 170–6, 179, 181, 183, 192–3

226

diaspora (cont.) English Orange Order 57, 77–82 Scottish Orange Order 126–33, 137 Diefenbaker, John 23 Donegal 203 Dorrian, Frank 133–4 Down 52, 81, 131, 132 Dublin 3, 171 Dumbarton 102, 104

Education (Scotland) Act (1918) 109, 111 empire 1, 2, 6, 10, 11, 13, 204–6 Canadian Orange Order 149, 153, 157, 161–2, 164, 175, 182, 183, 184–92, 193 English Orange Order 19, 20, 21, 46, 74, 75, 77, 82–3 Scottish Orange Order 101, 112, 119, 129–37 migration 168–9 English identity 11, 149, 170–1, 183–4, 203 English Women’s Orange lodges Catherine von Bora FLOL, Southsea 64, 74 FLOL No. 1, Preston 28, 48, 69, 71 FLOL No. 2, The Star of Progress, Birkenhead 27 FLOL No. 2, Victoria, Toxteth 34, 35, 73, 77, 80 FLOL No. 5, Preston 52, 71 FLOL No. 6, Preston 54 FLOL No. 7, Blackburn 54 FLOL No. 9, Birkenhead 27 FLOL No. 9, Queen Victoria, Whitehaven 59 FLOL No. 11, Pride of Old Brunswick, Liverpool 28 FLOL No. 16, Portsmouth 32, 53 FLOL No. 17, Princess of Devon 56, 78 FLOL No. 20, Lady Claude Hamilton, Liverpool 42, 53 FLOL No. 21, Lady Saunderson, Darwen 39 FLOL No. 23, Daughters of William, Sheerness 33, 44, 45, 48, 57, 60, 75, 77, 79 FLOL No. 29, Wigan 52, 53 FLOL No. 33, Coronation Temperance, London 36, 37, 47, 57, 73, 75, 80 FLOL No. 34, Cheltenham 54 FLOL No. 35, Lady Saunderson, Liverpool 54, 56

INDEX

FLOL No. 39, Daughters of Enniskillen, Liverpool 35, 56, 57, 59 FLOL No. 40, Gideon de Griffith, Heywood 41–2 FLOL No. 43, Joshua, Liverpool 31, 75 FLOL No. 46, Daughters of Deborah, Plumstead 45, 56 FLOL No. 54, Lady Randolph Churchill, Liverpool 47 FLOL No. 58, Liverpool 54 FLOL No. 70, Anne Askew, London 39, 72, 75 FLOL No. 72, Croydon 67, 68, 71 FLOL No. 79, Liverpool 68 FLOL No. 80, Kirkdale’s Glory, Liverpool 66 FLOL No. 93, Saunderson’s Memorial, Devenport 54, 67 FLOL No. 96, No Compromise, No Surrender, Bolton 66, 67 FLOL No. 98, Flimby, Cumbria 52 FLOL No. 102, Rose of Hebburn 60–3 FLOL No. 105, Lily of Whitehaven 49 FLOL No. 110, Manchester 54 FLOL No. 115, No Surrender, Manchester 46 FLOL No. 116, Balham 49 FLOL No. 120, Ladies of Ulster, Birmingham 37, 38, 66, 67, 68, 71 FLOL No. 121, Grace, Sheffield 38, 46, 65 FLOL No. 123, City of London 68 FLOL No. 130, Mary’s First, Bournemouth 78 FLOL No. 131, Jarrow Primrose 60, 61 FLOL No. 133, St Stephens, London 39 FLOL No. 145, Brighton 72 Lady Saunderson FLOL (Belgravia) 20, 39, 56 Salisbury FLOL, London 31, 32, 74 English Women’s Orange Order charitable work 59–72 class structure 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 44, 51–5, 58 diaspora 78–82 district lodges 21–2, 40, 43, 44–8, 49, 50, 62–3 empire 82 First World War 65–72 formation 11, 21–2 growth 22–40 immigration 168–70 migration 77–8 mixed lodges 43–4 mutualism 58–9

INDEX227

‘Orange Ward’, Trent Bridge 19, 59, 65–71, 204, 205 Orangewomen’s Conference 41 orphanage scheme 71–2 politics 73–6 relationship with men 40–50 ritual 42, 47, 91 Ritualism 11, 32, 34–9, 83 sociability 56–8 Ewart, Maggie Isabel 38, 65, 66, 76 Ewart, Rev. Louis A. 37, 38, 39, 65, 67, 68, 72, 75, 76

female activism 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 204–6 Canadian Orange Order 150, 155, 157, 160, 163, 183, 184, 193 English Orange Order 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 31, 33, 39, 40, 42, 50, 55–72, 73 Scottish Orange Order 100, 101, 108–13, 115–16, 136 Fenianism 27, 31, 74 First World War 19, 55, 59, 114, 184, 189, 204 French Canada 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 190 gender 1, 5, 6–7, 12, 204–6 Canadian Orange Order 151, 153–8, 163, 165, 187, 192 English Orange Order 20, 21, 27, 32–3, 37–9, 40–50, 55, 58, 64, 65, 72 Scottish Orange Order 101, 104–5, 109, 110, 116, 133, 136 Glasgow 2, 7, 8, 10, 23, 27, 80, 83, 100, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111,112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 171, 178, 181, 192, 204, 205 Glasgow Royal Maternity and Women’s Hospital 115 Grand Orange Lodge of Alberta, LOBA 159 Grand Orange Lodge of British America 151, 152, 155, 159–60, 164, 169, 185 Grand Orange Lodge of England 21, 32, 40, 42, 43, 46–50, 51, 53, 66, 71, 72, 80, 81, 82, 83 Grand Orange Lodge of the Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association 21, 152, 159, 160, 164, 169, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191

Grand Orange Lodge of Manitoba, LOBA 157, 159, 162 Grand Orange Lodge of Prince Edward Island, LOBA 159, 174 Grand Orange Lodge of Ontario East, LOBA 163, 165, 168, 188, 191 Grand Orange Lodge of Ontario West, LOBA 151, 162, 164, 168, 189 Grand Orange Lodge of Saskatchewan, LOBA 160, 188, 191 Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland 102, 103, 104, 111,113, 116 Grand Protestant Association 24, 25, 40, 64 Greenock 102, 115, 118, 123, 125, 126, 128 Griffith, Edith 36, 37, 47 Griffith, Gideon de Gorrequer 36, 41, 43, 45, 73, 74 Halifax (Nova Scotia) 2 Hamilton (Ontario) 5, 123, 150–1, 154, 155, 156, 175–6, 178 Hebburn 46, 50, 51, 52, 60–3 Home Rule 39, 19, 20, 28, 29, 31, 33, 36, 42, 56, 65, 66, 72, 74–6, 78, 100, 101, 109–11, 119, 149, 150, 179–80, 192 Bill of 1886 3, 29, 36, 74 Bill of 1893 75 Bill of 1913 3, 75–6, 78, 100, 109–11, 179–80 Houlbrook, Matt 6

Imperial Order Daughters of Empire 169 Ireland 2, 3, 5, 9, 12, 20, 22, 28, 29, 31, 43, 51, 52–5, 65, 71, 74–6, 78, 80, 81, 100, 109–11, 118, 119, 123, 129, 131, 149, 152, 161, 170–5, 177–81, 183, 189, 192, 203, 204 Irish identity 9, 119, 203 in Canada 171, 176, 177, 180, 182, 183, 192 in Scotland 118, 119 Irish Orange Order 3–5, 22–3, 29–31, 43, 71, 75, 81, 109–10, 131, 171–5, 179 Irish Protestants 9, 31, 68, 76, 118–19, 137, 179, 183, 193 Johnstone, Mary E. 3 juvenile lodges 33, 127, 182

228

Kaufmann, Eric 106, 109, 118 Kennedy, Elizabeth 154, 162, 164, 171, 178 Kenny, Kevin 7, 132 Kensit, John 33, 34 Kidderminster 24, 59

Ladies’ Auxiliary (Scotland) 102, 104 Ladies’ Imperial Grand Council 82 Ladies’ Loyal Orange Association of the United States 151 Ladies’ Orange Benevolent Association (LOBA) 5, 12–13, 21, 50, 113, 114, 149–93, 205 Britishness 150, 160, 165, 168, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 193, 203 Canadian flag 13, 150, 161, 162, 185, 187–90 Canadian politics 13, 150, 153, 161–6, 180, 185, 190, 193, 204 charitable activities 12, 114, 153, 156–61, 180, 191,192, 205 English diaspora 183–4 First World War 156 insurance 154 migration 166–9 mutualism 154 Irish Protestantism 12, 149, 178 orphanages 12, 150, 155, 156–61, 177 return migration 170–6 ritual 152, 154 Toronto County LOBA 164, 165, 191 LOBA lodges Britannia, Cabri, Saskatchewan 170 Garner LOBA, Regina 157, 167 LOBA No. 1, Hamilton 154, 155, 156, 175, 176 LOBA No. 3, Queen Victoria (later Imperial), Toronto 155, 182 LOBA No. 6, Mary Princess of Orange (later Ladysmith), Toronto 151, 156, 178 LOBA No. 12, Ottawa 154, 177 LOBA No. 26, Boyne Jubilee, Montreal 154 LOBA No. 46, Cullum, Ottawa 170 LOBA No. 62, Rising Star, Winnipeg 179 LOBA No. 104, Purple Star, Victoria 154 LOBA No. 128, Lady Strathcona, Edmonton 156 LOBA No. 148 130 LOBA No. 190, Lady Russell, Toronto 182

INDEX

LOBA No. 204, Queen Mary, Aurora, Ontario 186 LOBA No. 212, Daughters of Portadown, Toronto 171, 180 LOBA No. 220, Ulster, Calgary 186 LOBA No. 238, London, Ontario 183 LOBA No. 248, Liberty, Winnipeg 174 LOBA No. 282, Edith Cavell, Sudbury, Ontario 167, 183, 184 LOBA No. 418, Excelsior, Moose Jaw 159, 171 LOBA No. 470, Queen Alexandra, Brampton, Ontario 158 LOBA No. 484, Lady Derry, Truro 158 LOBA No. 558, Lady York, Toronto 176 LOBA No. 620, Maple Leaf, Fort William, Ontario 181 LOBA No. 698, Daughters of the Boyne, Prince George, British Columbia 158 LOBA No. 718, Lady Wilson, Toronto 178 LOBA No. 746, Victory, Port Colborne, Ontario 163 LOBA No. 843, Queen Victoria, Toronto 158, 186 LOBA No. 865, Ulster Star, Warsaw, Ontario 164 No Surrender, Vancouver 157, 171, 179, 184 Ladies’ Protestant Benevolent Association 151 Lancashire 2, 19, 21, 22, 24–6, 27, 30, 39, 40, 52, 53, 167 Land League 31 Liverpool 5, 7, 10, 11, 26, 27–8, 30, 31, 33–6, 37, 40–1, 42, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 66, 68, 71, 73–4, 75, 77, 80, 176, 204 London 3, 19, 20, 27, 29–31, 32, 34, 36, 39, 42, 43, 48, 49, 51, 53, 57, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, 170, 171, 192 Londonderry 78, 118, 174 London (Ontario) 151, 167, 178, 183 Longford 177 Loyal Orange Institution of England 27, 32, 35, 44, 45 Loyal Orange Institution of Great Britain 35, 45 Loyal True Blue and Orange Home 157 Lurgan 52, 118

INDEX229

McFarland, Elaine 5, 9, 118 MacKenzie, John 6, 135 MacRaild, Donald M. 2, 8, 9, 22, 24, 26, 29, 32, 39, 58 Manchester 2, 26, 30, 32, 46, 49, 54, 81 Manitoba 157, 159, 162 masculinity 2, 3, 58, 105 Maybole (Ayrshire) 2 migration 2, 7–8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 205 Canadian Orange Order 149, 152, 161, 166–9, 177–9, 192–3 English Orange Order 20, 51, 52, 76, 77–8 Scottish Orange Order 100, 101, 118, 120–6, 128, 133, 136–7 Moleyns, Helena de (Lady Saunderson) 3, 29, 31, 43 Montreal 130, 154, 179 Navickas, Katrina 22, 24 Neal, Frank 21, 26, 33 Ne Temere decree (1908) 3, 109 New Brunswick 124, 151, 152, 159, 174, 186 Newcastle 52, 102 Newcastle, Co. Down 81 New Jersey 125, 126 New York 27, 80, 124 New Zealand 10, 78, 123, 124, 127, 129, 132, 134, 167, 170, 205 Northern Ireland 3, 10, 12, 81, 117, 119, 131–2, 133, 180 Nottingham 67, 68–72 Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club 13, 19 Nova Scotia 158, 168, 174, 182

Ontario 5, 126, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 172, 177, 178, 181, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191 Orange banners 82, 115, 117–18, 134–5 Orange and Protestant Banner 25, 26, 64 Orange Standard 38, 65, 68, 70, 71 Paisley 71, 102, 130 parades and marches 7, 22, 24–5, 35, 82, 102, 103–4, 155, 171, 174, 186, 192 Pennsylvania 129, 172 performativity 6–7, 26, 38, 179, 204 Portsmouth 19, 20, 32, 33, 50, 52, 54, 56, 64, 81, 205

Preston 27, 28, 40, 42, 48, 52, 54, 56, 68, 69, 71, 82 Primrose League 21, 36, 41, 44, 61, 67, 73, 74, 110 Prince Edward Island 159, 174 Protestantism 1, 12, 20, 204–6 English Orange Order 28, 31, 35–40, 41, 42, 51, 55, 65, 73, 75, 82–3 Canadian Orange Order 149, 150, 153, 160, 162, 185, 187, 193 Scottish Orange Order 101, 111 Purple Order (award) 3, 47–8, 50, 78, 81

Regina 157, 167 return migration 9, 10, 77, 78, 126, 129, 131, 136, 149, 167–8, 170–6, 192, 193 Rice, James 103, 104, 106, 108, 114, 118 Ritualism 11, 28, 32, 33–7, 40, 83, 204, 205 Roe, Lavinia 160, 187, 189, 190 Rossendale (Lancashire) 24, 25, 40

Salisbury, Lord 31, 37, 41 Salvation Army 121, 124 Saskatchewan 157, 159–60, 167, 170, 171, 177, 188, 191, 204 Saskatoon 149, 177 Saunderson, Colonel Edward 3, 29, 31 Scott, Margaret 160, 163, 164, 168, 172, 189, 190 Scottish Emigration Database 122, 124 Scottish identity 9, 11, 118, 119–20 in Canada 149, 177, 179, 180–2, 184, 192, 203 Scottish Women’s Orange lodges FLOL No. 1, Scotland’s First, Glasgow 107, 108 FLOL No. 8, Excelsior Daughters of Levi, Glasgow 80 FLOL No. 9, Clydebank 110 FLOL No. 13, Primrose, Glasgow 113, 114, 127, 128, 133 FLOL No. 14, Thornliebank 109, 118 FLOL No. 16, Lily of Scotland, Greenock 115, 118, 125 FLOL No. 19, Bridgeton 100, 134 FLOL No. 20, Jenny Geddes, Edinburgh 109 FLOL No. 30, Banockburn 117–18 FLOL No. 30, Glasgow 128 FLOL No. 32, Glasgow 120 FLOL No. 39, Glasgow 119 FLOL No. 42, Govan 124

230

Scottish Women’s Orange lodges (cont.) FLOL No. 55, Glasgow 111 FLOL No. 56, St Rollox True Defenders, Glasgow 119 FLOL No. 70, Glasgow 120 FLOL No. 102, Tollcross 120 FLOL No. 140, Possilpark 112 FLOL No. 188, Glasgow 129 Scottish Women’s Orange Order Carson Defence Fund 110–11 charitable work 113–18 class structure 100, 101, 104–5, 107–8, 116, 120, 124, 136 diaspora 12, 126–37 district lodges 102 education authority elections 109, 111–12, 116, 120, 136, 204, 205 empire 129–36 First World War 114–15 growth 12, 20, 106–7 Home Rule Bill (1913) 109–11 Irish Protestants 118–19 Ladies’ Conference of the Grand Lodge 115 marching 103–4 migration 12, 20, 100, 101, 118, 130–6 religiosity 116–18 ritual 113–14, 116–17 Scottish identity 119–20 Select Committee Report on Orange Order (1835) 23, 24 Sentinel (Toronto) 11, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 162, 170, 177, 178, 180, 183, 184, 192 Sheerness 33, 44, 45, 48, 50, 54, 57, 60, 75, 77, 78, 79 Sifton, Clifford 168 Smellie, Agnes 112, 205 Smitley, Megan 6, 120 Smyth, William J. 12, 152, 176, 177, 180 South Africa 10, 44, 79, 121, 123, 135 Southsea 22, 29, 32, 36, 51, 53, 54, 64, 74, 205 St John, New Brunswick 124, 151 St John’s, Newfoundland 187 St Patrick’s Day 76, 182–3 Sydney 80, 128 temperance movement 6, 26, 41, 105, 120 Took, Grace 123, 124 Toronto 7, 8, 10, 11, 77, 123, 124, 130, 132, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 164, 165, 171, 176,

INDEX

177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 193 Toryism 12, 20, 21, 22, 23, 55 Trent Bridge 13, 19, 65, 68–71, 204, 205 Triennial Conference 8, 9 Triennial Council 171–3, 174, 205 Tulk, Mary 5, 150, 151, 152, 155, 178, 179, 184 Twelfth of July 5, 7, 24, 26, 81, 102, 131, 155, 161, 171, 175, 179, 184, 192 Tyrone 52, 100, 177

Ulster Day 110, 179 Ulster identity 9, 118, 119, 180 Ulster Volunteer Force 110 Ulster Women’s Unionist Council 179 Unionism 3, 19, 29, 31, 39, 59, 61, 65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 74, 75, 76, 101, 109–11, 132, 178, 181, 204 United Irishmen 2, 20 United States 10, 80, 81, 82, 121–3, 125, 137, 151 Vancouver 125, 157, 171, 179, 181, 184

Walker, Graham 5, 9 Walthamstow 20 West of Scotland Women’s Suffrage Union 105 Whitehaven, 27, 49, 54, 58, 59 Wigan 25, 52, 53 William III 20, 25, 79, 117, 134, 155 Wilson, Annie, 103–4 Wilson, Dorothy 102 Wilson, Harriet 102, 118 Winnipeg 170, 174, 179, 180, 181, 182, 190 Wise, George 33, 34, 35 Wishaw 102, 133 Women’s History Network 6 Women’s Orange Order charitable work 11, 13, 55, 59, 64, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 113–18, 136, 153, 156–61, 180, 191, 192, 205 class structure 1, 2, 6, 11, 204, 206 religiosity 11, 21, 22, 28, 32, 40, 42, 55, 65, 82, 103, 105, 116–18, 134, 135, 187, 193 respectability 21, 28, 40, 42, 103, 104, 105, 109, 116 Women’s Unionist and Tariff Reform Association 21 Woolwich 20, 44, 45 Yorkshire 23, 25, 26, 183