Nina Boyle

Constance Antonina (Nina) Boyle (21 December 1865 – 4 March 1943) was a British journalist, campaigner for women's suffrage and women's rights, charity and welfare worker, and novelist. She was one of the pioneers of the women's police service in Britain; in April, 1918, she was the first woman to be nominated to stand for election to the House of Commons, which paved the way for other female candidates in the general election held in December of that year.

Family

Nina Boyle was born in Bexley, Kent. She was a descendant of the Earls of Glasgow through her father, Robert Boyle (1830-1869), who was a captain in the Royal Artillery and the younger son of David Boyle, Lord Boyle. Her mother, Frances Sydney Fremoult Sankey, was the daughter of a medical doctor. Nina Boyle never married,^[1] nor did she have any children.

Career

Two of Boyle's brothers served in the Boer War while she lived in South Africa. She did hospital work in Africa and was employed as a journalist. While in South Africa, she also began to pursue her interest in women's rights, founding the Women's Enfranchisement League of Johannesburg.^[2] She returned to Britain in 1911 and, drawing upon her experiences in South Africa, became active in the Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women, headed by Princess Christian, the daughter of Queen Victoria. The League was set up to help women who had received a good formal education to make use of their skills where they might otherwise be ignored- in British territories, and once they had returned home.^[3]

Boyle had radical opinions about how women's position in society could be improved. She was soon associated with the Women's Freedom League (WFL) along with other well-known suffragettes, including Charlotte Despard, Teresa Billington-Greig, Edith How-Martyn and Margaret Nevinson. Boyle was quickly elected to the WFL's executive committee and became one of its leading speakers.^[4] By 1912, she was its secretary.^[5] The WFL was a breakaway organisation from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), formed in 1907. The WFL split from WSPU due to the Pankhurst family's increasingly personal control of the WSPU and the violent tactics used by the WSPU. The WFL preferred civil disobedience and traditional campaigning.

Women's Freedom League activism

In 1912, Boyle became head of the WFL's political and militant department.^[6] She continued her journalism, publishing many articles in the WFL's newspaper, "The Vote" and employing [[Edith Watson (police officer) as a campaigning court correspondent. She and Watson argued against the injustices of the male dominated legal system. They protested that women victims needed to be cared for by women police. Courts should realise that they could not expect women and girls to give evidence in a court that was a room full of men.^[7] Watson began to document unfair practises. She recorded the crimes or rape, sexual assault and incest, ironically, under the title of "The Protected Sex".^[8] Watson continued for three years to compare the sentences with those handed down for loss or damage to property.^[9] In 1914 Boyle and Watson went to Marlborough Street Police Court and made a more militant protest. Watson was amongst other who were arrested for chaining themselves to the court gates.^[8]

Boyle took a leading role in the WFL's campaigns and demonstrations.^[10] She was arrested on several more occasions ^[11][12][13] and imprisoned three times. She protested the conditions under which she and a fellow suffragist were taken to prison after being arrested for obstruction in 1913 and sentenced to 14 days imprisonment. Their prison van contained men who made lewd remarks and gestures.^[4] It was as a result of this experience at the hands of the police and within the criminal justice system, and consistent with WFL policy on equal employment opportunities, that Boyle started a campaign for women to become Special Constables. This campaign coincided with the outbreak of the first world war in 1914 and the call for volunteers for the war effort which Boyle wished to see taken up by women as well as men.^[14] When the request was officially refused, Boyle, together with Margaret Damer Dawson, a wealthy philanthropist and herself a campaigner for women's rights,^[15] established the first voluntary women's police force- the Women Police Volunteers (WPV). Together with Mary Sophia Allen they won the approval of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to train and patrol in London on a voluntary basis with the role of offering advice and support to women and children to help prevent sexual harassment and abuse.^[16] Boyle herself was one of the first women to appear in a police uniform.^[4]

For Boyle, the WPV was an opportunity to challenge male control of the practice of the law particularly in relation to sexual issues and it the policing in this area that led to differences of opinion and approach within the WPV. The original emphasis of the WVP was the protection, welfare, and morality of young women and prostitutes loitering near railway stations used by servicemen. While this side of their work was generally approved, Boyle was to become alarmed that her organisation and other similar initiatives were being used to support anti-female propaganda and to curtail women's civil liberties.^[17] She also deplored the adoption of Regulation 40D, an anti-prostitution amendment to the 1914 Defense of the Realm Act, that in many people's view revived some of the objectionable features of the nineteenth-century Contagious Diseases Acts.^[18] She described Regulation 40D, which punished women for their sexual relations with members of the armed services, as 'besmirching' the good name of women.^[19]

In February 1915, Boyle split from the organization over the use of the WPV to enforce a curfew on women of so-called 'loose character' near a service base in Grantham.^[20] Still, in August 1915, Edith Smith was appointed the first woman police constable in England with full power of arrest.^[21] Boyle also denounced the use of the Defence of the Realm Act by the authorities in Cardiff to impose a curfew on what were described as 'women of a certain class' between the hours of 7 pm and 8 am.^[22] Boyle saw the WPV as an instrument to help and support women—not to control their activities. However, most of the WPV supported Dawson and the progress the corps' progress in gaining acceptance of the role women in police work. Dawson changed the name of WPV to the Women Police Service and ended all links with the WFL. While the WPV continued to patrol on its own terms in Brighton and part of London until 1916, Dawson's new service enjoyed much greater success, carrying out contract work for the Ministry of Munitions and the Royal Irish Constabulary. Though both organisations helped accustom the government and the British public to women exercising policing functions, it was the members of a third organization—the Voluntary Women Patrols of the National Union of Women Workers—who would be drawn upon to form Britain's first official women's police force, the Metropolitan Police Women Patrols, in 1918.

War work

In late 1916, Boyle went to Macedonia and Serbia on hospital duty.^[4] She also performed other war relief work in the Balkans, for which she was awarded the Samaritan Order of Serbia and the allied medal.^[23] After the Russian Revolution, she travelled in Russia with fellow suffragette Lilian Lenton, an experience which would make her a lifelong anti-Communist.^[24]

Keighley by-election, 1918

In March 1918, the sitting Liberal MP for Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Sir Swire Smith, died, causing a by-election. Although women over thirty had gained the vote in 1918, there was some doubt as to whether women were eligible to stand for parliament. Boyle made known her intention to stand as a candidate for the WFL at Keighley and, if refused, to take the matter to the courts for a definitive ruling.^[25] After some legal consideration, the Returning Officer stated that he was prepared to accept her nomination, thus establishing an important precedent for women candidates. However, he ruled her nomination papers invalid on other grounds: one of the signatories to her nomination was not on the electoral roll and another lived outside the constituency. While Boyle did not, therefore, get to appear on the ballot paper, she claimed a moral victory for women's suffrage rights ^[26] and cleared the way for others to stand and win election a few months later at the 1918 general election.

Post-war

After 1918, Boyle remained active in a number of important women's organisations. She campaigned or addressed meetings on behalf of the National Union of Women Teachers,^[27] the Women's Election Committee, the Open Door Council (which aimed to remove protective barriers that restricted women's employment opportunities) and also organisations concerned with the welfare of women and children in developing countries. She was particularly active in the Save the Children Fund (SCF),^[28] and in 1921 she went to the USSR to work in an SCF famine relief program. She used her position in the SCF to raise the issue of sex slavery and trafficking of women for prostitution.^[28] She wrote frequent articles for SCF publications and made many speeches as a SCF representative.^[29] She also supported the work of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, an organisation that campaigned against the exploitation of prostitutes and their welfare.^[30]

After the war and the winning of women's political rights, Boyle, like many ex-suffragettes turned to the right politically, though not to the same extent as her former associate Mary Allen who became a member of the British Union of Fascists. Boyle was a speaker at a meeting of the anti-German and anti-immigrant British Empire Union (BEU) in 1921,^[31] and shared a meeting with Margaret Lloyd George later that year.^[32] In the by-election for the Abbey Division of Westminster held on 25 August 1921, she spoke in favour of the victorious Conservative candidate, John Sanctuary Nicholson.^[33] During the Second World War, she was also active in the Never Again Association,^[34] a body similar to the BEU that campaigned for the dismemberment of Germany and the expulsion from Britain of all persons born in Axis countries.

Novelist and publications

Apart from her journalistic and campaign-related publications, Boyle mostly wrote adventure or mystery novels. Though not critically acclaimed, many featured strong, capable female characters and were popular enough to merit continued publication.

Death

Boyle died on 4 March 1943, aged 77 in a nursing home at 99 Cromwell Road, London.She was cremated at Golders Green on 9 March.^[1] For some years after Boyle's death, Bedford College offered a Nina Boyle memorial prize for the best essay on a subject connected with the position and work of women.^[35][36]

References