Bessie Watson aged 9

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

22261

Title

Bessie Watson aged 9

Description

Bessie Watson is wearing a checked dress and a Glengarry hat. She has a Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) scarf draped over her and is blowing into a set of bagpipes. In this photograph, Bessie Watson is dressed ready to join the Womens Franchise Procession and Demonstration in October 1909.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1909

Type

Photograph

Location

The People's Story

In this photograph, Bessie Watson is dressed ready to join the Womens Franchise Procession and Demonstration in October 1909. She had been playing the pipes since she was seven years old. The scarf she is wearing is in the colours of the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU).

Bessie describes here how her involvement came about;
'We were walking down Queensferry Street and we stopped at a shop window. It was the window of the WSPU. It seemed that the Union was putting on a Historical Pageant on a Saturday afternoon in October and was asking for helpers. We went into the shop and when we came out my mother and I were members of the WSPU and I was booked to play the pipes in the Historical Pageant in October. They asked me because there I was, a girl doing something which they always associated with men.
I rode on a float beside the Countess of Buchan in her cage and played at intervals along the way. A few weeks later Christabel Pankhurst came to Edinburgh to address a meeting at the King's Theatre and I was invited to attend. During the evening I was presented with a brooch representing Queen Boadicea in her chariot, as a token of gratitude for my help in the pageant.
When I was ten, I was invited, along with the other lady pipers with whom I had played in 1909, to lead the Scottish Contingent in the great pageant of women in London on the 17 June 1911, just five days before the Coronation of King George V. The procession was five miles long.'

The first Scottish women's suffrage procession was held in Edinburgh in 1907, but it was the Great Procession and Women's Demonstration in 1909 that attracted much attention. On that day women, including a number of ladies on horseback, marched along Princes Street, watched by a large crowd of spectators. They wore the suffragist colours of purple, white and green and carried many banners.

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Related subjects

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Hats

Clothing and dress > Accessories > Scarves

Government > National > Suffrage

People > Children > Girls

People > Entertainment and sports > Pipers