Hannah Mitchell in Ashton-under-Lyne

43 Elizabeth Street, Ashton-under-Lyne.

 

'HANNAH MARIA MITCHELL

1871 – 1956

 

A working class woman who became a

local leader in the Suffrage and Labour

movement in the North of England.

She lived here from 1900–1910.'

 

Hannah Mitchell was born into a farming environment in Hope Woodlands in the High Peak area of Derbyshire and it was on her early move to Bolton as a seamstress that she became engaged with the socialist movement. An early influence was Robert Blatchford, and she became a feminist and a pacifist. She began her autobiography before the end of World War II, although it was not published until twelve years after her death: The Hard Way Up: The Autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, Suffragette and Rebel, was edited by her grandson and published in 1968.