Notes from the meeting held at Suffolk Archives on 23rd October, 2025.
We were very pleased to welcome Joy Bounds - author of the book A Song of Their Own - The Fight for Votes for Women in Ipswich as the first speaker.
Joy started by saying that she is not an historian (by training), nor an academic but that she was lead into her research by a passion for the topic.
She also posed the question 'why do we need a session on women's history'? And answered this by saying that 'it is not easy to find out about women as they are hard to track (they often change their name on marriage)' and so become 'lost' in the records.
She said that, for her, her topic was more than idea - it inspired her. She had heard a story about a group of women who had locked themselves into a small room in Museum Street, Ipswich to avoid the census (1911 census); they adopted the slogan "No vote, no census" and, on a banner, "if women don't count then don't count women". As a former political activist herself she felt proud that these fairly ordinary local women had taken this action for her generation: their action inspired her to undertake the research.
She posed the question "What is research?" And answered that, to her, it was 'discovering information, facts and stories'.
The researcher needs to:
Be prepared to look at the evidence
Be challenged (i.e. it might not be what you want it to be)
Make the research as varied as possible and adopt different perspectives (standpoints)
Be proportionate i.e. don't do too much but similarly don't do too little
Be careful with the internet
Consider
A) PLACE - the place where events happened, where people lived, try to visit the places where things happened. Use 'place' to tell the story.
B) PEOPLE - who is there to talk to? Are there family members to interview? Are there local historians and enthusiasts on the subject who will share what they know?
C) Are there PRIMARY SOURCES i.e. people who were there at the time? E.g. are there records of who was at an event (newspapers used to publish names and addresses of people who attended a particular event).
D) Suffolk Archives have information such as pamphlets and flyers; there may be contemporary books from the time (e.g. Joy used the Trade Union Congress in Ipswich report).
E) Find sources of information in unexpected places e.g. census records (the 1911 census was released in 2011 just as Joy was doing her research - it is very exciting to suddenly find new information from the time).
F) OTHER - National Archives have some military records and parish records; street directories (e.g. Kelly's, Wright's) can show where offices were (e.g. for the Women's Freedom League); SA in the Hold also have diaries and show exhibitions (e.g. Women Don't Do Such Things); Museums have artefacts (e.g. Felixstowe's Bath Hotel that was burnt out by suffragettes); photos - private and collections
G) SECONDARY Sources - what other people have written or collected (particularly look at footnotes and bibliographies)
But alongside -
be careful with the internet and google searches (not everything is accurate so find another source to confirm)
Always take notes and always note references (you won't remember and might not be able to go back).
How 'deep' you go depends on what your intention is and your audience. Joy decided to write a book quite quickly after starting as there was clearly much interest in her work BUT she didn't know that at the outset.
For further info on her work look at her blog: www.joybounds.co.uk
Our second speaker was Paul Botwright, a Suffolk Archives volunteer who had helped catalogue some of their collection.
The first example he gave was of Dorothy Calthorpe (1648–1693) who lived in Shrubland Hall near Bury St Edmunds. In our first meeting (Sept 2024) Paul had described what he found but in this meeting the focus was on the research process and using the diaries.
A key source was the 'commonplace book' - that she kept (and was widely used by other women of the time to record their thoughts and events in their lives - they not only wrote in these but also illustrated them and kept mementoes and so are a key source of information for researchers of 'ordinary lives' but not of particularly 'ordinary women').
Diaries are a wonderful source of information and a great place to get started. Just entering in the term 'diary' into the Suffolk Archives search tool brings up 38 pages of 'hits'.
Paul had gone into the record of one of these 'hits' - Lady Pleasance Smith of Lowestoft who had diaries from 1804 when she was a young woman and 1843 when an older widow (she lived a long life - until 103 and was a friend of Queen Victoria).
By chance, Susan (chairing the meeting) had also been researching Pleasance Smith because she lived in Crown House where Susan's husband has started a community garden based on 'The Hanging Gardens of North Lowestoft' (National and Suffolk Garden Trust research).
Susan's experience of researching Suffolk women was that she found them when she was least expecting them - her research to do with her house and its local area on Lowestoft High Street had revealed not only Pleasance Smith but also her distant relative Richenda Cunningham (nee Gurney who had married the local rector) and the owner of the Eastholme Girls' School (now the Royal Falcon pub!)
Paul suggested
getting access to university libraries - Univ of Suffolk and UEA in Norwich
Suffolk Local History Council (anyone can submit an article)
Suffolk Archives staff - always ask the staff on the desk (or send in an email) as there is a different cataloguing system used by them which is more comprehensive than what is available on the SA website.
Collection J48s in SA - women's language and experience 1500 - 1940 which is a project based on women's diaries (from website: This project is based on a nationwide trawl of women's diaries in public libraries, university libraries and county and regional records offices carried out by Dr Amanda Vickery. Microfilms of material held in the Suffolk Record Office and Cambridge University Library.)
Suffolk Bibliography book (AI overview: A "Suffolk Bibliography" most commonly refers to the comprehensive 1979 publication compiled for the Suffolk Records Society. It lists thousands of books and articles on Suffolk's history and is a key resource...)
The discussion afterwards centred around the use of street directories (Lisa in Halesworth had also used these to research women business owners in the town)
Exploring networks created by a common theme/association etc. e.g. the Quaker families in Norwich (the Gurney family who were connected to campaigners such as Amelie Opie, Harriet Martineau) whose links can be found in north Suffolk (e.g. Lowestoft and Halesworth) and, it was suggested, would also link to Quakers in Ipswich.
Suffolk writers (fiction)
How to research 'ordinary women' - there are organisations such as Soil Sisters but also worth knowing about research on women in other areas of the country (e.g. fishing women) as sources for investigation more locally.
We also talked about copyright and making sure that all permissions are sought and properly attributed in any published work.