Miss Clemence Annie Housman

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/22967928012/
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); Elizabeth Oakley, Inseparable Siblings: A portrait of Clemence and Laurence Housman (2009)

Family information: Sister to Laurence Housman, a suffrage campaigner (see Laurence Housman), and to A E Housman, a famous poet.

Additional Information: Clemence was a quiet sort of person, but very determined. She had only been allowed, as a middle class woman, to travel and live in London so that she could keep an eye on her lively younger brother Laurence, and the two studied art there. Clemence subscribed to the WSPU in 1908 and by 1909 became a central figure in the Suffrage Atelier (SA). The SA was formed that year as 'An arts and crafts society working for the enfranchisement of women'. She was the society's 'chief banner maker', so described by her brother (see Laurence Housman), who also worked with the society and was a suffrage campaigner. Throughout the suffrage campaign, the SA made artwork in the studio at the bottom of Clemence and her brother Laurence's garden in Kensington, London. For a time, it became the society's official headquarters. Clemence worked on many banners, using elaborate stitching and seamstress techniques, including three designed by her brother: a 'From Prison to Citizenship' banner for the WSPU branch in Kensington; a banner for the Church League for Women's Suffrage (CLWS) in Hampstead; and one for the United Suffragists (US) in 1914. Clemence's brother worried that she would 'wear herself out' as she worked so tirelessly on suffrage banners, which were very often large, especially leading up to London processions. Clemence was also talented at accounting, so it is unsurprising that tax resistance was a method of protest that attracted her. She joined the Women's Tax Resistance League (WTRL) in 1910 and was subsequently arrested in 1911 and imprisoned (which she wanted) for refusing to pay 'inhabited house duty' tax on a property she had deliberately rented and stocked with furniture. This raised publicity for the cause and for the method of 'no taxation without representation', just as she had wanted. She was sentenced to one week in Holloway Prison but was quickly released. She did not pay the tax debt until after the end of the First World War.

Other Suffrage Activities: Clemence was a very skilled artist, using traditional arts and crafts techniques like wood engraving, but she also published three 'fantasy' novels, which her brother Laurence, also an artist and writer, illustrated. These were The Werewolf (1896), The Unknown Sea (1898) and The Life of Aqlovale de Galis (1905).