Nelson Chronicle, Colne Observer, and Clitheroe Division News. — 1901-10-25 (Nelson, Lancashire, England)

WOMEN'S RIGHTS. Another crowded meeting was held in the Carr-road Baptist Schoolroom on Tuesday evening. Mr. W. B. White, of Colne, presided, and he was supported by Mrs. Jennie Walker and Miss Robinson, and the Manchester-road Congregational choir, who, under the conductorship of Mr. F. Stonehouse, sang Gaul's part-song, "The singers," and the anthem •Lead kindly light." Every seat in titie commodious schoolroom, up stairs and down, was occupied, and the audience was much impressed by the lecture. The chairman delivered a long and effective address in condemnation of the drink, both for a moral, physical, and monetory I point of view. After speaking of the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent in this Icountry in asylums, prisons, etc, mainly rendered necessary through drink, he went on I to show that we had to fight two gods, the god of pleasure and the god of gold. Referring to the latter he spoke of the sale of public houses, some of which realised as much as 4:34,000 that were only worth £3OOO so far as the building and contents were concerned. That was £4OOO for the building and £30,000 for the privilege of drugging the people of this country. Who was it that purchased those places? My Lord So-andSo. Sometimes shopkeepers and parsons, and a bonny lot the latter were. What eared they for the consequences if only they got gold out of it? If there was such a place as hell, those folk would be in, burning, and serve them jolly well right, too (applause). Mrs. Jennie Walker, after singing "Home dearie home" in a very sweet voice, with a most pathetic effect, gave a capital lecture. She spoke for fully an hour and threequarters, and maintained the interest of the vast audience to the last. The subject of her lecture was 'Women's rights, place, and power." She reviewed the whole cause of women from the old days when they were held back while the boys were pushed on until the present time when they were on School Boards, Boards of Guardians, and other municipal and parochial bodies, and she showed with what bad results the Parliamentary Franchise was still kept from them. Mrs. Walker demonstrated the great good women had effected wherever they had been appointed, and she showed the many unjust laws that remained on the Statute Book of this country which women would remove if only they were allowed to be in Parliament. Had women been in power the War Office would not have blundered as it had in the conduct of the Boer war during the last two years (laughter). She gave a racy description of the superiority of women canvassers over men at election times, while her satire on men was keen and scathing in the matter of bazaar work and raising money for public purposes. Mrs. Walkers descriptions of motherhood, womanhood, wifehood, and maids-in-waiting must be heard to be understood and properly appreciated, they being full of beauty and pathos, instruction and suggestion, while she developed her most dramatic style of withering scorn and denunciation on the impurity of the age. Her warnings to innocent women as against vicious and impure men can best be described as oratory in forked lightning and thunder. Her passion fairly blazed as she denounced a woman's betrayer as a cruel, monstrous murderer.