The Scottish Suffragette Agnes Henderson Brown was born on April 12th 1866 in Edinburgh.
Nannie Brown, as she later became known as was born at 125 Princes Street, which is slap bang opposite the Castle. The street in those days would have been mainly a residential one, as it was meant to be in the plans for the New Town, George Street was meant to be the main shopping are.
Their father was interested in social and political reform and the house became a centre of cultural activity. The Dad ran a number of fruit shops under the title of William Brown & Sons he trained his daughters, Agnes and Jessie, well and refused to submit to laws that he objected to, he was an activist for women’s rights. His opposition to taxes that differentiated between genders caused him to end up in Calton Gaol.
Agnes and her sister Jessie were among the first women to be seen on bicycles in Scotland. The safety bicycle was the direct ancestor of today’s machines. With a slight adaptation they attracted thousands of women to cycling and some historians point to the safety bicycle as the beginnings of suffrage, women’s rights and feminism.
They first became active in the (WFL) Women’s Freedom League around 1910. Agnes was one of 6 women who walked the whole length of the Edinburgh to London suffrage march in 1912. It took five weeks and involved walking around 15 miles a day and attending a suffrage rally each evening. The marchers were dressed in russet brown jackets, earning the six women the name (the) Brown Women.
Following Emily Davison’s death at the Derby in 1913 a deputation of Councillors, JPs ministers, solicitors and barristers from Scotland and the North of England tried to see Prime minister Asquith, He refused to see them so they formed the ‘Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage’ Agnes became secretary of the Edinburgh Branch.
Unlike the (WSPU) The Women’s Social and Political Union , the WFL welcomed male support in the struggle. They continued campaigning throughout the war years.
After the war Agnes was involved in setting up the (SWRI) Scottish Women’s Rural Institute and was an organiser from 1917-22. She was also a member of the Edinburgh Women’s Citizens Association.
Nannie Brown wrote articles and plays and participated in societies such as the Edinburgh Dickens Fellowship, where she learned women to type and ride a bicycle.
She continued to walk. Not content with the Brown Women walk she repeated a similar walk but this time she set off from John O Groats. As she travelled to London she reported on her journey in the Weekly Scotsman.
Agnes Brown died on 1st December 1943 and was buried with her parents in Dean Cemetery Edinburgh. She was noted in the Scottish Saltire Society who published her obituary as an Outstanding Women of Scotland Community in 2014
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