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Suffrage Movement in Peterborough

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04/03/1911

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Speaking with evident gratification following last week's speech by Mrs Pankhurst, Miss Tebbutt, a local militant suffragette, felt that it had 'done the cause no end of good'. However, when asked about the local membership, she was less enthusiastic, saying simply that, 'members are coming in well, but you see, we have only been really started a short time, so you must give us a chance. There are some who are hesitating, but you see, it is rather difficult to get the ladies of either Party to come out.' When asked if Peterborough would offer passive resistance to the census and Coronation fireworks in Peterborough, she felt that, as there were many business members in Peterborough, it would not be advisable for them to do this. Asked if any from Peterborough might go up to London to take part in the protest, she felt she could not say but personally, if she had not had business ties, she would join the demonstration. As to not filling in the census, Miss Tebbutt replied that to be in a position to make that protest one would have to be  the head of the house, so it would be no use refusing as she was not the head. (Peterborough Standard)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

Shakespeare , Mary Queen of Scots , Katherine of Aragon , Edward the Fool

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Old Scarlett

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1594

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‘Old Scarlett’ was the nickname of Robert Scarlett, parish sexton and gravedigger throughout the Tudor period. He lived to the prodigious age of 98, dying in 1594 Married twice, he is known for burying Katharine of Aragon and Mary, Queen of Scots inside the Cathedral.

Amongst the hundreds of people that Scarlett buried during his lifetime was one ‘Edward the Foole’, a native of Crowland by birth and former court jester to King Henry VIII, laid to rest here in 1563. As was common practice at the time, and to allow for more burials in an already packed graveyard, the skeleton would have been exhumed some years later and the bones reburied in stacks. The image of an elderly gravedigger exhuming a royal jester’s skull might have stuck in the head of a Peterborough schoolboy, John Fletcher, the son of the then Cathedral Dean. Fletcher went on to become a noted Elizabethan playwright and worked with Shakespeare, even co-writing three plays with him, including the aforementioned ‘Henry VIII’. Is it possible that Fletcher may have suggested this scene to Shakespeare? Unfortunately ‘Hamlet’ was written between 1599 and 1601, and we have no evidence that the two men met until at least five years later, but it’s a tantalising thought nonetheless!

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Shakespeare , Mary Queen of Scots , Katherine of Aragon , Edward the Fool

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