Isabel Cowe (1 December 1867 - 3 January 1931) was a Scottish suffragist, campaigner for the local Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and boarding house owner. She was nicknamed the "Provost of St Abbs". [1]
Cowe was born in Coldingham, Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders, in 1867. Her father was a fisherman and her brother Robert died at sea in 1879. [2] Extended family members working as mariners were also lost at sea as she grew up. [3]
Cowe owned the St Abbs Haven boarding house in Berwickshire from 1914 to 1931 and was a popular figure in the village. [1] She campaigned and fundraised for St Abbs to have its own lifeboat and took part in the rescue of passengers and crew from the ship Glanmire when it floundered in Coldingham Bay. She was awarded a RLNI Gold Brooch for her bravery and campaigning. [4]
Cowe joined the Women's Freedom League (WFL) with her friend Jane Hay. She helped organise the 400-mile Scottish Suffrage March from Edinburgh to Downing Street, London in October 1912, to present a petition for women's enfranchisement. [5] During the march she would often ride ahead on her bicycle to secure accommodation for the marchers and get signatures for the petition from people living in out of the way farms, hamlets and villages. [6] She was one of six marchers who completed the entire journey, [2] wore the suffrage colours of a white scarf and green hat on the march, and was even arrested in Egham, Surrey, for cycling on a pavement. [3]
She refused to pay taxes to her local council on one occasion in protest of its "ineffectiveness" and resisted bailiffs armed with a hatchet and fire extinguisher. [6] Cowe was also a supporter of the Children's League of Pity.
She died in 1931 and a memorial garden was made in her honour at St Abbs, where her ashes were scattered and a marble-columned sundial was erected that was paid for by subscribers from across Britain. [3]
Eyemouth is a small town and civil parish in Berwickshire, in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It is two miles east of the main north–south A1 road and eight miles north of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
St Abbs is a small fishing village on the southeastern coast of Scotland, within the Coldingham parish of Scottish Borders.
St Abb's Head is a rocky promontory by the village of St Abbs in Scottish Borders, Scotland, and a national nature reserve administered by the National Trust for Scotland. St Abb's Head Lighthouse was designed and built by the brothers David Stevenson and Thomas Stevenson and began service on 24 February 1862.
Vida Jane Mary Goldstein was an Australian suffragist and social reformer. She was one of four female candidates at the 1903 federal election, the first at which women were eligible to stand.
Æbbe, also called Tabbs, was an Anglian abbess and noblewoman. She was the daughter of Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia from c. 593 to 616. She founded monasteries at Ebchester and St Abb's Head near Coldingham in Scotland.
Coldingham is a village and parish in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders. It lies a short distance inland from Coldingham Bay, three miles northeast of the fishing village of Eyemouth.
The Women's Freedom League was an organisation in the United Kingdom from 1907 to 1961 which campaigned for women's suffrage, pacifism and sexual equality. It was founded by former members of the Women's Social and Political Union after the Pankhursts decided to rule without democratic support from their members.
Dame Sarah Elizabeth Siddons Mair was a Scottish campaigner for women's education and women's suffrage. She was active in the Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women and the Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society, which she founded before she was 20.
The National Society for Women's Suffrage was the first national group in the United Kingdom to campaign for women's right to vote. Formed on 6 November 1867, by Lydia Becker, the organisation helped lay the foundations of the women's suffrage movement.
Coldingham Bay is an inlet in the North Sea coast, just over three kilometres north of the town of Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. It is situated at grid reference NT918666 and is easily reached by a minor road which leaves the B6438 road at Coldingham.
Anna Maria Haslam was a suffragist and a major figure in the 19th and early 20th century women's movement in Ireland.
RNLB Helen Smitton is a Watson-class lifeboat built by Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company in 1910. Helen Smitton served as the lifeboat at St Abbs, Berwickshire, Scotland from 1911 to 1936 and was the village's first lifeboat.
St Abbs Lifeboat is an independent marine-rescue facility in St Abbs, Berwickshire, Scotland.
The Berwickshire Coastal Path is a walking route some 48 kilometres (30 mi) long. It follows the eastern coastline of Scotland from Cockburnspath in the Scottish Borders to Berwick upon Tweed, just over the border in England. At Cockburnspath the path links with the Southern Upland Way and the John Muir Way.
Frances Helen Simson (1854–1938) was a Scottish suffragist, campaigner for women's higher education and one of the first of eight women graduates from the University of Edinburgh in 1893.
Jane E. Taylour was a Scottish suffragist and women's movement campaigner, and one of the first women to give lectures in public. She travelled around Scotland and northern England as a suffrage lecturer, and was a key figure in spreading the message of the women's suffrage throughout Scotland and inspiring others to join the National Society for Women's Suffrage.
Jessie Cunningham Methven was a Scottish campaigner for women's suffrage. She was honorary secretary of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage from the mid 1890s until 1906. In that role, She corresponded regularly with national and local newspapers across Scotland on the subject of women's suffrage. She subsequently joined the more militant Women's Social and Political Union and described herself as an "independent socialist". Methven took part in suffragette protests and was arrested for breaking windows in London in 1911. She wrote an article for The Suffragette newspaper, the weekly newspaper of the WSPU, entitled Women's Suffrage in the Past, A Record of Betrayal which reflected on the history of the women's suffrage movement in Britain.
Alice Low, (1877–1954) was a British suffragist, who spoke up for peaceful means of achieving women's rights to vote, and fairer laws, including reducing sweated labour. She was a leader in Edinburgh and Berwickshire National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and a touring speaker in the early twentieth century. She was also a lead member of Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps. (QMAAC) in World War One and an amateur actress taking lead roles with the British Empire Shakespeare Society.
Jane Hay was a Scottish philanthropist and campaigner. She was elected to the Edinburgh Parish Council in 1895 and campaigned to improve the lives of poor children in the city.