An Ordinary Life: Florence Lockwood's Memoir of Life, Suffrage and War in the Colne Valley

One hundred years ago this year, Florence Lockwood (1861–1937), artist, suffragist and pacifist left her home in the village of Linthwaite near Huddersfield for the final time. She had arrived in Yorkshire in July 1902, after marrying Josiah Lockwood (1854–1924), woollen manufacturer and director of Black Rock Mills. Grief-stricken following his death in 1924, she returned to London, where she had worked as an artist before her marriage. A keen diarist and watercolourist, Florence put her powers of observation to good use in a memoir that paints a vivid picture of the people, politics, communities and industry of the Colne Valley in the early twentieth century. It is especially precious as the only known autobiography of a Yorkshire suffragist. The Huddersfield Local History Society is delighted to bring this important, long out-of-print, work to a wider audience.

The new edition includes an introductory essay by Janette Martin and Rebecca Gill, a bibliography of Lockwood’s writing and eight additional images, including a recently discovered water colour painting by Florence Lockwood.