“I VOTED FIFTY YEARS AGO”

White Ribbon, Volume 49, Issue 9, 18 October 1943, Page 6

“I VOTED FIFTY YEARS AGO”

Mrs. Peryman Interviewed on the Radio

The National Broadcasting Service presented from its Wellington station on Friday, September 17th, a special half-hour feature commemorating the jubilee of the Franchise for New Zealand women. The story was told of the long fight for the vote, this being interrupted now and then with amusing quotations from the Parliamentary debates of the early ’nineties. Having brought the narrative up to the culminating point of victory, the narrator introduced Mrs. Peryman, Editress of the White Ribbon, who had been specially inv : ted by the broadcasting authorities to give her impressions of registering her first vote in the elections of 1893.

The interview, which gives interesting glimpses of conditions fifty years ago was as follows:

Mrs. Very mm: Yes, I voted in the Parliamentary elections of 1893, when women first had tlia* privilege, that right, and I'm voting in this General Election, too.

My first vote was in Hutt electorate, and I wcil remember the candidates— Doctor Newman and Mr. Wilford, afterwards Sir Thomas, then making his first attempt to enter Parliament, where he had i very long career. At that time I was First Mistress in the Petone School —there were over six hundred children attending it in those days. I was very interested in the women’s franchise movement organised by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and helped to get signatures for the big j>etitions vou’ve heard about.

Inten\eixcr: New Zealand women were content to i>etition. 1 suppose you never thought of stirring up obstinate legislators by setting fire to j>ost-boxes or storming Parliament Building?

Mrs. Peryman: Ob, no! Mrs. Sheppard, who directed the franchise movement was a lady in the real “early Victorian” sense of the word. She would never have approved of violence, though we had some provocation. We pu* up with abusive criticism from our chief opponents, and some silly things were said about our ideal in Parliament.

Intennewer: So, to impress Parliament you relied on the enthusiasm of your sex in signing petitions?

Mrs. Peryman: Well, all women were not enthusiastic. It meant hard work to collect those signatures, and we met many women who told us quite emphatically they wanted nothing to do with politics. Mrs. T. E. Taylor, wife of the very prominent Independent Member, used to tell a good tale about one of these reluctant women. The lady firmly declined to sign the jietition, and firmly shut the door in Mrs. Taylor’s face. But before Mrs. Taylor could reach the front gate, she was called back.

“Yes,” said tlie lady, “I’ll sign your petition just to vote against that man Tommy Taylor!”

Before we could vote we had to enrol, and again we went through the existence of finding man” women who did not want the voting privilege. One of their strongest objections was that voting meant going to a public polling booth

among a number of strange men. You know, conditions were very different for women in those Victorian days They always had to have a male escoit whet, thev went out, and the idea o asking them to enter a polling booth or election day, when things were rather lively, was so rej>ellant to many people that an effort was made to introduce |x>stal voting lor women. That was not adopted. Intenncvrer: But you didn’t hesitate, Mrs. Peryman, to go to the polling booth ?

Mrs. Peryman: Well, it was a bit unpleasant going among a lot of strange men, but the conditions at Petone, compared with some other places, were very decent. And once the women had succeeded in getting the vote, all candidates were anxious to have their support. 1 remember that in my first election one candidate made a special appeal to the women. Hts baby son was paraded in a i>eramhulator, with a large placard: “Vote for Daddy!” Interviczvcr (laughing) : 1 wonder if they’d do that to-day! Thank you, Mrs. Peryman.