Hampstead in the years before the First World War was home to a significant cluster of women involved in the campaign for the vote. The neighbourhood's combination of affordable Edwardian flats, good transport links to the centre and a tolerant social environment made it attractive to progressive professional women — teachers, journalists, doctors and political organisers — who were often excluded from more conventional suburbs.
Charlotte Despard
Among the most notable was Charlotte Despard, who lived on Oppidans Road and was a leading figure in the Women's Freedom League. She was imprisoned several times, went on hunger strike, and continued her political activism until her death in 1939 at the age of 95. Despard's life is among the most remarkable of the Hampstead suffrage circle — she also campaigned for Irish independence, vegetarianism and pacifism — yet her house is unmarked and the neighbourhood shows no visible sign of her tenancy.
Other residents
The novelist May Sinclair lived briefly in Hampstead and wrote for suffrage publications; the publisher Mary Lowndes, who designed banners for the movement, had a studio in West Hampstead; the Pankhurst family used Hampstead safe houses during the most militant period. The Hampstead Society of the Women's Social and Political Union held its meetings at the old Town Hall on Haverstock Hill; the minutes of those meetings survive in the London Metropolitan Archives.
The Heath as a campaigning space
The Heath itself was used for outdoor suffrage meetings. Accounts left by participants describe large and enthusiastic crowds, occasional heckling — some of it organised — and the particular difficulty of maintaining attention on a warm summer afternoon when the ponds offered more immediate satisfactions. Parliament Hill was a favoured location, chosen partly for its natural amphitheatre and partly because the police presence was lighter than in central London.
Tactics and visibility
Hampstead's suffrage organisers combined public meetings, door-to-door canvassing and the production of pamphlets and posters. The neighbourhood was progressive but not uniformly supportive; the Hampstead and Highgate Express reported heated letters columns throughout 1912–14. The window-smashing campaigns of the militant years did not spare NW3; several shop windows on Haverstock Hill were broken in coordinated actions, and the perpetrators were named, tried and imprisoned.
What survives on the ground
The blue-plaque record is thin. Despard's house has no plaque. A handful of suffrage banners from the movement's Hampstead chapter are held at the Museum of London, and Burgh House's small archive includes leaflets and photographs. For a broader sense of the village's unusual residents, see our blue-plaque trail and literary ghosts.
How to find the story today
Walk the route: Oppidans Road, up Eton Avenue, along Haverstock Hill to the site of the Town Hall, and on to the Heath at South End Green. The buildings are largely intact; the names are not commemorated. For a complementary historical walk see our street-by-street architecture guide.
Further reading
Charlotte Despard: A Biography by Andro Linklater is the essential single volume. The Women's Library at LSE holds the main UK collection of suffrage printed material and welcomes visitors. For the wider political history of the village, see our journey through Hampstead's history.
## The Hampstead suffragette presence Hampstead in the early 20th century was an unusually active centre of suffrage organising, with both the militant WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union) and the constitutional NUWSS (National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies) maintaining significant local memberships. The geographic and social character of the village — well-educated, professional, with strong networks among writers and artists — supported the movement's organising efforts. The Hampstead branch of the WSPU operated from a small office on Heath Street between 1908 and 1914. The Pankhursts spoke at meetings on Hampstead Heath several times; an outdoor rally on Parliament Hill in 1909 drew an estimated crowd of 5,000. ## The key local figures Evelyn Sharp, the writer and journalist, lived in Hampstead from 1907 and was one of the WSPU's leading London organisers. Her flat off Hampstead High Street served as a meeting space. Mary Adelaide Broadhurst, a writer and political activist, lived on Downshire Hill and held weekly suffrage discussion evenings. Lady Constance Lytton — author of Prisons and Prisoners (1914), the seminal first-hand account of suffragette force-feeding — convalesced for several months at her sister's Hampstead home after her release from Walton Gaol in 1910. ## The actions Several significant militant suffragette actions originated from or focused on Hampstead. The 1913 attempted bombing of David Lloyd George's house at Walton Heath was reportedly planned in part at meetings in Hampstead. Local suffragettes participated in the major London window-smashing campaigns of 1912. The Hampstead postal pillar boxes were a regular target during the postal-box arson campaign of 1913; several boxes on Heath Street and Rosslyn Hill were damaged in coordinated actions. ## What survives in the village No formal suffragette memorial exists in Hampstead. The Heath and Hampstead Society included suffragette sites in its 2018 commemorative walk for the centenary of partial female enfranchisement; that walking guide remains available from Burgh House. Several plaques in the area mark suffragette-adjacent figures (Evelyn Sharp's house has an unofficial plaque; the Pankhurst Heath rallies are mentioned in interpretation panels at the Parliament Hill summit). ## The wider context Hampstead's suffragette history reflects a national pattern: the movement drew disproportionately from educated, middle-class women in well-off London suburbs. The local social networks (writers' circles, university connections, the artistic community) provided organising infrastructure that working-class districts could rarely sustain. The 1918 Representation of the People Act — granting limited female suffrage — was celebrated locally with a thanksgiving service at St John-at-Hampstead church. Full female enfranchisement followed in 1928.