Our Appeal has attracted widespread community backing and has the cross party support of the City Council. It has a number of prominent Patrons, whose support we are immensely proud and honoured to call our own. However, we think our most recent Patron is probably the most famous. We are delighted that the best selling author Peter James has agreed to serve as a Patron…
This Appeal is pledged to remember 18th November, the anniversary of ‘Black Friday’, the notorious day in 1910 when three hundred suffragettes were attacked outside Parliament as they tried to petition Prime Minister Asquith. Three women died as a result of the violence that day, the first of whom was Mary Clarke. Another key commemorative date for us is the 25th November. This is the…
The Statue Appeal’s primary focus is to fundraise for the statue of Mary Clarke and following the difficulties posed by COVID and lockdown, we plan to redouble our efforts to raise the £35,000 we still need. However, the Appeal’s purposes are broader than just the achievement of a statue. An important aspect of our purpose has always been to use the commemoration of Mary’s life as…
We are proud to announce that the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal now has its first Child Ambassador. She is River Isaac who is 8 years old and in year four at Balfour Primary School in Brighton. We first came across River during lockdown at the height of the pandemic, when she and her mother Paula contacted our chosen sculptor Denise Dutton to ask if she…
Peter Barratt from Leicester is a great grandson of suffragette Alice Hawkins and has been an inspiration to our Appeal. From 2012 he co-led a fund raising campaign for a statue of Alice and after several years of hard work and effort this proved successful. On February 4th 2018 a statue of Alice was unveiled in the Leicester market place and has been credited with…
During the pandemic, like other charities, we have found our fundraising badly affected. We have been unable to run events since our very successful benefit concert in early March 2020, with fabulous jazz singers Claire Martin and Liane Carroll. Instead we have worked to broaden support, particularly at a national level. National media coverage has brought us new donors from across the country and we…
Denise Dutton, our wonderful sculptor, has offered to make a very limited edition of duplicate bronze maquettes available to major donors who give £6,000 or more to the Appeal. She has generously offered to do this at cost, so apart from foundry and delivery charges, all profits will go to the Appeal. This is an amazing offer from Denise who is internationally known and in…
March is Women’s History Month and the 8th March is International Women’s Day. Jenny Engledow, well known local peace campaigner and an extremely accomplished embroiderer has just completed a banner depicting Mary Clarke. The suffragettes’ processions were central to their campaigning. They used fantastic costumes, flowers, horses, choirs and bands, and above all, beautifully coloured banners, to wonderful effect. Many banners were designed to be carried…
We are delighted to have received a statement of support for our campaign for a statue for Mary Clarke from Katy Bourne OBE, the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner. On 19th February she wrote: “Despite being the first suffragette to die for her cause, Mary Clarke has been largely forgotten by history. She was a determined woman who was not afraid to fight for…
It seems that Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary and Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary plans to back a proposal from the Common Sense Group of Conservative M.P.s that local authorities erect (and fund) civic statues to all holders of the Victoria Cross and George Cross (Daily Telegraph 24th January 2021). Admirable and worthy as these individuals are, they are almost exclusively male and in the…