Alan's Tea Rooms

Alan's Tea Rooms (1910)

Alan's Tea Rooms

Location: 263 Oxford Street, London, England, United Kingdom

Opened: 1907

Closed: 1916

Time and time again, we've made the argument here at Lost Womyn's Space that having real physical public space where women can safely meet and congregate is crucial to the survival and the future of the feminist movement. (Bonus points if the space is actually owned, managed, and controlled by women for women.) We've also mentioned that this was also true for the women of the first wave of the feminist movement, who often met at tea shops and used them as "sheltering space" for public meetings and organizing. (Check out the tea room tabs below for earlier posts.)

There seems to be a lot of new and fascinating research on these issues, which is really important to share. This recent piece from the Women's History Network on "Suffragettes and Tea Rooms" discusses one of these places, which was called Alan's Tea Rooms. [Note: the "reference guide" mentioned below is shorthand for Elizabeth Crawford's The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide (1999)]:

One of the businesses mentioned in the Reference Guide was ‘Alan’s Tea Rooms’, 263 Oxford Street, popular with both suffragettes and suffragists. I suggested that the owner, ‘Mr Alan Liddle’, while not charging the rent of the room hired for suffrage meetings, doubtless made his profit from the sale of the accompanying tea and buns, conjuring up the image of a suave male entrepreneur cashing in on the need of campaigners for a safe haven in Central London. A minute with the relevant rate book in Westminster Archives revealed that the owner was not ‘Mr Alan Liddle’, but ‘Miss Marguerite Alan Liddle’. A subsequent investigation of the census records showed that she was the sister of Helen Gordon Liddle, an active member of the WSPU, who, in The Prisoner, describes the month in 1909 during which she endured forcible feeding in Strangeways prison. Thus, while the news pages of Votes for Women were reporting her sister’s hunger strike, the back pages carried advertisements for Alan’s ‘dainty luncheons’.

Over and above this direct connection with the suffrage movement, the rate book demonstrated that Alan Liddle may have had good cause to advertise to suffragettes as assiduously as she did. For it became evident that ‘Alan’s Tea Rooms’ was on the first-floor of the Oxford Street building and, in order to reach their lunch, customers had to enter by a door at the side of the shopfront and climb a flight of stairs. With so much competition from neighbouring establishments  – a Liptons, a Lyons and an ABC were all close by – one can see that the proprietor may well have thought it necessary to carve out a niche market.

As to the ‘look’ of Alan’s Tea Rooms – a photograph (London Metropolitan Archives) showed that the now-demolished building had at its first floor a semi-circular arcaded window, rather in the Venetian style. One might imagine that a table in the window, looking down onto Oxford Street, would have been rather popular.

Fortunately the discovery of a line drawing of a ‘corner of Alan’s Tea Rooms’ in a 1910 issue of The Idler, a magazine edited by Jerome K. Jerome, made it unnecessary to rely wholly on conjecture  – with the bonus that the artist included a sample menu. Thus it has been possible, from a variety of sources, to recreate something of the reality of this business, which, from 1907 until 1916, provided a space in which ‘Votes for Women’ could be freely discussed.

Read the rest here. 

The Tearoom

Six Girls and The Tea Room (1907)

The Tearoom

Location: Especially common in Great Britain, but seen in other English speaking countries as well

Opened/Closed: Heyday was in the late 19th century, early 20th century

I have long believed that owning and/or managing actual physical public space for women by women was somehow of central importance to our liberation and freedom, and to the building of women's community. We can dance, drink, talk politics, or network all we like in private homes, but the attendance will necessarily be limited to the fringes of our immediate circle. And for women living in small quarters or in extended families with fathers or husbands, the potential of such gatherings will be extremely constrained from the start. The same goes for floating meetings or parties held hither and yon--in a backroom this week, a church basement next month. These tend to be hard to sustain over time much less grow in size. And yet some women--particularly younger self-styled "queer" women--assure us that the loss of lesbian bars, community centers, women's music festivals, feminist boookstores and the like is not important. It's okay to "claim" a new party space once a month at yet another hard-to-find location somewhere across town, or in the corners of the local gay men's bar. We don't need public meeting spaces just for us, they say. As if women were somehow fundamentally different from every other group in their need for some territory of their own.

That said, it was still a revelation when I stumbled upon this article showing how having access to tangible public spaces mattered for the early women's movement. And it's a space that tends to be treated disdainfully, if it's existence is noted at all. I speak of the humble tearoom. Yes, where your great-grandmother (if of the middle-class sort) may have taken tea and a biscuit, or even a pleasant luncheon or two with several of her lady friends. Bourgeois and suffocatingly respectable you say? Wrong.

Also notice how another seemingly innocuous public space we have taken for granted until fairly recently--the ladies lavatory or restroom--was a deeply political struggle within Victorian society. Sobering stuff, given that the very existence of a ladies restroom as such (i.e. for female persons only) is once again a point of attack and contention in transgender politics.

Tea and Women – how the Tearoom supported women’s suffrage

Jane Pettigrew – tea specialist, historian, and writer

Tea has many unusual connections but one of the least obvious perhaps is the fact that towards the end of the 19th century, tearooms provided a safe haven and meeting place for the women suffragists and may have been instrumental in furthering their cause.

In many areas of Britain, local branches of the women’s movement grew out of the temperance societies. T-Total meetings were often just very large tea parties (with a sermon or two thrown in) and the women, who brewed gallons of tea and dished it out in mugs, encouraged ‘guests’ to turn away from harmful alcohol and instead drink ‘the cup that cheers but does not inebriate’.

Towards the end of the 19th century, society was changing fast. New public transport allowed easier movement into and around town, more women were working in professional employment, going out more, shopping in the new departments stores. And yet, there were no even moderately respectable places where some kind of refreshment could be taken by female shoppers. When William Whitely opened his department store in Bayswater in the 1870, he applied for a licence to open a restaurant inside the store but was refused on the grounds of its potential for immoral assignations!

And where were women to wash their hands and find other essential comforts? It was still considered very improper and frightfully bad manners to refer to women’s bodies, and finding a lavatory was almost impossible. The provision of public conveniences for ladies was considered outrageous and it was not until 1884 that the first ‘convenience’ run by the Ladies Lavatory Company opened near Oxford Circus.

The tearoom at the Walforf Hilton, London

To provide for women’s needs, women-only clubs started appearing – The University Women’s Club in 1883, The Camelot Club for shop and office workers in 1898, Harrods Ladies Club in 1890. And women met more and more frequently in tearooms. Tea had always had very genteel connections and, as the public tearooms became more and more popular during the 1880s and 90s, they were recognised as very respectable places where respectable women could enjoy a peaceful cup of tea away from the hurley-burley of busy urban streets. They created the perfect place for a little light refreshment, for a chat, and for discussions about politics and votes for women and, of course, for planning campaigns and demonstrations.

Fullers' tearoom at The London Colisseum in London

In Votes For Women, published in 1956, Roger Fulford wrote, “The spread of independence was helped by the growth of the tea-shop. A few expensive restaurants existed but apart from these, there were no places for a quick meal other than the formality of the large damask tablecloth and best silver at home, or the brisk clatter of the bar parlour. The tea-shop gave the young – perhaps in revolt against the stuffiness of family afternoon tea – an ideal meeting place; it was an integral part of the women’s liberation movement.” And according to Margaret Corbett Ashby, the teashops run by the ABC (Aerated Bread Company) were “an enormous move to freedom”.

Once the Suffrage campaign got going, the tearooms played a central part. In 1907, the Young Hot Bloods (the younger members of the Women’s Social & Political Union, founded in 1907) met at a tea shop in the Strand. And Alan’s Tea Room at 263 Oxford Street regularly advertised the free use of its large function room for members of the Women’s Social Political Union. Records show that the room was used in 1910 by the Tax Resistance League and in 1911 by the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society for its inaugural meeting. In 1913, at the end of the ‘pilgrimage’ to London by the NUWSS (the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies), some of the women (a few from the 50,000 who attended the rally) went to Alan’s for dinner and no doubt for several restorative and well-deserved cups of tea!