In praise of the passing parade

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Sunday, June 13, 2010

Did anyone notice

I can’t be there, so I have to wait for a review, any review will do, for the grandly promoted World Premier of Why Muriel Matters, tonight at Adelaide Town Hall, for the Adelaide Cabaret Fringe Festival.
Today is the centenary of a rollicking good lecture in a packed Adelaide Town Hall, on June 13th 1910, by Muriel Matters, so the play holds some relevance
I’m interested, because Adelaide has always taken its early role in the evolution of Womens’ sufferage quite seriously, and Adelaide born girl Muriel Matters was a leading participant in demonstrations in Britain for votes for women.
Muriel was a recognised actress in Adelaide before she left for Britain, with a good sense for stunts that would win attention to the suffrage cause.
She was one of two women in 1908 who chained themselves to the ‘grille’, a piece of ironwork placed in the Ladies’ Gallery of Parliament that obscured their view of the male proceedings.
It was Matters firm conviction the grille was a symbol of the oppression of women in a male-dominated society and should be removed. Her non-violent solution to the issue was to chain herself to the grille
Police couldn’t separate Matters and associate Helen Fox from the grille, so eventually the grille was removed completely, with the women attached and carried to a nearby committee room. A blacksmith was brought in to detach the women from the ironwork and they were sent to Holloway Prison for a month.
Six months later 1909, when King Edward officially opened Parliament for the coming year. Matters decided to hire a dirigible air balloon to gain attention to the suffrage cause. Her intention was to drop WFL pamphlets on the King and the Houses of Parliament below. Unfortunately the wind blew their balloon off course so she never made it to the Palace of Westminster. Instead, Matters dropped her handbills about votes for women on London suburbs, from a height of 3,500 ft.
The next year she gave three talks in Adelaide, where  she advocated for prison reform, equal pay for equal work, and, naturally, for the vote to be granted to the women of Great Britain. Matters is reported to have  presented the audience with "illustrations related to the movement, and donned a facsimile of her prison dress."
A modern day fringe cabaret performance, about a woman who made world wide headlines and packed her home town hall, sounds interesting

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