BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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CHAPTER FOUR
Maturity and Stagnation, 1889-1901
The League is a curious compound of duchesses and maids
of all work, but it is a great instrument to the Tory
party for bribery and corruption. These wives and
daughters of the Philistines stop at nothing. All the
unscrupulous women of England are members of the
Primrose League. In the country districts they
threaten; in the towns they cajole; in both town and
country their armouries are overflowing with thousands
of yards of flannel and countless sacks of coal.
Herbert Gladstone, The Primrose
newspaper, Bournemouth (1 February 1887)
Since the execution of Charles I, the fate of no one
Briton has so profoundly stirred the heart of the
nation as the death of Gordon at Khartoum. Nay, more;
while there was a certain division of opinion about the
former, a section of the nation deeming it, if not an
act of justice at least an act of necessity, there was
no such divided view about the latter, except that
while all saw it in the light of disgraceful error, to
some it appeared a hideous crime.
Horace G. Hutchinson, Portraits of the
Eighties (1920)
I
If the activities of the Primrose Dame and female Associate
were the frequent subject of ridicule by Herbert Gladstone and other
Liberals, this was in large measure due to the electoral successes
achieved through their assistance.
A measure of the importance of
Women in the League can be gauged by their prominence in positions of
leadership at the local level.
By the 1890's fully 17.4 percent of the
officers of the Divisional Councils were female.
Women accounted for
twenty-five percent of the senior officers of the Habitation, Ruling
Councillors or Dame Presidents, and nearly thirty percent of the