Brighton

On the night of 2 April it’s estimated that thousands - or even tens of thousands - of women (and male supporters) resisted being counted in protest at the government’s refusal to grant them a vote.

In Brighton, ‘open houses’ were set up where resisters could spend the night away from home. The Gazette reports that one house in Hove was so full that only a third of women could sleep at one time, with the rest coming and going throughout the night to confuse snooping enumerators attempting a head-count. In another Brighton home they avoided questions by returning the incomplete form in a basket lowered from a top floor window. One Hove suffragette, Mary Hare, vandilised her census form with the words “Women don’t count therefore they will not be counted!”