Leeds artist completes mural in Bramley celebrating life and legacy of local suffragette Mary Gawthorpe
A Leeds artist has completed an astounding mural dedicated to the legacy of one of city’s fiercest advocates for women’s rights during the suffragette movement.
David Griffin, originally of Horsforth, completed the striking mural of Mary Gawthorpe at the junction of Hough Lane and Cross Bath Road in Bramley this week.
Mrs Gawthorpe fought strongly for women’s rights from a young age and worked as a teacher in Bramley while attending protests and demonstrations in Leeds, London and across the UK.
Mr Griffin, an ex-Marine, left the corps in the 2021 and became an artist, having already amassed a portfolio during his unofficial tenure as “Regimental Artist” by painting murals on a number of military sites.
He said: “I normally work on commission, painting whatever my customers ask me to paint for them but this job was one I’ve been wanting to do for a long time so I funded it myself, spent time looking for and comparing various potential sites and seeking the necessary permissions.
“There's a blue plaque on the house she lived in, on Warrel's Mount but other than that there's previously been little in the area to commemorate this great woman who is a significant figure, not just in local history, but in the history of Britain and the history of democracy.”
He added: “I noticed the statue of Emily Pankhurst in Manchester and it made me think that in Leeds we are not as good at celebrating our historical figures.
“That was part of the motivation to do the mural. To not allow her to be forgotten.”
During her time in the Women's Suffrage movement Mrs Gawthorpe was violently arrested numerous times, including in October 1909 when she received serious internal injuries after being struck by one of the stewards at a political rally she was disrupting, the candidate of which was Winston Churchill.
Gawthorpe also spoke at national events, including a rally in 1908 attended by over 200,000 people, and was the co-editor of the radical periodical ‘The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review’, which discussed topics such as women's wage work, housework, motherhood, suffrage movement and literature.
Mr Griffin said: “Mary is important to me because we shouldn’t forget that rights which we now take for granted once had to be struggled for by forward-thinking people from previous generations.
“Voting rights, sick leave, job security, overtime rates, weekends and more were fought for by dynamic and determined working people and not freely given by the owning class out of the goodness of their hearts.”
Mr Griffin received much intrigue from the local community while working on the mural and received a visit from the UK’s first female Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves.
He said: “She’s aware that she wouldn’t be where she is today if the likes of Mary Gawthorpe hadn’t gone before her so she came to visit the mural while work on it was ongoing.”
Many locals have praised the “fantastic” mural on social media since its completion, with one writing: “How interesting and what a beautiful tribute.”