Alice Hicks ( )was a British activist and founding member of the Workers' Birth Control Group.[1]
Life
editHicks, Mrs Alice was named in 1927 in a questionnaire returned to Margaret Sanger as the Honorary Superintendent of the Glasgow Women‟s Welfare and Advisory Clinic.[1]
Hicks was the first Treasurer of the WBCG but she was replaced at her request in 1926 by Mrs Lendon so Hicks could concentrate on propaganda work.[1]
Hicks found that when she visited Scotland her research convinced her, contrary to popular opinion, that the miners actively encouraged their wives to seek birth control advice (WBCG Conference, 2 Dec.1926). She appeared to have been seconded from London to assist the Glasgow clinic and the Executive Committee paid tribute to her dynamism. They reported that Hicks in 1927 has also addressed thirty meetings, mainly women‟s meetings but one or two mixed meetings and several men‟s meetings. These meetings represented various Trade Unions, the Labour Party, Independent Labour Party, the Women‟s Cooperative Guild. Hicks was a founder member of the Workers‟ Birth Control Group. She was middle aged and not in good health but Dora Russell described her as „wiry, indefatigable, the best type of working class woman‟. The two went campaigning together to Motherwell to the constituency of the Rev. James Barr MP, a leading opponent of birth control in the House of Commons They paid their own fares. Browne, F.W.S (Jan.1927) The New Generation p.4. Questionnaire on the Glasgow Women‟s Welfare and Advisory Clinic completed on 11 November 1927 and returned to Margaret Sanger. Margaret Sanger Papers, Box 60, Sophia Smith Collection. Smith College Archives, USA. Russell, D. (1977 reprint 1989) The Tamarisk Tree. London:Virago, pp.173-174.
References
edit- ^ a b c Debenham, Clare (2010). Grassroots feminism: a study of the campaign of the Society for the Provision of Birth Control Clinics, 1924-1938 (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Manchester.