The Bill became an Act, notwithstanding Lord James's opposition, and within twelve months he had become a vice-president of the League for Opposing Women's Suffrage and for "Maintaining the Representation of Women on Municipal and other Bodies concerned with the Domestic and Social Affairs of the Community."
It has been said by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Miss Violet Markham, and other anti-suffragists that it is not very creditable to women's public spirit that four years after the passing of the Local Government Qualification of Women Act of 1907, so few women[1] are serving on Town and County Councils. The chief reason for their insignificant numbers is that at present only those women may be elected who are themselves qualified to elect. Outside London this disqualifies married women, and in London it only qualifies those married women who are on the register as municipal voters. It also disqualifies daughters living, under normal conditions, in the houses of their parents. The range of choice of women candidates is, therefore, very severely restricted. Similar disqualifications in former years applied to the post of Poor Law Guardian. When a simple residential qualification was substituted for the electoral qualification the number of women acting as Poor Law Guardians increased in a few years from about 160 to over 1300, of whom eight out of nine have the residential qualification only, nearly half of them being married women. It helps people to realise how the present law limits the range of choice of women to serve on locally elected bodies to ask them to consider what would be the effect on the number of men who could offer themselves for election if marriage were a disqualification for them also. A Bill for allowing women to be elected to Town and County Councils on a re-
- ↑ The exact numbers in England and Wales (autumn 1911) are fifteen on Town Councils (two being Mayors) and four on County Councils.
