Kate is living in Pimlico and still working at the office of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage in Knightsbridge. The society is now devoting itself to supporting the war effort.
‘Tuesday 1 June 1915
To office and a very busy day. News of a raid on London last night – Zepps – and bombs have been dropped – some deaths. No places mentioned but I know they went to the East End. So it’s come at last. It is a horrible feeling.
I had a quick lunch with Constance [Constance Gilbey, her cousin] at Tudor. had to go back before 2 o’clock though everything was ready for the meeting and it was a packed one. We had it in our Hall – and the speakers were Miss Damer Dawson – on the Women Police Service and Alexandra [Wright] on the Canteen [set up by the New Constitutional Society at the Enfield Lock Small Arms Factory]. I thought the latter did very well for her, but of course she could not be other than herself and a sort of unpleasingness creeps in and after Miss Dawson who was just delightful – well there it was. But the meeting was a great success – though as I told Mrs Hartley it was a Women’s Police audience and not ours.
Cleared up as much as I could – then as Alexandra and Mrs Fausset waited we ended by walking across the park together. We saw A. to her turning and then went on and had some dinner at Arthur’s Stores. Mrs Faussett’s husband is down with scarlet fever and she is very lonely. We walked together to Royal Oak where she got a bus and I continued my ramble to Marble Arch. Stopped on my way to send Post Cards to Mother, and John to let them know I was safe. Of course all our talk was of Zepps – everyone feverish with the subject and none of us too comfortable about the matter.
Two buses back. A little writing then bed. I couldn’t sleep at first – so read. It been much warmer but a very heavy day.’
For more information on the first London Zeppelin raid see here
Margaret Damer Dawson was one of the founders, in 1915, of the Women’s Police Service.
You can read about Kate Frye’s work as an organiser with the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage in Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary. – for full details see here.
For much more about Kate’s life – as told in her biography, based entirely on her own diary, – see here.
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