At the end of the 20th Century, we hold the rightness of universal franchise to be self evident. Yet at the beginning of the century, nations considered the majority of their citizens unfit to vote: all women and those men who did not own land.

Ironically, Bermuda had the chance to be the first to extend the franchise to women and thus lead even the European democracies into the 20th Century.

Instead, she would be among the last.

In 1895, a petition was presented to the Colonial Assembly signed by 172 women "praying the franchise may be extended to them''. Anna Maria Outerbridge, an early human rights activist, is said to have persuaded her father, Dr. T.A.

Outerbridge, MCP to propose the first Women's Franchise Bill.

Astonishingly, the bill passed the lower House. However, it was defeated in the Legislative Council (LegCo) by a single vote! The Assembly sent the bill back to LegCo the following year, and again it was defeated.

The following year the honours went to Austria. An active suffrage movement fizzled out in Bermuda and at the dawn of the 20th Century the conservative element took over in Parliament.

The Parliamentary Election Act, 1900 restricted voter rights specifically to male property owners only and The Women's Property Act 1901 gave men the exclusive right to use their wives's property to qualify for the vote.

Miss Misick Matters languished until 1914 when Miss Gladys Misick arrived back in Bermuda, fresh from England where the women's suffrage movement was very alive. She was one of the first Bermudians to have earned an honours degree, from London University. And she had led a 100-mile suffrage, which at one point at been pelted with tomatoes and eggs.

During Miss Misick's short stay in Bermuda, she found a Parliamentary champion for the case, the young MCP, Mr. Stanley Spurling, and core group of suffragists. They held the first public meeting on the franchise in St.

George's in 1914. Soon thereafter, the First World War broke out and Miss Misick returned to England and served with the French Red Cross at bloody Verdun.

In 1919, after the war and a year after British women had won the vote, Mr.

Spurling made a motion to form a select committee to make a bill extending the franchise to women, which was "a matter of justice long overdue''. The House responded with cheers.

It looked as if women were going to get the vote! Little did Miss Misick and the excited suffragists in the gallery know; the battle had just begun and a quarter of a century would pass before they would finally succeed.

The House committee buried the bill for four years. Meanwhile, American women won the vote in 1920.

Women's Suffrage Society In frustration, the Bermuda Women's Suffrage Society (BWSS), "desiring to press the claim for the franchise'', was founded in 1923. Miss Rose Gosling, headmistress of the Bermuda High School, was elected president; Mrs. Allan Smith, Miss Misick and Mrs. Doris Butterfield as officers.

The majority of BWSS members were ladies whose husbands were prominent in the affairs of Bermuda, and thus had protection from harsh consequences. They also conducted a moderate campaign with a great deal of dignity and wit. Bermuda's suffragists were not beaten and imprisoned as were their more militant English counterparts.

In 1925 the Society lobbied for legislation proposed again by Mr. Spurling to give women the full parochial, municipal and parliamentary franchise. It was easily defeated.

Not "persons'' In 1928 Gladys Misick Morrell (now married) brought a test lawsuit against the chairman of the Sandys Parish Vestry. She argued, that the word "person'' in the Act meant both men and women and thus they were entitled to vote.

Bermuda's Supreme Court ruled against Mrs. Morrell. On poor advice, she did not appeal to the Privy Council.

In July 1929, Parliament passed the Parish Vestries Act that specifically restricted the parochial vote to males only. The Bermuda Attorney General declared, "no person not a male shall be registered to vote''.

A mere three months later, the Privy Council declared Canadian women to be "persons'', reversing the decision of Canada's Attorney General in a similar lawsuit. The enfranchisement of Canadian women was bittersweet news, as it was too late to appeal the Bermuda ruling.

Franchise killed In November, 1929 the Women's Franchise Bill was again defeated in Parliament.

Suffragists illegally lowered the flag outside of Parliament in protest and stood with their heads bowed.

"It made one ashamed of one's own country,'' Mrs. Morrell later remarked. In 1930, the BWSS appealed to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Passfield, to set up a Royal Commission. Their petition was in the form of a "Memorial'' on the death of women's franchise in Bermuda. While Lord Passfield declined to interfere in Bermuda's internal affairs, he did strongly advise the Assembly to "bring legislation into conformity with contemporary British institutions elsewhere.'' His advice was ignored.

When the bill was killed again in 1931, members of the Society dressed in mourning clothes placed a wreath on the Mangrove Bay police station steps to mark the "Passing of Justice''.

Civil Disobedience Forced to make a stand, some the core `militant' suffragists raised the "No Taxation without Representation'' banner of the American Revolution. They refused to pay their property taxes. Miss Rose Gosling, however, was one of the members who declined, saying she would not break the law.

The Overseer of the Poor, who was responsible for collecting parish taxes, brought a charge against Mrs. W.E. Tucker and Miss May Hutchings for tax evasion. In Magistrates' Court the women made a statement on suffrage and paid their taxes. Mrs. Morrell refused to appear in court. Instead, her suitcase packed, she waited at home to be arrested.

Faced with the awkward prospect of sending a lady to jail, the overseer dropped the case and instead, opted to confiscate some of her property for auction.

"So ends tamely the cause celebre in Sandys Parish,'' the Mid-Ocean News reported, "with Mrs. Morrell emerging victorious and with dignity unruffled, while the overseers are made to look very uncomfortable indeed''.

On the day of the auction, Mrs. Morrell and a band of supporters paraded the streets of Somerset carrying a suffragist banner, to mixed cheers and boos.

The suffragists' opponents tried to push the bidding up, but the ladies prevailed. Mrs. Morrell was able to discreetly buy her table back from the successful bidder.

The event was widely reported. Tax resistance, court appearances and auctions of confiscated property would become an annual form of protest for much of the 1930s.

Supporters The Society battled on. In 1935, Mrs. W.E. Tucker secured an endorsement from the British Commonwealth League Conference in London. It "deplored'' the continued exclusion of women from the franchise and promised to support women in Bermuda "by every means in its power''.

The same year, Mr. Spurling's franchise legislation is again defeated, by a vote of 26-9. The Society had also lost two of its most loyal Parliamentary supporters, with the death of the Hon. Allan Smith and Mr. S.S. Toddings. The discouraged BWSS was urged on by its friends. The famous militant suffragist Mrs. Pankhurst, addressed the Society several times. American politician and lawyer Dudley Malone declared, "let no group of small minded, power loving gentlemen on any hill deprive you of your freedom''.

In 1936, Lady Astor, the first women elected to the British Parliament, spoke to 700 people at the Colonial Opera House. "Every enlightened country now realises that a democratic and free government which does not include women is an absurdity.'' The Women's Franchise bill was defeated again in 1937, but for the first time by a close vote: 15-13.

The tide was turning. Refusing women the vote was steadily becoming more ridiculous. It was wartime. Bermudian women found themselves in the demeaning position of working or socialising with British and American women who had had the right to vote for some 20 years! Infuriatingly, the 1942 franchise bill was defeated by only a single vote, as it had been 47 years ago, and postponed consideration of the franchise in 1943 by only 2 votes.

Political Shift The all-male Parliament had rejected the Women's Franchise Bill ten times in the last 24 years. In recent years the opposition had been an odd coalition of conservative white businessmen, who thought the franchise the thin edge of the wedge towards universal franchise, and all the black MPs who considered the BWSS' aims to limited and had larger dreams of political freedom.

Historian Colin Benbow relates that Mr. David Tucker, MCP, lawyer and editor of The Recorder, told the BWSS: "Some people are prejudiced against Women's Suffrage because they think it will further restrict the franchise for the coloured people.'' One of the few black property owners to support the BWSS was Miss Alice Scott, already a trailblazer for her race and sex in the field of nursing and education.

Sir Stanley Spurling having been knighted and elevated to the Legislative Council, it fell to a young MCP, Henry Tucker, to plot the bill through the House. The future leader of the House had not supported the women in his first term, but had come to believe in the justice of extending the franchise to women.

During that historic final debate in 1944, it was Dr. Eustace Cann's speech that seemed most pertinent to the central issue: "I have never questioned the women's right. I have only protested a system that I consider unfair... Some say there is no race issue here. I say there is... I shall vote for this measure today because I hate to see any group enslaved by the power of others and refused their legitimate rights. I call on all Assemblymen to consider those matters that would grant to others the same privileges now proposed for the Suffrage Society.'' Gladys Morrell: Leadre of the women's suffrage movement Decisive vote: Dr. Eustace Cann