In 1911, an estimated several thousand British women boycotted the federal census. ("Women do not count, neither shall they be counted," wrote one.) This was a form of peaceful but pissed protest over their government's refusal to grant women's suffrage. Some of these women, or their husbands, refused to fill out the form; others simply stayed out the entire night the census takers were coming round. (I'll bet the second way was the most fun, although modern genealogists are grateful for the former option, which at least registered the presence of a woman or women in a given household.) Women over the age of 30 got the right to vote in 1918; women over the age of 21 in 1928. American feminists found other ways of making their voices count; women got the vote here in 1920. We noted the presence of 11 United Stats (for United States) in OhioLINK today.(Suffragettes gathered in Manchester Census Lodge to boycott the 1911 census, from Wikimedia Commons.)
Carol Reid
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