‘Skirted hooligans’- historian tries to trace author of 112 years old letter
On 7 June 1913 someone called Matthew S. Smith, Lerwick, wrote a barely sane letter to the Shetland News about female suffrage.
“As the law is supine,” he said, “and the hands of the police palsied and powerless, the masculine section of the community should meet physical force with physical force and have those skirted hooligans incarcerated in asylums …”
Does any genealogist know who Smith might have been? I can’t locate him.
It has occurred to me that he might have been using a pen-name.
Brian Smith
burgigeos@gmail.com
