Precious paperwork detailing the women's suffrage movement at the turn of the 20th century disappeared after its last sighting at a Buglawton property over 100 years ago.

The "saddening" loss was revealed in Elizabeth's Group's latest lockdown video relating to the campaign to honour Congleton's suffragist Elizabeth Wolstenhome Elmy, who lived in the town from 1874 until 1918.

Susan Munro was joined by Mrs Elmy's biographer and the group's patron, Dr Maureen Wright.

Dr Wright first heard about Elizabeth in 2001 whilst studying for her undergraduate degree at University of Portsmouth before completing a PhD on Mrs Elmy in 2007.

Dr Wright said: "When you start off something like this, you have to know there is enough material and there's certainly enough material out there about Elizabeth."

"My research included a cache of 3,000 handwritten letters, 2,500 of which sit very, very under researched in the British Library.

"She was a radical, she was certainly not backward in coming forward and she suffered fools not at all. She makes a really encouraging personality for, I believe, the young woman of today to study."

Mrs Munro said: "One of the things that always saddens me is that we lost such a lot of Elizabeth's writings and I suspect probably her poetry as well as her autobiography when her house was emptied, and her paperwork recycled. It just seems so terrible that that happened."

Dr Wright responded: "She does leave a note in one of her letters that tells you how big that archive was. Her archive filled a whole downstairs room in that house.

"It went right back to the very first changes in in legislation for women the divorce act of 1857 and her archive grew and grew. Until in 1907 she loaned some of it to Sylvia Pankhurst and she bemoaned that Sylvia was tardy in returning it.

"But it grew and grew until her active work finished which I can roughly date to when she was 80 in 1913. But yes, it disappeared.

"The date I can get closest to is that somewhere in 1917, when we do have an eyewitness who saw it disappearing from the house in Buglawton in wheelbarrows."

Mrs Munro said: "That's so sad. For me there's a little bit of mystery there. Why did her son Frank allow that to happen? Was it possible he could have been away at the war?"

Dr Wright replied: "I don't think he would have been away at the war; I think he would've been a conscientious objector. If he followed the premise of his parents he certainly would have been, they were ardent pacifists.

"He died in the 1920s, he lived in Sandbach. Elizabeth by that time, was probably in the nursing home in Manchester where she later died, I think the house then could've been up for sale and I think he may have moved.

"He worked for the council, at least he did until I can sort of last trace him. I wonder if his office was in Sandbach and he may have moved over there. I think the sale of the house is the likeliest reason."

Dr Wright stated that there are hints that the archive was given to the war effort in what was called a paper and described "a bit like when people sacrificed their saucepans for the aluminium in the second world war".

She added: "I can hardly think that Elizabeth, the ardent pacifist that she was, would've wanted anything to do with anything of hers going to the war effort.

"But of course, we're not to know any different. I've only had glimpses of the event but it is quite shocking that had her autobiography survived and had this archive survived, it would've made a comprehensive women's suffrage collection whereas rather now we trace it from personal correspondence and the documents relating to some of the organisations that Elizabeth worked for, which she took it upon herself to preserve."

Dr Wright's probable theory behind Mrs Elmy's move to Congleton was due to her wish to relocate her school, which up until 1867 was in the district of Boothstown, near Worsley, it was a school for middle class girls.

She continued: "They didn't learn the standard curriculum that middle-class girls favoured, that of the development of all accomplishments in order for them to marry well.

"Elizabeth's girls rather learned things to support themselves like political economy, arithmetic, English language, botany and biology which is more like the secondary school curriculum of today."

When Mrs Elmy moved to Moody Hall in 1867, Dr Wright felt that having a larger premises could have played a big role in her decision to relocate, but Dr Wright's romantic theory touched upon how Ben Elmy arrived in Congleton at a similar time to Elizabeth.

Dr Wright added: "Ben had been a textile manager in Mobberley, but he was looking to branch out and buy his own textile mills, which he did and ended up owning three in Congleton (one in partnership).

"But the one in Mobberley, it was his declared intention that he paid his women workers himself in cash, because of course back then husbands or fathers could actually come to the mill and collect their money on pay day, because this was before the 1870 Married Women's Property Act, which both Ben and Elizabeth had a lot to do with.

"They met and had a great interest in adult education as well as the education for children and young people and they were both active in a local education society that was set up in Congleton most likely by themselves."

Dr Wright said that they became a couple quite soon after that, Mrs Munro described the pair as a "match made in heaven".

Dr Wright was scheduled to give an inaugural Elizabeth Elmy lecture in May, something that Mrs Munro said wasn't going to "happen now, not this month anyway". Dr Wright's lecture was going to be about marriage and the vote.

Dr Wright continued: "For many women including most of Elizabeth's pupils, I think most women grew up expecting to marry and in those days where marital rape was not criminalised and there was little in the way of birth control, motherhood and children were the natural consequence of being married.

"But Elizabeth managed to turn the birth of children into something which gave women a complete shift in the way they campaigned for the vote. Prior to the 1890s all suffragists campaigned on the grounds of what they could do for the nation, could they become factory inspectors, schoolteachers, could they become people who worked as Poor Law Guardians as Elizabeth's great friend Harriet McIlquham did.

"These were nurturing professions. So how do you go from a suffragists campaign, to suffragists campaigning and linking motherhood to their militant campaign for the vote in 1903.

"The crux of the issue was the outbreak of the Boer War, when the British Government sent troops to fight in South Africa on the behalf of men who were sent there to work/live in the army. But the South Africans who governed the Transvaal and the Orange Free State at the time of the Boers took away the right of those British settlers to vote.

"The only thing that would change their mind was that the British Government decided to send in military force, this happened at the end of 1889, on the grounds that the British men would not consent not to have to vote and would not consent to obey the rules that they had no hand in making."

Dr Wright stated that Mrs Elmy had written on the subject of consent to making rules in 1895, and according to Dr Wright "women who had no power to not consent to having children had the better claim to the vote then the men who would be sent in as soldiers to claim it."

Dr Wright continued: "Because women lost their lives as the soldiers did but through childbirth, she wanted to criminalise marital rape, so that women couldn't consent to sexual intercourse with men.

"It became a really good method of propaganda to associate childbirth, which is so feminine with the militant campaign. If you can fight for the vote with guns, so can we.

"Although Elizabeth as a pacifist herself brought the matter of guns into it, she did see militancy in campaigning to march, campaigning to go on hunger strike as the suffragettes later did, she did see that as perfectly okay."

Elizabeth's Group is campaigning to raise £60,000 to erect a statue to Elizabeth Wolstenhome Elmy in Congleton town centre. So far, it has raised around £30,000.

A booklet about Elizabeth's life is one sale from the group for £3. You can order through Elizabeth's Group Facebook page. For more information about her, visit this website.