Frances Foxcroft: BC’s Labour Hero

A large crowd, incited by business interests, encircles the Vancouver Labor Temple in 1918. Vancouver Public Library 18266.

The throng — said to number 300 — called the strike “seditious”, “unpatriotic” and the organizers “pro-German.” Some proposed stringing Victor Midgely up on a pole. Others offered to run the streetcars which had been shutdown by the strikers. When the mob entered the labour offices looking for Midgely and others, they were stopped in their tracks by Foxcroft,  the stenographer and telephone exchange operator at the Labor Temple.

The mob planned to hurl Midgely through the second floor window but Foxcroft, “Who was bruised considerably in the process, stood in front of the window and prevented this being done.” (BC Federationist, August 9, 1918).

“Again and again the soldiers demanded that she step aside and let them open the sash, but she stood firm and blocked the way,” wrote the Vancouver Sun. (Vancouver Sun, August 3, 1918) 

Incited by stories in the morning newspapers, a throng of ex-soldiers and followers broke windows, vandalized the interior and threatened violence toward union officials. Frances Foxcroft, stenographer and telephone operator, stood in their way. Enlarged from Vancouver Public Library 18264.

When the melee was over, so grateful were the union officers that “Miss Foxcroft, the popular telephone operator at the Temple, was presented with an amethyst and pearl pendant, as a token of appreciation for the manner in which she saved V.R. Midgley from being pushed out of the Temple window during the riots.”

“Miss Foxcroft, in expressing her thanks, stated that she would be willing to perform the same service for any of them under the same circumstances.”(BC Federationist, August 16 1918)

Labour activist and union organizer

Frances Foxcroft was not a one-day heroine. Known to her friends as ‘Frank’, Foxcroft was a devoted trade unionist.

Foxcroft landed in Halifax in 1912 at the age of 23 from Hesket-in-the-Forest, a small parish in the north of  England to join her brother William in Vancouver. She soon began work at the Vancouver Labour Temple where she earned $900 a year, higher than the average weekly wage for women. Frances’ brother was also active in the labour movement; he chaired the Miners’ Liberation League in 1913 which agitated for release of 39 men imprisoned during the Vancouver Island coal strike.

Though William spent the war years in Australia, Frances remained in Vancouver where she was a contemporary of Helena Gutteridge, the union organizer who was the first woman elected to Vancouver City Council in 1937. Gutteridge too, was present during the storming of the Labour Temple, but unlike Foxcroft, did not rush to defend the others. Instead, she was quietly hiding $300 in union dues in her purse that she had just collected from laundry workers.

Both women were active members of the Union Label League made up of delegates from various trade unions who worked to increase public demand for union-made goods and services. (B.C. Federationist March 20 1914)  Gutteridge and Foxcroft were also prominent in the 1917 campaign to register women voters in Vancouver for the wartime election where conscription was the key issue.

Frances Foxcroft was also a founding member of the Vancouver Telephone Operators’ Union – the “Hello Girls” — chartered by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 213. She was a trustee for the union, and was elected as their delegate to the Vancouver Labour Council. The renowned Vancouver operators stayed out on strike longer than any other workers during B.C.’s sympathy action in support of the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. Shortly afterwards, Foxcroft represented the union operators at the IBEW’s international convention in New Orleans..

In 1923, after 12 years in Vancouver, Foxcroft returned to England “to spend Christmas with her mother”. Her father passed away shortly afterwards, and she never returned to Canada.

Frances Foxcroft’s brother William chaired the Miner’s Liberation League who posed for this photo in 1913 in front of the Labor Temple. The building remains standing today at 411 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver. City of Vancouver Archives | CVA 259-1.