WE Celebrate: Catherine Boyle

Mrs. Catherine Boyle, a New Castle resident, was a munitions worker during World War I. She was arrested during a suffrage watchfire demonstration in January 1919 and was sentenced to five days in jail. Boyle began contributing to the Congressional Union, the predecessor of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in 1915. During the flu epidemic of 1918, Boyle used her nurse’s training and opened her home to twenty-seven men working in a powder factory and nursed them all through influenza because no doctors could be found for them. It seems likely that Boyle joined the wartime production effort during that time because by 1918 Boyle was employed by the Bethlehem Steel Company’s plant in New Castle, Delaware. There, she was in contact with militant suffragists, most notably Florence Bayard Hilles, who, despite her pedigree as the daughter of a high-ranking politician, “donned a working women’s uniform and became a munitions worker.” Together with eight other Delaware women munitions workers, Boyle and Hilles traveled to Washington, D.C., in June 1918, in an unsuccessful effort to meet with President Woodrow Wilson. In their appeal to the president, they stressed the dangerous nature of their work and their desire, through the right of suffrage, to be “recognized by our country as much her citizens as our soldiers are.” #womenshistorymonth2021 #netde #powerofwecsd