Rosa May Billinghurst

She was born in 1875 in Lewisham, London, the second of nine children of Henry Farncombe Billinghurst and Rosa Ann (Brinsmead) Billinghurst.[1] Her mother came from a family who manufactured pianos and her father was a banker.[3] As a child she survived polio which left her unable to walk. She wore leg-irons and used either crutches or a modified tricycle.[3] She became active in social work in a Greenwich workhouse, teaching in a Sunday School and joining the temperance Band of Hope.[4]

She was an active member of the Women's Liberal Association and later in 1907 a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She took part in the WSPU's march to the Royal Albert Hall in June 1908. Billinghurst helped organise the WSPU's response in the Haggerston by-election in July 1908,[4] polling was on the day that twenty-four suffragettes were released from Holloway prison and came round the area canvassing to 'keep the Liberal out.' [2] She was assumed to be the wheelchair user, in 1909, seen distracting a police horse by Annie Barnes, who laughed as another woman seemed to tip the rider off and he fell in the horse trough; the wheelchair occupier was the one arrested and rough handled into a waiting police van.[2]

Billinghurst demonstrating

Two years later, she founded the Greenwich branch of the WSPU. As its first Secretary she took part in the 'Black Friday' demonstrations. She was able to attend because she used an adapted tricycle.[4] She was still arrested after the police had capsized her from the trike. Billinghurst knew that she was helpless when this happened but she was quite prepared to take the added publicity to benefit the suffrage cause. The police also exploited her disability leaving her in a side street after letting her tyres down and pocketing the valves.[3] Billinghurst was able to get closer to the House of Commons on another occasion in 1911, when police thought the better of attacking her trike with 'Votes for Women' banner during the rush.[2] She is also thought to have been one of the suffragettes to evade the 1911 census on the night of Sunday 2 April 1911[5] in response to the calls from suffragette organisations for a boycott.[6]

suffragette force feeding in prison

Billinghurst would place her crutches on both sides of her tricycle and would charge any opposition.[3] She was arrested several more times in the next few years.

The Glaswegian suffragette, Janie Allan, apparently worked in partnership with Billinghurst during the window-smashing campaign of March 1912, with Billinghurst apparently hiding a supply of stones under the rug that covered her knees.[7] Billinghurst's first stint in Holloway Prison was for smashing a window on Henrietta Street during this campaign,[8] for which she was sentenced to one month's hard labour. The prison authorities were confused when she was sentenced to one month hard labour and gave her no extra work. She was befriended by the many other prisoners including Dr Alice Stewart Ker who got her to smuggle a letter out to her daughter when Billinghurst was released.[3] On 8 January 1913, she was tried at the Old Bailey and sentenced to eight months in Holloway Prison for damaging letters in a postbox.[2] She subsequently went on hunger strike, and was force-fed along with other suffragettes. She became so ill that she was released two weeks after being force fed.[4]

Billinghurst had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour'.

She spoke at a public meeting in West Hampstead in March 1913. On 24 May she chained herself to the gates of Buckingham Palace and on 14 June she was dressed in white on her trike in Emily Wilding Davison's funeral procession[9] after she became a martyr to the cause.[4] Billinghurst also took part in the mass deputation of suffragettes to petition King George V on 21 May 1914. Though she was not arrested, two policemen deliberately tipped her out of her tricycle, and another suffragette, Charlotte Drake, had to lift her back into it. [2]

Billinghurst supported the Pankhurst's lead when they decided to prioritise the war over the campaign for women's rights. She helped in Christabel Pankhurst's campaign to be elected in Smethwick in 1918.[2] She had however joined the Women's Freedom League and became part of the Suffragette Fellowship.[4] She supported Jill Craigie's Equal Pay Film Fund.[2]

Billinghurst stopped her activity for women's suffrage after Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 gave some women the vote. She later attended Emmeline Pankhurst's funeral and the unveiling of Emmeline's statue in 1930.[3]

In 1911, she was residing with her parents at 7 Oakhurst Road, Lewisham.[10]

Billinghurst lived in the garden house of her property "Minikoi", Sunbury, Surrey (but then in Middlesex), with her adopted child, "Beth". Beth has since written a book describing her relationship with her adoptive mother. Her brother was Alfred John Billinghurst, an artist[11] whom she lived with after 1914.[1]

She died on 29 July 1953 at a hospital in Twickenham,[1] leaving her body to science.[2]

Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.[12][13][14]

• List of suffragists and suffragettes
• Tejera, P. (2018). Reinas de la carretera. Madrid. Ediciones Casiopea. ISBN 9788494848216 (paper) / ISBN 9788494848223 (digital). Spanish edit.

The archives of Rosa May Billinghurst are held at The Women's Library at the Library of the London School of Economics.[15]