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Margery Corbett Ashby was born at Danehill, Sussex in 1882 to Charles Corbett, the future Liberal MP for Grinstead, and Marie Corbett. At the age of eighteen, she formed a society called the Younger Suffragists with a group of friends and her younger sister Cicely. The following year, in 1901, Margery won a place at Newnham College, Cambridge, to read Classics. Three years later, despite passing her examinations, Cambridge refused to grant her a degree on the grounds of her gender. Subsequently, she obtained a place at the Cambridge Teachers Training College, though she would later decide against teaching as a profession. That same year, in 1904, she and her sister attended the first meeting of the International Women Suffrage Alliance in Berlin with their mother.

She had been involved in the women's suffrage movement since Cambridge, where she had joined the local branch of the National Union of Women s Suffrage Societies. In 1907 Corbett was appointed Secretary of that same organisation and editor of the journal, The Common Cause, positions that she held until she was elected to the executive committee two years later. It was in 1909 that she also became a member of the Cambridge Women s Suffrage Association as well as becoming involved in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance as a speaker at their conferences in Berlin and Stockholm. The following year, she married the barrister, Brian Ashby, giving birth to their only child four years later. In 1912 she became a poor law guardian in Wandsworth and in 1914 was the chairperson of the Barnes, Mortlake and East Sheen branch of the London Society for Women s Suffrage. However, when that year the NUWSS launched the Election Fighting Fund policy, which promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal, Corbett Ashby felt compelled to resign form the organisation.

Corbett Ashby passed the First World War carrying out work in hospitals and running a canteen at an outbuilding of Woodgate for local schoolchildren. In 1919, she attended the Versailles Peace Conference in place of Millicent Garrett Fawcett as a member of the International Alliance of Women. After the passing of the Qualification of Women Act in 1918, she became one of the seventeen women candidates that stood in the post-war election. She stood as the Liberal candidate for Ladywood, Birmingham, but lost her deposit in the process, having advocated feminist policies that would have given women full political equality with men. The following year she took part in the first post-war congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and was elected president of the organisation in 1923, a position she would hold until she retired in 1946. She succeeded Eleanor Rathbone as the president of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and co-founded the Towns Womens Guild with Eva Hubback in the late 1920s which she also presided over for a time. In 1932 Corbett Ashby was the British delegate to the Geneva Disarmament Conference, but resigned from this position in 1935 in protest at the British Government's refusal to support any practical scheme for mutual security and defence. That same year, she resigned from the head of the Towns Womens Guild but accepted the presidency of the Women s Freedom League instead. Around the same time, she became the vice president of the Fawcett Society.

Corbett Ashby continued to be active in politics after the Second World War. In 1952, at the age of seventy, she became editor of International Women's News. Her last political action was at the age of ninety-eight when she took part in the Women's Day of Action in London in 1980. She died at Danehill on 22nd May 1981.

Mary Stocks (1891-1975) was the daughter of Roland Danvers, a General Practitioner, and Helen Constance Rendel. She was educated at St. Paul's Girls' School, London and at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she studied economics, graduating in 1913. In 1913 she married John Leofric Stocks. Mary went on to have an academic career at the University of Oxford, LSE, King's College of Household and Social Science, Manchester University and Westfield College London, of which she was Principal from 1939-1951. Whilst still at school, Mary had become a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She carried a banner in the 1907 'Mud March' and stewarded at meetings, distributed literature, attended conferences and addressed street corner meetings. In 1914 she became a member of the Executive Committee of the NUWSS and in 1928 remained involved in the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. In addition she was active in the birth control movement and was a member of various royal commissions and statutory committees, including the Unemployment Statutory Committee. Mary Stocks also wrote and broadcast widely. Her publications include 'The Industrial State: A Social and Economic History of England' (1921), 'The Case for Family Endowment' (1927), a biography of Eleanor Rathbone and histories of district nursing, the Manchester University Settlement and the Workers Educational Association. In addition, she published two autobiographical volumes, 'My Commonplace Book' (1970), which contains an account of her suffrage activities, and 'Still more commonplace' (1973). She was created a life peer in 1966. She died in 1975.

Mary Eliza Haweis née Joy (1848-1898) was the eldest daughter of the Victorian portrait artist Thomas Musgrove Joy and his wife Eliza. She herself painted and exhibited. She illustrated books, designed book covers and many of her woodcuts appeared in Cassell's magazine. However, she is best known as an important figure in the female literature of household taste that flourished in the 1880s, her most famous work being The Art of Decoration (1881). She wrote several books and also contributed widely to contemporary women's magazines, mostly on women's clothes and interior design. In 1867, aged 19, she married Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901), popular preacher, musician, lecturer and incumbent of St James, Marylebone. The couple lived in Welbeck Street and later in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, at the centre of an intellectual, scientific and literary circle. The marriage was a difficult one, with her husband's extra-marital affairs causing pain to Mary Eliza. They had three children Lionel (b. 1878), Hugolin and Stephen (who was delivered by the female doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson). Mary died in 1898.

Margaret Eleanor Scott (1859-1929) was born in Norwich in 1859. Between 1872 and 1876 Scott was apprenticed as a pupil teacher of St Paul's City Trust School, Norwich and received a Bishop's Certificate of Norwich diocese for five years of scripture examinations. She gained a first class Queen's Scholarship in 1876, and went on to study at Norwich Training College between 1877 and 1878, gaining a first division certificate. Between 1879 and 1884, and again in 1889, Margaret Scott studied at Cambridge University, focusing mainly on sociology, physiology and history. Scott taught at a number of schools during the 1880s including Cringleford Public School, Norwich between 1878 and 1881, St Paul's City Trust School, Norwich between 1881 and 1883, Marylebone Queen's Scholarship Class of the Central Classes for Training Young Teachers and Wordsworth College for Training Teachers, Kilburn, in 1887. Scott was also headmistress of All Souls' Schools, South Hampstead during the 1880s. During the 1890s Scott was Special Lecturer to the National Health Society and lecturer on hygiene, domestic economy, history and literature to the Central Classes for Teachers, Marylebone. She went on to co-write Domestic Economy: Comprising the Laws of Health in their Application to Home Life and Work with Arthur Newsholme in 1893. In 1897 Scott was on the committee of the Norwich Sanitary Aid Commission, she had gained a diploma for proficiency in Sanitary Knowledge granted by the Sanitary Institute (London), and was the only woman in the United Kingdom qualified to act as a Sanitary Inspector under the Public Health Acts during this period. Scott married Edward Pillow, an engineer and later Organising Secretary for Technical Education, Norfolk County Council, in 1891. They had two sons, Edward and Henry Montgomery. Margaret Scott died in 1929.

ME Roberts (fl 1881-1968) was born around 1881. She became a member of the Sheffield branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) around 1906 before leaving this to join the local branch of the Women's Freedom League which came into being around Dec 1908 after Charlotte Despard and her associates followers broke away from the Pankhursts and other WSPU's leaders. Roberts seems to have taken part in the Pageant of Women that was held in Sheffield in 1910. She would later become the local secretary of the Sheffield WFL. In 1909 she took part in a deputation to 10 Downing Street to hand in a petition to the Prime Minister. She kept an interest in the militant suffrage movement throughout the 1930s, keeping in correspondence with the Record Room of the Suffragette Fellowship. In 1940 she moved to Liverpool where she lived for the rest of her life. She retired to a home around 1968.

Mrs Mary Ellen Taylor (fl 1910-1914) and her husband Captain Thomas Smithies Taylor were friends of the Pethick Lawrence family, Dr Elizabeth Wilkes (her sister) and her brother-in-law Mark Wilkes. By early 1912 Mrs Taylor was an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union which was then engaged in a campaign of militant action against government and private property. On 4 Mar 1912 she took part in a window smashing party with a Miss Roberts and a Miss Nellie Crocker, attacking a post office in Sloane Square. They were arrested and brought before a magistrate at Westminster Police Court, who referred their case to the Sessions. From the 5-22 Mar 1912 they were placed on remand at Holloway Prison until Taylor went before Newington Session and was given a three months sentence. While in prison, she went on hunger strike, though she was not forcibly fed, and was subsequently discharged and taken to her sister's house on the 27 Apr 1912. She was imprisoned a second time in Jul 1913 under the alias of Mary Wyan of Reading. Mrs Ellen Mary Taylor refused release under the Cat and Mouse [Temporary Discharge for Ill-health] Act of 1913. She claimed complete discharge and declined to give the prison governor any address. When she was conveyed to a nursing home she refused to enter until her full release was granted and continued her strike on a chair in the road outside. The police then removed her to the Kensington Infirmary where she eventually gave up her protest. Around this time, the Woodford assault case took place, touching the Taylor's immediate circle of friends.

Lady Mary Gertrude Emmott (1886-1954) was born Mary Lees in Oldham in 1866. She was the daughter of John William Lees and Elizabeth Lees and was educated at Queen's College in London. She married the Liberal MP Lord Alfred Emmott in 1887, with whom she had two daughters. She became the Mayoress of Oldham in 1891, the same year that she became one of the original members of the Board of the Oldham branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This social welfare work was to continue through her life, she was the first woman to be elected to the Oldham Board of Guardians in 1898 and went on to represent the Women's Industrial Council on the Council of the National Association of Women's Lodging Houses in 1910. During the First World War she was involved in organising aid to Belgian refugees and in its aftermath she was appointed to the Chair of the Women's Subcommittee Advisory Council by the Ministry of Reconstruction. Her interest in housing was continued by her work as a member of the Housing Advisory Council overseen by the Ministry of Health, membership of the Advisory Council of the Local Government Board on Housing in 1919, membership of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association from 1932-3 and presidency of the Women's Homes Association in the 1930s. Emmott was also active in the area of women's status. She helped establish a branch of the National Council of Women in Oldham in 1897 and became the vice-chair of the Women's National Liberation Foundation. Later she would be successively a member of the Executive committee, president of the London branch and the Chair of the National Council of Women's Parliamentary Legislation Committee before being appointed acting vice-president in 1927 and president from the following year until 1938. She was also closely associated with the London Society for Women's Suffrage, as a member of the Executive Council from the end of the nineteenth century to its transformation into the Fawcett Society in 1951, of which she was elected President months before her death in 1954.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929) was born in Suffolk in 1847, the daughter of Newson and Louisa Garrett and the sister of Samuel Garrett, Agnes Garrett, Louise Smith and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. The sisters' early interest in the issue of women's suffrage and commitment to the Liberal party were heightened after attending a speech given in London by John Stuart Mill in July 1865. Though considered too young to sign the petition in favour of votes for women, which was presented to the House of Commons in 1866, Millicent attended the debate on the issue in May 1867. This occurred a month after she married the professor of political economy and radical Liberal MP for Brighton, Henry Fawcett. Throughout their marriage, the future cabinet minister supported his wife's activities while she acted as his secretary due to his blindness. Their only child, Philippa Fawcett, was born the following year and that same month Millicent Garrett Fawcett published her first article, on the education of women. In Jul 1867, Millicent Garrett Fawcett was asked to join the executive committee of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage and was one of the speakers at its first public meeting two years later. She continued her work with the London National Society until after the death of John Stuart Mill in 1874, when she left the organisation to work with the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage. This was a step which she had avoided taking when the latter was formed in 1871 due to its public identification with the campaign for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Fawcett, despite her support for the movement's actions, had initially believed that the suffrage movement might be damaged by identification with such controversial work. However, the two groups later merged in 1877 as the new Central Committee for Women's Suffrage and a new executive committee was formed which included Fawcett herself. Her influence helped guide the group towards support for moderate policies and methods. She did little public speaking during this period but after the death of her husband in 1884 and a subsequent period of depression, she was persuaded to become a touring speaker once more in 1886 and began to devote her time to the work of the women's suffrage movement. In addition to women's suffrage Millicent Garrett Fawcett also became involved in the newly created National Vigilance Association, established in 1885, alongside campaigners such as J Stansfeld MP, Mr WT Stead, Mrs Mitchell, and Josephine Butler. In 1894 Fawcett's interest in public morality led her to vigorously campaign against the candidature of Henry Cust as Conservative MP for North Manchester. Cust, who had been known to have had several affairs, had seduced a young woman. Despite marrying Cust's marriage in 1893, after pressure from Balfour, Fawcett felt Cust was unfit for public office. Fawcett's campaign persisted until Cust's resignation in 1895, with some suffrage supporters concerned by Fawcett's doggedness in what they felt was a divisive campaign. In the late nineteenth century, the women's suffrage movement was closely identified with the Liberal Party through its traditional support for their work and the affiliation of many workers such as Fawcett herself. However, the party was, at this time, split over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. Fawcett herself left the party to become a Liberal Unionist and helped lead the Women's Liberal Unionist Association. When it was proposed that the Central Committee's constitution should be changed to allow political organisations, and principally the Women's Liberal Federation, to affiliate, Fawcett opposed this and became the Honorary Treasurer when the majority of members left to form the Central National Society for Women's Suffrage. However, in 1893 she became one of the leading members of the Special Appeal Committee that was formed to repair the divisions in the movement. On the 19 Oct 1896 she was asked to preside over the joint meetings of the suffrage societies, which resulted in the geographical division of the country and the formation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She was appointed as the honorary secretary of the Central and Eastern Society that year and became a member of the parliamentary committee of the NUWSS itself. It was not until the parent group's reorganisation in 1907 that she was elected president of the National Union, a position that she would retain until 1919. By 1901, she was already eminent enough to be one of the first women appointed to sit on a Commission of Inquiry into the concentration camps created for Boer civilians by the British during the Boer War. Despite this, her work for suffrage never slackened and she was one of the leaders of the Mud March held in Feb 1907 as well as of the NUWSS procession from Embankment to the Albert Hall in Jun 1908. She became one of the Fighting Fund Committee in 1912 and managed the aftermath of the introduction of the policy, in particular during the North West Durham by-election in 1914, when other members opposed a step that effectively meant supporting the Labour Party when an anti-suffrage Liberal candidate was standing in a constituency. When the First World War broke out in Aug 1914, Fawcett called for the suspension of the NUWSS' political work and a change in activities to facilitate war work. This stance led to divisions in the organisation. The majority of its officers and ten of the executive committee resigned when she vetoed their attendance of a Women's Peace Congress in the Hague in 1915. However, she retained her position in the group. During the war, she also found time to become involved in the issue of women's social, political and educational status in India, an area in which she had become interested through her husband and retained after the conflict came to an end. She remained at the head of the NUWSS when the women's suffrage clause was added to the Representation of the People Act in 1918 and attended the Women's Peace Conference in Paris before lobbying the governments assembled there for the Peace Conference in 1919. She retired in Mar 1919 when the NUWSS became the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship but remained on its executive committee. She also continued her activities as the vice-president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, to which she had been elected in 1902, for another year. After this she became the Chair of the journal, the 'Women's Leader', and appointed a Dame of the British Empire in 1925. It was in that year that she resigned from both NUSEC and the newspaper's board after opposing the organisation's policy in support of family allowances. She remained active until the end of her life, undertaking a trip to the Far East with her sister Agnes only a short time before her death in 1929.

Frances May Greenup (1902-1998) was born in 1902, the daughter of George Tuckwell, a police constable. At the age of fourteen she began her training as a pupil teacher in Coleshill, Warwickshire. In 1922 she went on to study at St. Gabriel's College, Camberwell, London. Once qualified she took up a teaching post in Tottenham. Two years later, in 1926, she married the artist Joseph Greenup (1891-1946). He had been educated at the Birmingham School of Art, South Kensington College of Art and at the Royal Academy School and he worked as an illustrator for newspapers, books and periodicals and as a portrait painter. In the 1930s May also took up painting and was elected to the Royal Institute of Water Colourists. In 1940 she joined the Auxiliary Ambulance Service as a driver and was promoted to Station Officer at 39 Weymouth Mews, London. Joseph died in 1946 and after his death May left London to live in the Cotswolds and then in Cardiganshire with her friend Elizabeth Bridge (1912-1996), also an artist, and continued to teach and to paint. She died in 1998.

Margaret Heitland (1860-1938) was born in 1860, the daughter of the Rev WH Bateson DD, Master of St John, College, Cambridge University, and his wife Anna Aitkin. Margaret was educated at Highfield School, Hendon and in Heidelberg, Germany. She and her two sisters, Anna and Mary Bateson were involved with the women's suffrage movement alongside their mother. When the Cambridge Women's Suffrage Association was formed in 1884, Margaret Bateson was appointed the first honorary assistant Secretary. However, her main interest was journalism and she entered the profession in 1886. Two years later she began working for the Queen magazine, where she remained for most of her career. In Jan 1888 she organised a campaign of meetings in various towns for the Women's Suffrage Society and in 1895 she was editor of a collection of interviews, which was published under the title of 'Professional Women upon their Professions'. She married William Emmerton Heitland MA, Fellow of St John's College, in Jul 1901 but continued her work after this time and was elected to the executive committee of the Cambridge Association of Women's Suffrage the following year. She supported the Association financially, paying the costs of a Secretary for seven months in 1905. In Dec 1908 she was asked to speak at a private meeting in Bedford which led to the founding of the Bedford Society for Women's Suffrage. It was in Bedford in 1912 that she also spoke to members of the local branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in support of the national organisation's Election Fighting Fund which was aimed at supporting Labour Party candidates in seats where an anti-suffrage Liberal candidate was standing. By 1913 she was the president of the Cambridge Women's Suffrage Association, a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Executive committee and vice president of the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women, which she had helped to found and on whose behalf she had lectured on women's employment since 1906. In 1920, Heitland was a member of the standing committee of the Cambridge branch of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. She died in 1938.

Mary Henrietta Kingsley (1862-1900) was the daughter of George Henry Kingsley (1827-1892) and Mary Bailey and the niece of Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), she became known as an explorer, ethnologist and travel writer. After the death of her parents Mary Kingsley went to West Africa for six months in 1893, aged 31. She returned there in 1894, staying for a year and working as a trader. Whilst there she discovered a new genus of fish, six new species, an unknown snake and a rare lizard. Mary Kingsley donated pickled specimens of these to the British Museum. She lectured widely and wrote on her travels. Her most famous works include Travels in West Africa (1897), West African Studies (1899) and The Story of West Africa (1899). She worked as a nurse during the Boer War, departing for South Africa in Mar 1900 but dying in Jun 1900 of a fever contracted whilst nursing Boer prisoners of war. Mary Kingsley is known to have deliberately distanced herself from the women's movement and to have adopted a conservative position with regard to questions of equality, opposing, for example, the admission of women to learned societies. On 27 Feb 1900, in one of her last public engagements before leaving the country, Mary Kingsley participated in a debate on women's suffrage. This is recorded in a letter which she wrote to Sir Matthew Nathan: 'I have been opposing women having the parliamentary vote this afternoon and have had a grand time of it and have been called an idealist and had poetry slung at me in chunks. Argument was impossible so I offered to fight the secretary in the back yard but she would not so you can all write me down impracticable.'

Marjorie Hayward (1905-1974) was born in 1905 and attended Maida Vale High School before working with the Federation of British Industries as a typist. From 1928-1930 she was the London Correspondent of the Commercial Bulletin of South Africa and later moved to the press office of ICI. She remained in this position for 11 years undertaking promotional work on dyes and agricultural products across Europe and introducing the zip to the designer Schiaparelli on a visit to Paris in the late 1930s. In 1940, at the start of the Second World War, she left ICI to work in the Ministry of Labour Headquarters. There, she became involved with a survey of woman-power available to industry in 1942, undertaking fieldwork and interviews at labour exchanges. This work for the SE1 Department resulted in a report co-written with Isabel Harrison and KD Matheson, highlighting the lack of involvement of married women with children and their failure to return to industry as the government had requested that year. After this and until the end of the war, she remained involved with the Employment Planning Committee at the Ministry where she stayed until 1959. During this time, she also became involved with Business & Professional Women's Clubs, sitting on its Employment Conditions Standing Committee in the post-war period. After her time at the Ministry, she became involved in film production, making a number of art-related films that were distributed by the British Council. In 1963 she joined with Audrey Mitchell and Don Pavey to form Hayward, Mitchell and Pavey Limited, a firm of colour practitioners that wrote, photographed and produced five filmstrips on colour for educational use. The company was also involved in creating colour schemes for buildings and making decorative features as well as writing a series of training courses on the business use of colour and design. Hayward was awarded an OBE. She died in 1974.

Margaret Judith Smieton (fl 1919-1925) decided to study for the newly instituted BSc in Horticulture in 1919. However, admission to the course was complicated by the need to obtain other qualifications and apply for grants to take up places on these courses. Her mother undertook an extensive correspondence with the University of London between 1919-1922 to ascertain available types and scope of horticultural degree courses, qualifications for grants, terms of admission etc. Consequently, in 1923, Smieton obtained a Diploma from the Horticultural College in Swanley, and went on to take Parts 1 and 2 of the Final Degree course for the BSc in 1924-1925.

Melanie Manchot (1966-fl 2002) was born in Witten, Germany and was a student at New York University (1988 -1989) before going on to study at the Royal College of Art in London (1990-1992) where she received a Master of Fine Art in Photography. She undertook a series of exhibitions including: 'Look at you loving me' shown at the Zelda Cheatle Gallery, London (1998) as well as at the Poster Project, Bucknell University, USA and Galerie Fiebig, Berlin (1999); 'Intimate Distance' at the Fotogallery, Cardiff, (2000); and 'Just one kiss?' at the Rhodes + Mann Gallery, London and the Fotogalerie in der Feuerwache, Mannheim, Germany (2001) as well as at the Cornerhouse Manchester, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon, USA and the Staedtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany (2002). Her work was been published as a number of monographs: 'Love is a stranger' (Prestel Verlag: Munich, 2001), 'Look at you loving me' (Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag: Basel, 1998) and 'Vile Bodies' (Prestel Verlag: Munich, 1998). She regularly worked on pieces of public and commercial art. She was nominated for the 1996 Citibank Photography Prize and won the Fuji Award in 1992. She also lectured at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design, Central St Martins School of Art and Middlesex University.

May Morris (1862-1938) was born on the 25 Mar 1862, christened 'Mary', and was the younger of William and Jane Morris's two daughters. Both she and her sister Jenny were accomplished embroiderers - taught by their mother and by their aunt, Bessie Burden - and in 1885 May took over the direction of Morris and Co.'s embroidery department. She also actively assisted her father in promoting the cause of Socialism in the 1880s and 90s. At the turn of the century she taught embroidery at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and at Birmingham's Municipal School of Art, becoming a leading figure in the (mainly male-dominated) Arts and Crafts Movement. Morris was an accomplished Embroiderer, jeweller, and fabric designer; she was also the first President of Women's Guild of Art (founded 1907). Her Introductions to The Collected Works of William Morris, 24 volumes edited by her and published between 1910 and 1915, contain many illuminating details of Morris's career and his family life.

Mollie Prendergast (1907-fl 1977) was born in 1907, in Hallthwaites, Cumberland, the daughter of George Shaw, a farm labourer and Mary Shuttleworth. She grew up near Boughton in Furness, Lancashire. Mollie left school in 1920 and went into service in Ambleside and later at Malton in Yorkshire. She then moved to London and held several positions there. In 1928 she married Wesley Packham, a chauffeur and subsequently gave up work. During the Second World War she joined the ARP and trained with the St. John's Ambulance Brigade. In 1942 she joined the Communist Party. During the War she also took evening classes and went to work as a clerk in the insurance conglomeration Amalgamated Approved Societies that became part of the Ministry of National Insurance after the War. She was amongst the first tourists to visit East Germany after the War and she also travelled to Switzerland, Austria, Spain, France, Australia, Czechoslovakia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Her husband died in 1951. After this Mollie Prendergast became involved in political action in health and housing, especially locally in Marylebone and St. John's Wood, and went on political marches and demonstrations, including with CND. In 1958 she married for a second time, to Jim Prendergast, a railway guard at Marylebone Station. He died in 1974. Mollie then became secretary to Joan Maynard MP, a position from which she retired in 1977.

Millie Browne (fl.1881-1918) (later Millie Braine Price) was born on Christmas Day, 25 Dec 1881, in London. She was the daughter of the baritone Walter Browne and his wife. Mrs Browne left her husband around 1884 and moved to York where her daughter grew up and went to Castlegate College. In 1895 her mother inherited a sum of money and was able to both divorce her husband and send her daughter to the Priory Street School, here the younger Browne became a pupil-teacher. A Quaker, from around this time, she became involved with the Labour movement and attended a number of meetings before being awarded a Queen's Scholarship. Failing to enter Stockwell College, she attended Swansea Training College until 1902. Thereafter she became a teacher at a number of schools in Leeds before moving back to York in 1904 where she also taught at the Seacroft School for a time. It was during a visit to London in 1907 that she heard speeches given by members of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Hyde Park and quickly became a member of the organisation. In Aug 1907 she was posted to Bristol to work on a suffrage campaign there with Annie Kenney and work in the suffrage shop in the town. She was offered a position as a WSPU organiser that she rejected before returning to her mother's home in Letchworth where she also campaigned. The following Aug 1908 she returned to Bristol to continue her activities. She took part in a series of parades in London and was arrested in one particular raid on the Houses of Parliament. She went on to be posted to Derbyshire during a by-election and to Llandudno and Southport as a helper before her activities tailed off as she became both concerned about the increasing violence of the methods used by the group and more interested in the work of the Labour Party. She went on to marry Charles Price, the son of the famous jeweller, and continued to attend local meetings of the WSPU until the outbreak of the First World War. Since she and her husband had become Quakers, she spent the war teaching while he became a conscientious objector and was posted to a hospital unit in Belgium. The fate of both after the war is unknown.

Mahduri R Kothari (1919-1985) was born in 1919 in Ranpur in Gujarat, India. She married Ratilal D Shah in 1936 and had two sons, Rajat and Gautam, who she brought up while continuing her studies and beginning her academic career. She was active in the field of education and research for over 40 years and published widely in the fields of educational administration and finance as well as psychology, testing and testing evaluation. She was also involved in work on mathematics, language learning, as well as continuing and special education. Towards the end of her life she became involved with the World Education Fellowship and was its president at the time of her death in 1985.

Myra Eleanor Sadd Brown (1872-1938) was born in Maldon, Essex on 3 Oct 1872. Her parents were John Granger Sadd and Mary Ann Price and she was the tenth of eleven children. The family operated a firm of timber merchants and processors in the hometown of Maldon. Myra Sadd received a private education at a school in Colchester. She met Ernest Brown through her interest in cycling; they were married in 1896. The couple moved to Finsbury Park in London, and then to Hampstead. Myra and Ernest had three daughters and one son. Due to the commercial success of her husband's business Myra was provided with independent means. Myra was raised within a Congregationalist environment; later becoming a Christian Scientist. She was interested in artistic pursuits and avidly enjoyed Shaw's plays. Myra is particularly renowned for being a feminist. It is believed that prior to her marriage she purchased a small property giving her, as a ratepayer, the right to vote. In Hackney, Myra served as a Poor Law Guardian. Furthermore, she was a committed supporter of the women's suffrage movement; being a member of the Women's Social & Political Union. In 1912, Myra was arrested and imprisoned; she went on hunger strike and endured forcible feeding. Myra wrote a great deal on behalf of the suffrage cause; the 'Christian Commonwealth' being one such periodical which published her letters. Later, she became associated with Sylvia Pankhurst's East London Federation of Suffragettes, inviting East London women, travelling by bus, to visit her home near Maldon. Following WWI, Myra became an active member of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (later known as the International Alliance of Women). She travelled widely throughout Europe attending conferences. This activity allowed her to indulge her interest in other cultures and countries, as did her periods of wintering in Italy and Egypt with her husband Ernest. Although Myra herself did not speak a foreign language, she insisted that her children should study French and German. The emerging Commonwealth became another area of interest to Myra. From 1923 she had been involved in meetings, which culminated in the formation of the British Commonwealth League (later the Commonwealth Countries League) in 1925. It was a feminist organisation devoted to the upholding of women's rights in the Commonwealth of which Myra became its Treasurer. In 1931 Ernest died of rheumatic heart disease. In 1937 Myra visited South-East Asia where she was present for the birth of her second grandchild. She then extended the tour to visit Angkor Wat and the Malaysian islands. Myra continued her journey to Hong Kong, planning to return via the Trans-Siberian railway. However, she suffered a stroke and died in Hong Kong on 13 Apr 1938. The British Commonwealth League established the Sadd Brown Library of material on women in the Commonwealth as a memorial to her. It was placed in the Women's Service Library, now The Women's Library. Myra's interest in the Commonwealth Countries League, and the International Alliance of Women, has been continued first by her daughter Myra Stedman, and subsequently by Lady Diana Dollery, her granddaughter, both of whom have been closely involved in the development of the Sadd Brown Library.

Mary Sheepshanks was born in Liverpool in 1872, one of fourteen children. Her father, the Rev Sheepshanks, was a Church of England vicar who, in 1890, became the Bishop of Norwich. She attended the Liverpool High School until she was seventeen and then was sent to Germany for a year before returning to attend Newnham College, Cambridge in 1892. On graduation, Sheepshanks became involved in social work in Southwark for the Women's University Settlement for two years. She continued this work in Stepney before becoming the Vice Principal, then Principal, of the Morley Memorial College for Working Men and Women in 1897. In 1907 she asked Emmeline Pankhurst to give a lecture on women's suffrage at the College and began the practice of organising women-only meetings for female students as well as holding college debates and lectures on the topic. In 1908 she attended the International Woman Suffrage Association congress which took place in Holland and by 1913 had been asked to undertake a lecture tour of Western and Central Europe for the organisation. This culminated in her attendance at the IWSA's 1913 meeting in Budapest, where she was asked to become the IWSA's secretary in London and where she also edited its journal, 'Jus Sufragii'.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Sheepshanks maintained a pacifist stance while the major suffrage societies undertook war work despite, a few months before, having worked with her on the International Manifesto of Women and the demonstrations for peace in August 1914. In October, she was the one who signed an editorial in Jus Suffragii entitled 'Patriotism or Internationalism' which attacked the war. However, when Belgium was overrun, she organised aid to Belgian refugees and helped stranded German women find safe refuges through her International Women's Relief Committee. Through her editorship, Jus Suffragii maintained a strictly neutral position throughout the conflict while attacking the war itself. This led her into difficulties that came to head over the International Women's Peace Conference held in The Hague in 1915 and which caused a damaging split within the suffrage movement. Like many, Sheepshanks applied for a passport to attend but was unable to attend due to the closure of the North Sea shipping lanes. Instead, Sheepshanks concentrated on the question of post-war reconstruction, working with the Union of Democratic Control and celebrated the coming of the Russian Revolution in 1917 in the pages of Jus Suffragii. However, after the end of the war, Sheepshanks resigned from its editorship and became the secretary of the Fight the Famine Council, lobbying the League of Nations meting at Geneva on its behalf in 1920. She also became a member of the British executive committee of the Women's International League at this time. They following year she took a holiday to South America and studied the economic and social conditions in the area, returning to Europe via the United States.

In 1927, Sheepshanks became the International Secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at their office in Geneva, monitoring the cases of political prisoners and attending meetings of the League of Nations Council on its behalf. In September 1928 she led a deputation of the WILPF to the Secretariat of the League to present a memorandum on disarmament before organising a conference on the use of modern chemical weapons and their use against civilian s in Frankfurt-am-Maine the following January. In September 1930 she organised a conference on statelessness attended by the International Council of Women, the Society of Friends, the International Suffrage Alliance, the League of Rights for Man and the League of Nations Union. However, she resigned from the post in December due to disagreements over policy between her and the more left-wing French and German members of the Executive Council. However, she remained a member and was commissioned in November of that year to carry out a fact-finding mission alongside Helen Oppenheimer to East Galicia and Poland to investigate reports of atrocities carried out by the government. Here she carried out covert interviews before reporting back and publicising their finding throughout Europe.

She moved back to London in 1932 where, two years later, she became interested in the question of the status of women and created a report on the admission of omen to the diplomatic and consular services. During the 1930s, Sheepshanks became involved with organising relief for child victims of the Spanish Civil War and her home became a safe-house for refugees. During the Second World War, she renounced her pacifism in the face of the threat of Nazism, gave English classes and discussion groups for female refugees and was employed as a German translator by the BBC. Chronic arthritis, blindness and the need to undergo an operation for cancer blighted her later years and it was as a form of therapy that her doctor suggested to her that, at the age of 83, she might write her still unpublished autobiography. She died in 1958.

Norman Ian Mackenzie (1921-fl 1986) was born in London, 1921. In 1958 Norman was commissioned by the Social Science Research Council of Australia in Canberra, as a British Scholar to conduct 2 year pioneering survey of the status, social and political roles of women in Australia. Published as Women in Australia (1962). Subsequent and revised editions entitled Women in Society. Upon his return to Britain c 1963 he joined the University of Sussex where he remained until c 1983. He married Jeanne Sampson (?-1986), writer and manuscripts editor; they had two daughters. Together with Jeanne, Norman MacKenzie wrote and edited several biographies including HG Wells, Charles Dickens, and Beatrice Webb.

Florence Priscilla Norman (1883-1964) (nee McLaren) was the daughter of the 1st Baron Aberconway and sister of the Liberal politicians Henry D McLaren and Francis McLaren. In 1907 Priscilla McLaren became the second wife of Sir Henry Norman, also a Liberal MP. Both the McLaren and the Norman families were strong supporters of the women's suffrage movement. Priscilla herself was an enthusiastic suffragist, though not a militant, and before the war held the post of Hon Treasurer of the Liberal Women's Suffrage Union. When hostilities broke out in 1914 she and her husband ran a small voluntary hospital at Wimereux, in northern France. She was awarded a CBE for her war services. After the founding of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in 1917 she became Chair of its Women's Work Subcommittee, responsible for recording the work of women during the war: the large Women's Work Collection held by the Museum is her committee's legacy. Norman remained a Trustee of the IWM for over 40 years, and was an active member of many other organisations, notably the League of Nations and the National Adoption Society. She was also interested in mental health issues and was the first woman to be appointed to the board of management of the Royal Earlswood Institution in 1926. During the Second World War Norman joined the Women's Voluntary Service, driving a mobile canteen in London through air raids. She died in 1964 at the Château de Garoupe, her home in Antibes, France.

Olive Chandler (fl 1945) appears to have had an interest in several women's groups in the period at the end of the Second World War. She apparently contacted both the National Council of Women and the National Federation of Women's Institutes to gain more information about their structures and their aims before collecting the material that they, in turn, sent her.

Octavia Margaret Wilberforce (1888-1963) was born in Lavington in Sussex on 8 Jan 1888, the daughter of Reginald and Anna Wilberforce who was granddaughter of William Wilberforce. In Jul 1909, the young women had become friends with Elizabeth Robins, the suffrage campaigner who would become her companion for a number of years. When a maid became ill in 1910, it was suggested that she took her to see Louisa Martindale, one of the doctors at Brighton County Hospital. The meeting influenced her decision to become a doctor herself, a step that was opposed by her parents. Her father arranged for her instead to marry Charles Buxton, the eldest son of Lord Buxton. Octavia refused and was struck from his will but Robins offered to help fund the course, as did Lord Buxton. In 1913 Wilberforce entered the London School of Medicine after studying privately for the entrance examinations, later moving to Dublin to continue the work. She returned to London and treated British casualties at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington until the end of the war. After this Wilberforce returned to Brighton and opened a medical practice there at Montpelier Crescent. Additionally, she became active in the campaign run by Elizabeth Robins and Dr Louisa Martindale to install a new women's hospital in Brighton that would be named the New Sussex Hospital. She was one of three visiting doctors before later being appointed the hospital's head physician. She, Elizabeth Robins and Marjorie Hubert also helped set up a convalescent home at Backsettown, Henfield, in Robins's country home for overworked professional women in 1927. During the Second World War, she came to know Leonard and Virginia Woolf and was asked for medical advice during the writer's last illness. Octavia Wilberforce officially retired from the New Sussex Hospital in 1954, but she continued to work on Sussex County Council and at Backsettown until her death in 1963.

Pat Caplan (fl 1970-) studied Swahili and anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She became an ethnographic expert on Mafia, an island off the coast of Tanzania, and also worked in Nepal, Madras and Britain. Pat Caplan was one of the founding members of the Anthropology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, which she joined as a lecturer in 1977. She became Professor of Anthropology in 1989 and continued to teach until 2003. She is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. She was also Director of the University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies 1998-2000 and Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth 1997-2001. Her interests have included gender and social inequality; sexuality; kinship; food, health and risk; reflexivity and anthropological ethics; social justice and human rights. She has carried out fieldwork on Mafia Island, Tanzania since 1965, Chennai (Madras) since 1974, and West Wales since 1992. She has authored five books and edited or co-edited six others, as well as writing numerous articles, both academic and non-academic; she has also produced a video and website (both about Mafia Island), a digital data archive about food and health, and an archive on her Nepal research. Caplan became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in the early 1970s, being a member of several local reading and consciousness-raising groups in north London. She also worked as a volunteer for two days a week at the Women's Research and Resources Centre (WRRC) in the mid 1970s, when it was still located in its first home at the Richardson Institute in Gower Street. Pat was a member of the (General) Collective and of the Publications Collective. Like many women academics at the time, Pat initially found it difficult to obtain a full-time university job. Many female academics held only part-time or temporary posts and this was often the experience of members of the WRRC. Pat attended the National Women's conferences held throughout the 1970s, and also conferences in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s concerning the teaching of women's studies (mainly in universities). As an academic she has remained active in feminism, and has taught a number of courses on women and gender as well as carrying out research in this area. She is currently a Trustee of the development charity Action Aid, and has responsibility on the Board for women's rights.

Philippa Strachey (1872-1968), known as Pippa, was born in 1872 to Lady Jane Maria Strachey and Major Richard Strachey. She was brought up first in India, where her father was a leading figure in the administration, and then in London, where the family moved in 1879. Her mother was active in the movement for women's suffrage and both Philippa and her siblings were encouraged to contribute to this work. In 1906 she became a member of the executive committee of the Central Society for Women's Suffrage and the following year she was elected the secretary of its successor the London Society for Women's Suffrage. In 1906 she joined the London Society for Women's Suffrage, succeeding Edith Palliser as secretary the following year. It was also in 1907 that she joined her mother Lady Jane Maria Strachey in organising what became known as the 'Mud March' at the instigation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and which went from Hyde Park to the Exeter Hall to demand the vote. During the First World War she was deeply involved in various war works, from being the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau for War Workers to participating as a member of the Committee for the London units of the Scottish Women's Hospital from 1914-1919. This war work began her lasting involvement with the issue of women's employment and she remained the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau after 1918 when it became concerned with helping women thrown out of jobs on the return of men from the Front. She remained there until its dissolution, which came in 1922, caused by a financial crisis in the parent organisation. However, subsequently Strachey helped to found a new group to fill the gap, becoming the secretary and then honorary secretary of the Women's Employment Federation. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, family problems took up much of her time as she nursed both her mother and her brother Lytton until their deaths. However, all through this time she remained active in the London Society for Women's Service and when it was renamed the Fawcett Society in 1951, she was asked to be its honorary secretary. It was that year that she was awarded the CBE for her work for women. She subsequently was made a governor of Bedford College. Increasing ill-health slowed the pace of her work and blindness finally forced her to enter a nursing home at the end of her life. She died in 1968.

Nina Popplewell (1890-1979) took the Social Science Certificate Course at London School of Economics (LSE) (1913-1914) and gained a Bsc Econ in sociology / social psychology in 1916. She was Professor Hobhouse's sole honours student and contemporary with Mary Stocks, Lord Piercy and Sir Theo Gregory. She was tutored by Clement Attlee and taught by Sidney Webb. After hearing a speech by Mrs Pankhurst in 1911, she began work at the offices of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Lincoln's Inn Fields, sorting letters, making tea and helping at fund-raising bazaars. She started her career by undertaking care committee work in Whitechapel and Stepney and became Vice-Chair of Stepney Juvenile Advisory Committee and a member of the main Employment Committee. Following her degree she worked at the Trade Boards as an assistant secretary and was the only woman on the staff. After five years in post, she was compelled to retire on her marriage to Frank Popplewell, although she was able to return for a year at the end of the First World War. She was later Secretary of the Equal Pay Campaign Committee and active in the National Council of Women and the Fawcett Society. Nina Popplewell was a volunteer in the Fawcett Library and as a lover of cricket.

Dr Patricia Shaw (fl 1948-1965) was employed by the Boots Pure Drug Company and investigated the health of shopworkers.

See the history of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (United Kingdom section); c 1929-fl 1993

Roxane Arnold (fl 1950-1993) was a member of the Six Point Group and Treasurer of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (UK section).

The International Federation of Women Lawyers (c 1929-fl 1993) was established in 1929 in Paris by a group of European women lawyers. Their aim was to improve the status of women in the legal profession and to foster social networks. The Federation developed national groups across the world, including a United Kingdom (UK) section, with the international headquarters remaining in Paris. By the 1990s the Federation also worked to support implementation of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. The UK section held seminars and social events and members attended international congresses and conferences.

Ruth Mary Cavendish-Bentinck (1867-1953) was born Ruth St Maur in Tangiers in 1867. She was the illegitimate daughter of Viscount Ferdinand St Maur, the eldest son of the Duke of Somerset, and a half-gypsy kitchen maid. Her father died in 1869 and her mother went on to marry. Consequently the Duke and Duchess of Somerset raised the child themselves and Ruth was brought up in the English aristocracy. She was brought up within the family home and on her grandmother's death was left an endowment of £80,000. Despite this, by 1887, she was already a committed Fabian Socialist. She energetically supported the cause of socialism, and later that of women's suffrage, throughout her life. In 1887 she married Frederick Cavendish-Bentinck, the grandson of Lord Frederick Bentinck, who was himself a rich man until the death of his father, who left the couple was considerable inherited debts to pay off. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1909 and the Fabian Women's Group the following year, when she also published The Point Of Honour: A Correspondence On Aristocracy And Socialism. She become part of the Fabian suffrage unit in 1912 and was able to use her social connections for political ends: for instance, she was able to persuade Bernard Shaw to intervene to have Gladys Evans released from prison in Dublin. That same year she was an organiser of the Women's March from Edinburgh to London and went on to become the secretary of the 'Qui Vive Corps'. However, like a number of members of the WSPU, she became alarmed at the rightward drift of the group and its increasingly violent tactics under the Pankhursts. Therefore, 1912 was also the year when she left the group for the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She was one of the first members of the Election Fighting Fund Committee that promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal. This in effect meant the NUWSS supporting the Labour Party in elections. While this disturbed many NUWSS members, it was fully supported by Cavendish-Bentinck who, on behalf of the Fabian Women's Group, approached the other members of the 'Qui Vive Corps' to start a propaganda campaign amongst the miners of Staffordshire and Derbyshire around this time. In 1913 she took on more activities, becoming an organiser of the Northern Men's Federation for Women's Suffrage and the following year published an article in the 'Women's Dreadnought'. By 1917 she had become a member of the executive committee of the United Suffragists. The main work for which she is remembered is the creation in 1909 of a subscription library of feminist materials open for the use of any individuals working for women's suffrage. She remained actively involved when the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies took it over, along with the Edward Wright Library, in 1918 and it became one of the core collections of the Women's Service Library (now the Women's Library) when it was gifted to them in 1931. Ruth Cavendish-Bentinck died in 1953.

Rose Lamartine Yates (1875-1954) was born in Brixton in 1875 to French parents. She studied at Clapham and Truro High Schools, at Kassel and finally at the Sorbonne. Yates studied modern languages at Royal Holloway College in 1896, but did not complete the course, though she did pass the Oxford final honours examination in modern languages and philology. She met her husband, Tom Lamartine Yates, a solicitor, through the Cyclists Touring Club in 1900. In 1907, Rose was elected as its first woman member, stating during the election process that she was not a suffragette. In 1909, she joined the committee of the Wimbledon branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), becoming its treasurer and organising secretary in 1910. The Wimbledon branch of the WSPU were renowned for their militant suffrage campaigns. Yates took the step of maintaining her right of free speech on Wimbledon Common after the Home Secretary attempted to prevent public meetings being held in open spaces by drafting in 300 policemen. The start of the First World War saw the Wimbledon branch converting its offices into Distress Kitchens of which Rose was Treasurer. This was followed by the opening of another soup kitchen in Merton. After the fragmentation of the WSPU, Yates became a committee member of a new organisation 'Suffragettes of the WSPU'. Yates was responsible, together with Una Dugdale Duval, for establishing the Suffragette Record Room that opened in 1939.

See the biography for Billinghurst; Rosa May (1875-1953); suffragette

Rosa May Billinghurst (1875-1953) was born in Lewisham in 1875. As a child she suffered total paralysis that left her disabled throughout her adult life. However, this did not prevent her becoming active in social work in a Greenwich workhouse, teaching in a Sunday school and joining the Band of Hope. She was also politically active in the Women's Liberal Association before becoming a member of the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) in 1907. She took part in the WSPU's march to the Albert Hall in Jun 1908 and also helped run the group's action in the Haggerston by-election the following month. Two years later, she founded and was the first secretary of the Greenwich branch of the WSPU and that same year she took part in the 'Black Friday' demonstrations where she was thrown out of her adapted tricycle and arrested. She was arrested several more times in the next few years culminating in a sentence of eight months for damage to letterboxes ('pillar box arson') and imprisoned in Holloway Prison. She went on hunger strike and was force-fed with other suffragettes. The experience led her to be released two weeks later on grounds of ill health. She was able to speak at a public meeting in West Hampstead in Mar 1913 and took part in the funeral procession of Emily Wilding Davison two months later.

She supported Christabel Pankhurst's campaign to be elected in Smethwick in 1918 and the friendship with the Pankhursts seems to have survived into the 1920s. However, she later joined the Women's Freedom League and became part of the Suffragette Fellowship. She lived for some time with her brother Henry Billinghurst, an artist, and spent the last years of her life in Weybridge, Surrey. She died on the 4 Sep 1953.

In Jan 1975 Ross Davies, then working on The Times, began to collect material for a biography of Margaret Bondfield, and, in 1978, having written to various individuals and asked for further information in the New Statesman, he spoke on his 'search for the real Margaret Bondfield' on radio's Women's Hour.

Margaret Grace Bondfield (1873-1953) was born to William Bondfield and Anne Taylor in 1873. Her education ended with elementary school and her first job was as a pupil teacher at Chard Elementary School in 1886. She subsequently became a shop assistant in Briton in 1887 where she became acquainted with Louisa Martindale who encouraged her to continue her education. In 1894 she moved to London to live with her brother Frank and there found similar employment and soon became active in the Shoe Assistants' Union as well as the Fabian Society. There she also joined the Idealists' Club and met prominent radicals such as George Bernard Shaw and began writing articles for the publication The Shop Assistant under the name of Grace Dare. In 1896, she was asked by Clementina Black of the Women's Industrial Council to carry out an investigation into the pay and conditions of shop workers and the report was published two years later. After this work she became recognised as Britain's leading expert on shop workers, giving evidence to the Select Committee on Shops in 1902 and to the Select Committee on the Truck System in 1907. In 1908, Bondfield resigned from the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants and Warehousemen and Clerks where she had been assistant secretary since 1898, to become the secretary of the Women's Labour League. In 1910 she assisted the WIC's inquiry into the pay of married women before being asked by the Liberal Government to serve on the Advisory Committee on the Health Insurance Bill. Her influence led to the inclusion of maternity benefits to be paid to the mother in the final bill of the WCG on creating legislation for a minimum wage. Between 1912 and 1915, she also worked for the Women's Trades Union League and the National Federation of Women Workers as well as with Women's Co-operative Guild in its campaign for minimum wage legislation as well as improvement in child welfare. A member of the Independent Labour Party, she was also interested in the issue of women's suffrage, but unlike many in the area refused to accept a franchise that was to be extended only to certain categories of women drawn from certain classes of society, excluding the working classes from the right to vote. Consequently, she became Chair of the Adult Suffrage Society. Due to her religious beliefs, when the First World War broke out, she was equally opposed to the pro-war stance taken by both the Women's Social and Political Union and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Instead, she spoke at a pacifist rally in Trafalgar Square in 1914, then joined the UDC and the Women's Peace Crusade. In 1916, she was one of the founders of the Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women's Organisations and was a delegate at the International Labour and Socialist Conference in Berne in 1918. After the war, her activities increased once more: she became the Chair of the Women's International Council of Socialist and Labour Organisations as well as being the first female member of the TUC's Parliamentary Committee in 1918. Her involvement with the TUC was close, becoming a member of the General Council from 1918-1924 and then again from 1926 to 1929. In 1920 she was the joint representative of the Labour party and the TUC sent her to the USSR and there she met Lenin. She contested the seat of Northampton in 1920 and then again in 1922, finally being elected to the House of Commons in 1923 as Labour MP for the city. In her first year in the house, she was appointed to the Labour Government's Emergency Committee on Unemployment and the following year was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labour. It was this seat in the cabinet that Bondfield herself took in 1929 as the MP for Wallsend, becoming the first female British minister. However, during the heart of the Depression in 1931, many in the feminist and labour movements attacked Bondfield when she supported a government policy that would deprive some married women of unemployment benefit. That same year, she lost her seat at the general election after losing support from her constituency for taking this step and though she contested it once more in 1935, she was never returned to parliament again. Her continued involvement in politics was done through work as an activist. In the late 1930's she travelled to the United States of America and Mexico to study labour conditions before returning to become the Vice President of the National Council of Social Services. During the Second World War, she was chair of the Women's Group on Public Welfare as well as undertaking a lecture tour of Canada and the USA for the British Information Services between 1941 and 1943. She was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1948, before retiring to a nursing home in Surrey where she died in 1953.

Rachel Pinney was born 11th July 1909, the daughter of a Major-General. She obtained a medical degree and practiced as a GP until 1961. On leaving the medical profession, Rachel contacted Dr. Margaret Lowenfeld, the distinguished child therapist. Rachel learnt her methods but never trained formally. This period resulted in the pioneering of her 'methods for conflict understanding' which she called Creative Listening, and Children's Hours, the former incorporated as a limited company in 1967. These techniques were widely used by experts working therapeutically with children. In 1977 Rachel went to New York and treated a four year old boy suffering from autism. This resulted in her publication 'Bobby, Breakthrough of an Autistic Child' (1983). Rachel was briefly married to Luigi Coccuzzi with whom she had one daughter and two sons. She was a member of CND from 1961 and openly declared herself a lesbian in 1989. She died 19th October 1995 aged 86.

St Clair Denham (1853-) was born into an Anglo-Irish family in 1853 and later married Walter Mallaby Townsend (brother to the arts and crafts architect, Charles Harrison Townsend who was responsible for the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Harrison Museum and the Bishopsgate Library). Walter Townsend was employed by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company but was a frustrated actor and playwright and took to drink. After losing his job with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, he, his wife and their second daughter returned to England and ran a marble mine in Stanhope Northumbria. Any further biographical history becomes quite difficult to find; though at some time St Clair took up an interest in the political issues of the day it is apparent that she was anti-socialist and opposed the militant suffragettes. St Clair acted as local President of the Women's Unionist Association Stanhope branch.

Shena Potter (1883-1972), later Lady Simon of Wythenshawe, was born 21 Oct 1883, to John Wilson Potter and Jane Boyd Potter. She was privately educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and graduated in Economics, gaining an MA. Later she became an Associate of Newnham College. Her post-graduate studies took her to the London School of Economics. In 1911 Shena Simon became an active secretary of a committee for safeguarding women's rights under Lloyd George's insurance bill. In 1912 Shena married Sir Ernest Darwin Simon with whom she had two sons. Shena Simon was responsible for founding 'The Women Citizens' Association' a local branch of the National Women Citizens' Association, whilst in 1921 she became Lady Mayoress of Manchester. It was during her tenure that she made mayoral history by refusing to grace a function at St Mary's Hospital for Women because no women served on either the Board or with the medical staff. Her professional postings included Member of Manchester City Council 1924-1933, Member of the Royal Committee on Licensing 1929, Member of Estate Council 1931-1933. Shena Simon was the first woman to hold the office of Chair of Education Committee 1932-1933 and from 1933 she was actively involved in the Spens Report on aspects of secondary education. Also in 1933 Lady Simon was voted off the council by the Conservatives due to a disagreement. From 1935 onwards, Lady Simon became a member of the Labour Party and a member of the Departmental Committee on Valuation of Dwelling Houses in 1938. In the following year Lady Simon published A Hundred Years of City Government, Manchester 1838-1938 as well as various pamphlets on education. Lady Simon was prominent in proposing free secondary education, which was refused in 1939. However, her proposals were later used by RA Butler in preparation for his 1944 Act. Lady Simon then spent seven years as Chair of the Further Education Sub-Committee. She also stood as Chair of the Workers Educational Associations' Educational Advisory Committee in 1946 and became an Honorary Freeman of Manchester in 1964. She died 17 Jul 1972.

Sheila Rowbotham (1943-) was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire in 1943 and attended St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford and then the University of London. Upon leaving university she began her career lecturing in Liberal Studies at Chelsea College of Advanced Technology and Tower Hamlets College of Further Education. She then worked for several years as an Extra Mural Lecturer for London University. Rowbotham's political activism began with her involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the British Labour Party's youth wing, the Young Socialists. Among her left-wing political activities was her work on the editorial board of the radical political paper 'Black Dwarf'. Towards the end of the 1960s she helped to start the Women's Liberation Movement. Active in the London Women's Liberation Workshop and a member of the Arsenal Group, Rowbotham was also involved in the campaign to unionise night cleaners, in the National Abortion Campaign (NAC) and in the National Child Care Campaign. In 1969 her influential pamphlet 'Women's Liberation and the New Politics' argued that Socialist theory needed to consider the oppression of women in cultural as well as economic terms. This was a key text in the emerging women's movement and she subsequently wrote an influential series of articles and books on this and related topics, including 'Woman, Resistance and Revolution' and 'Woman's Consciousness, Man's World' (both published in 1973). Also published in 1973 was 'Hidden from History: 300 years of Women's Oppression and the Fight against it' just one of her writings that contributed to the small group of historians who pioneered women's history. Rowbotham produced numerous books and articles expanding upon her theory, which argued that as women's oppression was a result of both economic and cultural forces then a dualist perspective (socialist feminism), which examine both the public and private sphere, was required to work towards liberation. She was a key organiser and author of the conference and book called Beyond the fragments: feminism and the making of socialism (London, Merlin Press, 1979), which attempted to draw together democratic socialist and socialist feminist currents in the UK. In 1981 she was appointed as a Visiting Professor in Women's Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Between 1983 and 1986 she worked as a research officer for the Greater London Council's Industry and Employment Department, producing a newspaper, 'Jobs for a Change', and contributing to the London Industrial Strategy. This led to an invitation to become Consultant Research Adviser for the Women's Programme, World Institute for Development Economics Research, (WIDER) at the United Nations University. She initiated a project which examined the conditions of poor women's casualised work internationally, involving activists and academics. This attracted interest among policy makers in Canada, Finland and India, and led to a project directed by Professor Swasti Mitter at UNU INTECH on women and technology. Between 1987 and 1989 she was also Course Tutor on the Women's Studies MA at the University of Kent and a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris VIII. This was followed by a Visiting Professorship in the Political Economy Department at Carleton University in 1993. Rowbotham moved to the University of Manchester as a Simon Research Fellow in 1993-1994, returning as a University Research Fellow in 1995, later becoming Professor of Gender and Labour History, Sociology. She lectured extensively in the North America, Brazil, Europe and India and her work was translated into many languages, including Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. A symposium on Rowbotham's historical work was organised at the American Historical Association in 1994 and has been the subject of various articles, essays and theses internationally. She was given an honorary doctorate by North London University (now London Metropolitan University) and in 2004 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. As at 2007 Rowbotham was on the Working Lives Centre Group at London Metropolitan University and the Workers' Institute Advisory Panel (Black Country Living Museum). In this period she continued to help groups involved with the organisation of home workers in Britain and internationally and supported the work of Women Working World Wide.

Sarah Madeleine Martineau (1872-1972) was a successful Arts and Crafts jeweller. She was born in Clapham, London on 2 May 1872, to Utilitarians David and Sarah Martineau. Sarah, known as Lena, and her two unmarried sisters probably remained together in the family home until the 1940s, living near or with each other in South London until their deaths. Lena began her education boarding at Roedean School in Sussex. She initially attended Clapham Art School, and subsequently attended Westminster School of Art with her sister Lucy and Sophie Pemberton, a Canadian artist. By autumn 1897 Lena and Lucy had found a studio to rent and in 1899 and 1900 Lena concentrated on submitting pictures to the Royal Academy, all of which were rejected. Later that year she sat a modelling design exam, passing first class, and a life exam which was awarded a book prize in the National Competition run by the Science and Art Department of the Committee of the Council on Education and entered by thousands of art students. In 1902 she decided to commit to metal work, buying a muffle furnace and a year later studying metal work at Sir John Cass Technical Institute in Whitechapel. She was also a member of the Sir John Cass Arts and Crafts Society. By 1904 she was an established jewellery maker, and in 1906 she had had two pendants accepted for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the Granfton Galleries. By 1909 she was showing her jewellery at various galleries and exhibitions, including the Society of Women Artists and was featured in 'Studio' magazine for various achievements. By the 1916 Arts and Crafts Exhibition her work was not exhibited suggesting she no longer actively participated in the arts and crafts scene. She died in 1972.

Lady Stella Reading (1894-1971) was born Stella Charnaud in 1894 in Constantinople where her father worked for the British Foreign Service. She was educated in Europe before becoming a secretary. She was posted to India as the secretary of the new Viceroy's wife before becoming part of the Viceroy's secretariat in Delhi. There, she met John Isaacs, the Marquis of Reading whom she would marry after the death of his wife in 1931. He died in 1935, soon after their return to England. Lady Reading became increasingly involved in social work such as the Personal Service League (PSL) and was elected to a number of committees as well as becoming a magistrate. Her work with the PSL meant that it was her that the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, approached to set up the Women's Voluntary Service for Air Raid Precautions in 1938. The organisation, which soon became known as the simply the Women's Voluntary Service or WRS, recruited and organised female volunteers before and during the war. After 1945, Lady Reading and the organisation continued their work and it was for this that she was created a Life Peer in Jul 1958, becoming the first woman to take her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Swanborough. She died on 21 May 1971.

Sybil W Hart was born in 1887, the daughter of William Herbert Hart and Ellen Louisa Barritt, both of whom were Quakers. Sybil was educated in London and at the Friends school in Saffron Walden from the age of 11. In 1913 Sybil married Andrew EC White and moved to Kilmarnock, both of them were ardent pacifists and Sybil also supported anti-vivisection societies. During the First World War, Sybil served on the Friends Emergency Committee and the War Victims Relief Committee. She died in 1985.

Teresa Billington-Greig (1877-1964) was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1877 and brought up in Blackburn in a family of drapers. Although from a Roman Catholic family, Billington-Greig became an agnostic whilst still in her teens. Having left school with no qualifications she was initially apprenticed to the millinery trade. However, she ran away from home and educated herself well enough at night classes to become a teacher. She worked as a teacher at a Roman Catholic school in Manchester, studying at Manchester University in her spare time, until her own agnosticism made this impossible. From there Billington-Greig joined the Municipal Education School service where her religious beliefs brought her into conflict with her employers. However, through the Education Committee there she met Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903 who found her work in a Jewish school, while that same year she became a member and organiser of the Independent Labour Party. In Apr 1904 she was the founder and honorary secretary of the local branch of the Equal Pay League within the National Union of Teachers. In either late 1903 or early 1904, she joined the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) and became one of their travelling speakers. She was sent to London with Annie Kenney to foster the movement there and to create a London-based organisation, which eventually became the headquarters of the Union. This was done on a small financial budget. The following year she was asked to become the second full-time organiser of the group in its work with the Labour Party and in this capacity she organised publicity and demonstrations as well as building up the group's new national headquarters in London. In Jun 1906, Billington-Greig was arrested in an affray outside of Asquith's home and later sentenced to a fine or two months in Holloway Prison. She was the first suffragette to be sent to Holloway Prison although an anonymous reader of the Daily Mirror paid the fine.

Later in the same month, Jun 1906, she was sent to organise the WSPU in Scotland and it was here that she married Frederick Lewis Greig 1907. However, growing differences with the Pankhursts led to her resignation as a paid organiser, though she remained in the group as a member until Oct 1907. In Oct 1907, Mrs Pankhurst suspended the constitution and took over government of the WSPU with her daughter Christabel. Several prominent members left the WSPU, including Billington-Greig, Mrs How-Martyn and Charlotte Despard who together went on to form the Women's Freedom League (WFL) on the basis of organisational democracy. Billington-Greig was initially appointed the National Honorary Organising Secretary for the League. However, Billington-Greig once more resigned in 1910 when the WFL undertook a new campaign of militancy after the defeat of the Conciliation Bill. Although she did not immediately join another organisation Billington-Greig continued to write and carry out public speaking engagements - activities she continued throughout her life. She also cared for her daughter, born in 1915, and supported her husband's billiards table company. Her only organisational work until 1937 was in the field of sport. Then she once more joined the Woman's Freedom League working for it's Women's Electoral Committee. After the Second World War this became the Women for Westminster group with which she remained involved. Subsequently she took part in the Conference on the Feminine Point of View (1947-1951) and after 1958 she was a member of the Six Point Group while writing her account of the Suffrage Movement. She had a keen interest in the history of the suffrage movement, as well as her writings on the subject she compiled many biographies. Some of these were created for obituaries for the Manchester Guardian. Her writings on behalf of the women's cause (but to some extent in criticism of it) included 'The Militant Suffrage Movement', published in 1911. Other writings cover a wide range of topics of social and feminist interest. She wrote innumerable articles for a variety of journals. Her interests were wide and she was involved in a large number of women's organisation. In 1904 she had formed the Manchester Branch of the Equal Pay League. She held strong views on a variety of subjects of public interest, but especially equality between the sexes in education and in marriage. She died in 1964.

Una M Heler (fl 1977-1981) worked in the advertising industry for most of her life. She appears to have been a member of staff at the Rumble, Crowther and Nicholas Ltd advertising company working on a drink survey carried out between May and Jun 1949 and she was still working for Impact Stationers Ltd into the 1980s. In this capacity, she became a member of the Women's Advertising Club of London and sat on its Executive Committee at the end of the 1970s. In 1977 she took over the position of representative of the Advertising Club on the Standing Committee of the Advisory Council to the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, a position which she held until at least 1981.

Ursula Roberts (1887-1971) was born in 1887 at Meerut in India, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel R J H Wyllie and Emily Titcomb. She married the Rev. William Corbett Roberts in 1909 and from this point both became increasingly concerned with female suffrage and the role and position of women in the church. She was the author of 'The Cause of Purity and Women's Suffrage' published by the Church League for Women's Suffrage as well as the Honorary Treasurer and Honorary Press Secretary of the East Midland Federation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Both before and after the First World War, her main interest was women in the Church of England. She was a member of the Church League for Women's Suffrage, which was established in 1909 as a non-party, non-militant organisation by the Rev. Claude Hinscliffe and his wife, renamed League of the Church Militant after 1918. Roberts subsequently became one of the key members of the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women after a call for evidence on women and the ministry went out in the run up to the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1930. She was also a member of the interdenominational Society for the Ministry of Women in the Church, which led her to correspond with Dr Emil Oberholzer and Dr Maude Royden. She died in 1971.

Vida Goldstein (1869-1948) was born in Australia in 1869 and educated at the Ladies' Presbyterian College in Melbourne. With her mother and siblings, she campaigned against slum poverty and sweated labour with the Presbyterian minister Dr Charles Strong and began to study sociology and economics to underpin her ideas on the causes of poverty. However, after her family found itself in financial difficulties in 1893, she and her sisters opened a mixed-gender preparatory school and became active in social welfare work. It was in the late 1880s that female enfranchisement became an issue in Australia. The Australian Women's Suffrage Society was formed in 1889 to obtain rights for women, building on the foundations of the Women's Christian Temperance Union's social reform and equal moral standards work since 1887. By the 1890s, Goldstein too had become concerned with the issue of women's suffrage. She helped her mother collect signatures for the Australian Woman Suffrage Petition at the start of the decade and by the end had become leader of the United Council for Women's Suffrage after the death of its founder Annette Bear-Crawford until the latter half of 1901. In 1894, South Australian Women were granted the right to vote followed by those Western Australia in 1899. However, her own territory of New South Wales did not grant this right until 1902 and Victoria waited until 1908. Goldstein therefore began 1900 by founding and editing the women's suffrage journal, 'Australian Women's Sphere', which was read worldwide since much suffrage work was done at the international level at the end of the century. Consequently, the Australian was invited to a suffrage conference in Washington in 1902 to which she was elected the first secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance formed there and drafted its proposed constitution and declaration of principles. During this visit, she was requested to undertake research into solutions to child neglect by the Australian government and the Trades Hall to inquire into unionisation in the United States. There, she spoke to the two houses as well as the president. Furthermore, she was invited to speak before a hearing of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives to support Carrie Chapman Catt's request for an investigative committee to into the practical results of women's enfranchisement. On her return, having resigned her role in the United Council, she began preparations for the first Federal election in 1903 where women were entitled to vote, founding the Women's Federal Political Association, which later became the Woman's Political Association. Goldstein, Mrs Nellie Martel, and Mrs Mary Ann Moore Bently stood for the upper house or senate, becoming the first women parliamentary candidates in the British Empire. Though unsuccessful, Goldstein ran three more times for the Senate, in 1903, 1910 and 1917 and for the lower House of Representatives in 1913, and again in 1914. She remained concerned with social issues during this time and her research on poor families was used in the Harvester Judgement of 1907, which set a basic wage for Australia. She also helped establish separate courts to try underage children. However, she did not leave the issue of women's suffrage behind, establishing the periodical the Woman Voter in 1908. Goldstein's first visit to Britain occurred in 1911 when she spoke on behalf of the Women's Social and Political Union, wrote a number of articles for Votes for Women and contributed several pieces for the book Woman Suffrage in Australia published by the Woman's Press. She was also present at the Women's Coronation pageant on the 17 Jun where she represented her country. It was while she was in the United Kingdom that she established the Australian and New Zealand Voters' Association. This was intended to help British citizens, resident in Australasia, to support the campaign for women's suffrage in their homeland. During this visit to Britain, she met Adela Pankhurst and it was Goldstein who helped Pankhurst to move to Australia and become the first organiser of the Woman's Political Association there in 1914. The support which she had in the country waned after the outbreak of the First World War after her pacifist position became clear. She became the Chair of the Peace Alliance and a number of original members left the Women's Political Alliance when it adopted a pacifist policy. In Jul 1915 she established the Women's Peace Army with Pankhurst and Cecelia Johns and began to campaign actively against conscription. At the same time, she organised the Women's Unemployment Bureau to find work for those in need as well as offering subsidised meals and offering help to dockers' families during a strike. In Jan 1919 Goldstein and Johns were asked to represent Australian women at the Women's Peace Conference in Geneva. After attending this, however, the former did not directly return home but spent three further years in the United Kingdom, allowing the Women's Political Association and the 'Woman Voter' to lapse. By the time of her return, she had become a Christian Scientist and she spent the rest of her life living with her sisters Elsie and Aileen, supporting the idea of planned families and social purity. She died in Aug 1949.

No further details are known about Phyllis Vickers.

Vera Louise Holme (1881-1969) was born in Lancashire in 1881, the daughter of Richard Holme, a timber merchant, and his wife Mary Louisa Crowe. Holme was sent away from home as a young girl to be educated at a convent school in Belgium. As a young woman she was based in London, and began performing with touring acting companies, often as a male impersonator. She adopted a masculine style of dress, short hair and took on the nickname Jack or Jacko. She became a member of the D'Olyly Carte Opera company around 1906, performing in productions of Gilbert and Sullivan at the Savoy Opera House. By 1908 she was a member of the Actresses' Franchise League. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1908 and was active in suffrage propaganda work such as greeting released prisoners from Holloway Prison in Mar 1909; working as a mounted marshal at a demonstration in Jun 1909 and acting the role of 'Hannah Snell' in Cicely Hamilton's 'Pageant of Great Women' in 1909. She was close to the centre of WSPU activity and social circles, staying with the Blathwayt family at Eagle's House in 1909, becoming the chauffeur for the Pankhursts and Pethick-Lawrences, and was a member of the 'Young Hot Bloods' group alongside Jessie Kenney and Elsie Howie. She was imprisoned in Holloway Prison in 1911 for stone-throwing. From 1914-1920 she was an acting member of the Pioneer Players. At the outbreak of the First World War, Holme joined the Women's Volunteer Reserve, and then enlisted in the transport unit of the Scottish Women's Hospital, based in Serbia and Russia, where she was responsible for horses and trucks. In Oct 1917 she delivered a report on the situation of the Serbian army on the Romanian Front to Lord Robert Cecil of the Foreign Office. She spent the remainder of the war giving lecture tours to publicise the work of the Scottish Women's Hospital Unit. In 1918 she became the administrator of the Haverfield Fund for Serbian Children - an orphanage set up by Evelina Haverfield, her companion from 1911 until her death in 1920. She continued to be involved in relief work for Serbia in various capacities throughout the 1920s -1930s, and remained interested in political issues in Yugoslavia throughout her life, returning to visit in 1934. She subsequently moved to Scotland where she lived with Margaret Greenless and Margaret Ker, friends from her suffrage days and also previously of the Scottish Women's Hospitals Unit. She became involved in the artistic scene centred around Kirkcudbright, led by Jessie M King. She was a lifelong friend of Edith Craig, participating in performances staged in the Barn Theatre, Kent. She was close to her brother Richard (known as Dick or Gordon) Holme throughout her life, and her niece and nephew were named Vera and Jack after her. She was also active in the Women's Rural Institute from the early 1920s until her death in Scotland in 1969.

See the biography for Lidiard; Victoria Simmonds (1889-1992); suffragette

Victoria Lidiard (1889-1992) was born Victoria Simmons in Bristol in Dec 1889, one of 12 siblings. She became a vegetarian at the age of ten, and remained interested in animal rights for all of her life. She left school when she was fourteen, later taking evening classes in shorthand and bookkeeping. She, her sisters and her mother became member of the Women's Social & Political Union in Bristol in 1907 and rapidly took part in militant activity such as disrupting political meetings and selling 'Votes for Women' in the streets. In Mar 1912, she took part in a window-smashing raid on Oxford Street and broke a window in the War Office. She was arrested, along with 200 other suffragettes, and sentenced to two months hard labour in Holloway Prison. During the First World War she ran a guesthouse in Kensington for professional women and worked at Battersea Power Station making anti-aircraft shells at weekends. In 1918 she married Major Alexander Lidiard MC of the First Manchester Rifles and a member of the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement. After the war the couple both trained as opticians and would work together as consultants at the London Refraction Hospital at Elephant and Castle where, in 1927, she became the first female refractionist. They subsequently took practices in Maidenhead and High Wycombe. She was a member of the National Council of Women for most of her working life and became involved with the Movement for the Ordination of Women during the last ten years of her life. She published a book, Christianity, Faith, Love and Healing at the age of 99 and canvassed MPs on improvement in the conditions in the transport of live animals. She died in Oct 1992, aged 102.

Winifred Adair-Roberts (fl 1910-1974) was brought up in Hampstead, the seventh child of a family of nine; all girls bar one. Her parents were Irish and her father co-owned a chemical works (Boke, Roberts) in Stratford. It moved to Walthamstow in 1974. Winifred was educated at private schools including, briefly, St. Felix, South Wold and Polam Hall (Durham). Winifred also attended a short course at the Gloucester Domestic Science College. She did voluntary work with the 'Women's Voluntary Reserve' in the First World War but did no paid work as she seems to have suffered lifelong poor health. In an interview conducted by Professor Brian Harrison, c 1974, Winifred was thought to be well into her eighties. In the interview she described her family background. All seven sisters went to school (several boarding schools are specified) and to college. She also recalled selling Votes for Women standing in the gutter on Finchley Road, near John Barnes store and stewarding at large Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) meetings. She claimed to have brought hot dinners (cooked at home in Hampstead) to Mrs Pankhurst, hiding out in the WSPU office at Lincolns Inn. They were smuggled in under the noses of the police. Her eldest sister, Muriel, a doctor, was imprisoned as part of the suffrage protests. Ethel, a PE specialist, was apparently good at helping to hide Mrs Pankhurst, who apparently looked like 'Dresden China'.

Winifred Cullis (1875-1956) was born in Gloucester and educated at King Edward VI School, Birmingham and Newnham College, Cambridge where she studied Natural Sciences. In 1901 she became a demonstrator of physiology at the London School of Medicine for Women (Royal Free Hospital), becoming head of the department in 1912. In 1919 she was made Professor of Physiology at the University of London and as such was the first woman to hold a professorial chair at a medical school. A committed feminist, Cullis toured the world giving public lectures. During the First World War she was sent by the Colonial Office to lecture to troops in Gibraltar and Malta, and in the Second World War she lectured in the Far East, the Middle East and the USA on the subject of British women's war work. Cullis was president of both the British Federation of University Women (1925-1929) and the International Federation of University Women (1929-1932). During her retirement she continued to work for the Royal Free Hospital through her committee-work and as a governor. She died in 1956.

Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) was born in 1898 at Rudston House, the daughter of David Holtby, a Yorkshire farmer and Alice Winn, the first alderwoman in Yorkshire. In 1917 Holtby passed the entrance exam for Somerville College but volunteered first in a London nursing home and then for the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps in France in early 1918. In 1919 she took up her place at Somerville where she met Vera Brittain and where she graduated in Modern History. Despite being offered a position as a history tutor at St Hugh's College, Holtby moved to London with Brittain in 1921. At the same time as lecturing for the Six Point Group as well as the League of Nations Union and becoming the London County Council manager for schools in Bethnal Green, Holtby completed her first book, Anderby Wold, which was published in 1923. This was followed by The Crowded Street in 1924 and The Land of Green Ginger in 1927. Additionally, she worked as a journalist throughout the 1920s and 1930s, writing articles for Time and Tide, the Manchester Guardian and a regular weekly article for the trade union magazine, The Schoolmistress as well as a critical study of Virginia Woolf. Holtby was by this time a pacifist and travelled throughout Europe in the post-war period, attending the League of Nations assemblies as a writer and speaker every year from 1923 to 1930. She was also involved in the campaign for equality for women and from 1925 was a member of the executive committee of the Six Point Group for whom she wrote the 'New Voter's Guide to Party Programmes' in 1929. She was also a member of the Labour Party, working as an activist in constituencies during elections and writing articles for the left-wing journal The New Leader. In 1926 she visited South Africa, establishing a branch of the League of Nations Union in Ladysmith, helping set up a black transport workers' union in Johannesburg and studying conditions and problems of the black population and the effects of discrimination. There she met and began to work with William Ballinger, a Scotsman working to improve conditions for whom she would become involved in fundraising activities with the aim of providing education, grants and sponsorships. In 1931 the writer became ill and during the Labour Party General Election campaign of 1932 Holtby's health began to deteriorate rapidly. Returning to Yorkshire, she appeared to recover, returned to London, attended the majority of the parliamentary Joint Select Committees on Closer Union in South Africa, advised the International Labour Organisation on the issue of forced labour there and published another novel in 1933, The Astonishing Island as well as editing Time and Tide. However, a second collapse revealed kidney disease and she was given two years to live, a diagnosis which intensive treatment extended by an extra eighteen months, during which she completed a book of short stories, Truth is not Sober and Women and a Changing Society. She completed her last work, South Riding, a month before she died in Sep 1935. Her last two books were published by Vera Brittain, her literary executor, after her death.