Price , Millie Braine , fl 1881-1918 , suffragette and Quaker

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.