"I'm prepared to go to prison": The forgotten mill girl who battled for women's rights 100 years ago
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Policemen grip her arms and her hair is dishevelled – but teenager Dora Thewlis’s face is defiant.
And when this picture was splashed across the cover of the Daily Mirror, she became an overnight sensation.
It was March 1907 and the 17-year-old mill worker was in the thick of the fight for women to have the right to vote .
Their actions were not in vain. The Representation of the People Act was finally passed on February 6, 1918 – 100 years ago this Tuesday – giving women in Britain the vote for the first time.
The part played by Dora and others like her was one in the eye for those who tried to belittle the suffragettes’ struggle as a pastime for middle class ladies.
Her arrest and imprisonment and her refusal to kowtow to a magistrate fired the public’s imagination.
The working girl in clogs and shawl became known as the Baby Suffragette.
But while others such as campaign leader Emmeline Pankhurst remain household names, it looks as if Dora simply ­disappeared from history.
Now the Sunday Mirror has tracked down her proud 10 grandchildren – after discovering she emigrated to Australia.
Granddaughter Kerrie Bartholomew, 66, a retired mum of two in Melbourne, said: “It is such a shame Nanna has been forgotten in Britain after being so involved in the suffrage movement.
“She never bragged about her ­achievements. She was a feisty and ­opinionated woman who instilled in all her children and grandchildren a sense of social justice. We are all very proud of her fight to get women the vote.
“She stood up for women in an age of terrible inequality.
“Without women like her, we would not have the rights we have today.”
Dora was born in 1890, the fifth of seven children of weavers James and Eliza Thewlis, and grew up in the ­Yorkshire mill town Huddersfield.
Like her siblings, she began to work in the mill aged 10, earning £1 a week.
Dora was ­an intelligent girl and read ­newspapers at seven.
A socialist, she joined Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union and campaigned for women’s suffrage.
Pankhurst urged women to storm Parliament to demand the vote and Dora volunteered, telling Eliza: “Let me go, Mother. I’m quite capable. I ­understand what I’m fighting for and am prepared to go to prison for the cause.
“Women ought to have their rights. It will be an honour to go to prison.”
On March 20, 1907, she joined a contingent of Yorkshire women as they travelled by train to London to march to Parliament Square.
Dora was one of 75 women arrested for disorderly conduct and sent to Holloway prison.
(Image: Alamy)
A picture of her being marched away by policemen appeared on the front of the Mirror with the line: ­“Suffragettes storm the House – desperate encounter with the police – wholesale arrests.”
Appearing in court in her mill dress, she defiantly told ­magistrate Horace Smith: “I don’t wish to go back, sir. I shall remain here as long as the WSPU women want me.”
She was released after a week in ­solitary. The Mirror’s headline was: “Baby Suffragette Goes Home.” She said: “Don’t call me Baby Suffragette. I am not a baby.” Her ­notoriety must have had an impact.
Kerrie said: “Life was not easy for them in Huddersfield. The magistrate implied she should make a new start elsewhere.” Dora arrived in Melbourne on October 9, 1912, with her elder sister Evelyn. Kerrie continued: “She got work as a blanket weaver and met my grandfather Jack Dow, a horse trainer.”
The couple married in 1918, when they were both 28, and had two children, Mable, in 1919, and Jack, who was Kerrie’s father, in 1923.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
There followed 10 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.
Dora died peacefully in her sleep aged 86. Kerrie said: “Her last words to me were, ‘Go and make yourself a cup of tea love,’ in her still broad Yorkshire accent.”
Grandson Chris, 55, recalled: “Once Dad declared he was going to vote ­Conservative and Nanna said, ‘Jacky, to vote against the Labour party is going against everything your family stood for. She had such fire in her belly, even at 85. She said it with such ­conviction in her.”
His cousin Philip, a retired architect, said: “She told how she was on the front page of the newspapers when she was being dragged away by the police.
‘She also told of a photograph of her in clogs and a shawl taken behind bars.
“She didn’t get involved in politics in Australia but she was very outspoken about her political views.
“The whole family has always been very proud of her. Perhaps now the British people will feel equally proud.”
High flyers of today with a debt to Dora
By Nigel Nelson
These are the women at the top of today’s political tree who reaped the legacy of February 6, 1918.
They sit in either Theresa May’s Cabinet – Caroline Nokes and Andrea Leadsom – or Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet – Diane Abbott and Shami Chakrabarti, a testament to how far women have come in politics.
(Image: Liverpool Echo)
(Image: PA)
But they speak of how far they still have to go.
Immigration minister Caroline Nokes said: “When I arrived in Parliament in 2010 I found attitudes that were really outdated and sexist.
“It’s better now. There are more woman there, which has certainly helped. But there is still a long way to go.”
The 1917 Rep­­resentation of the People Act gave women the vote – but they had to be aged 30 and a householder or have a university qualification.
(Image: Reuters)
(Image: PA)
By November that year women could stand as MPs.
The qualifying age for Parliament was 21 – so many couldn’t vote for themselves.
Shadow Attorney General Baroness Chakrabarti said: “The 1918 Act excluded working class women from the vote. Even these restricted rights were hard won, not by asking nicely but by feminists imprisoned and tortured by successive right-wing governments.”
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, who is heading the review to drive the sex pests out of Parliament, said: “There’s been great progress for women in the last 100 years, but as recent stories about sexual harassment have shown, we still have a long way to go.”