Rosa May Billinghurst

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Rosa May Billinghurst

Rosa May Billinghurst (born May 31, 1875 in London ; died July 29, 1953 ) was a British suffragette . The British public in the early 20th century noticed her mainly because of her appearance at demonstrations in a tricycle, on which she was dependent because of a disability to move.

Life

Early years

Billinghurst was born in Lewisham , London , where she grew up. Her parents were the banker Henry Farncombe Billinghurst and his wife Rosa Ann (née Brinsmead). Since his grandfather had amassed a considerable fortune as a piano maker , Billinghurst, like her eight siblings, grew up in affluent circumstances.

Billinghurst, who was born a healthy child, became seriously ill (suspected of polio ) at the age of five months and was completely paralyzed in the immediate aftermath. She later managed to regain her upper body mobility, but her legs remained largely paralyzed, so that she was unable to walk independently and was dependent on orthoses and crutches . For the purpose of locomotion over longer distances, she usually used a special tricycle .

Billinghurst's family employed a governess during their childhood who provided them with a good general education. However, her physical impairment did not allow her to attend university. As a volunteer, she helped her sister Alice with her charity work. She supported residents of poor houses , prostitutes and especially children in the London districts of Greenwich and Deptford . She also taught Sunday school and got involved with the Band of Hope , an organization against the abuse of alcohol and drugs.

Political activity

Rosa May Billinghurst and fellow campaigners in public in the fight for women's suffrage

The unfair conditions which Billinghurst had come to know in the course of her charitable activities and which affected women in a special way, led her to become politically active. First she joined the Women's Liberal Association , but in 1907 she switched to the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). The reason for this was the lack of commitment by the Liberal Party to women's suffrage and Christabel Pankhurst's role model . In the early days, she attended several WSPU meetings, where she heard speeches from Millicent Fawcett , Charlotte Despard and Emmeline Pankhurst , among others . In her political activities Billinghurst was able to count on the support of her family, who supported the suffragette movement through numerous donations and the payment of deposits .

Soon Billinghurst took an active part in national protests, for example in 1908 in the run-up to the by-elections for the House of Commons in the Manchester North West constituency , in which the WSPU wanted to prevent the election of the young Winston Churchill . In fact, this surprisingly defeated the Conservative Party candidate , William Joynson-Hicks, in the election . In October 1908 Billinghurst took part in a large demonstration outside the House of Commons. Billinghurst always appeared at such demonstrations in her tricycle, which was decorated with ribbons and flags of the women's suffrage movement. She often hid stones or paint bags under blankets in her lap.

Billinghurst made a conscious use of the attention she could get from her disability. In particular, the often harsh handling of the police officers with the supposedly defenseless suffragette repeatedly met with greater media coverage. The British newspapers nicknamed her the Cripple Suffragette .

In June 1910 she was one of the co-founders of the Greenwich Union of the WSPU, whereupon she assumed the office of honorary secretary.

Arrests

On November 18, 1910, the WSPU organized a large demonstration in London, as a result of which three suffragettes were killed as a result of the crackdown by the police. 159 women were taken into custody in what went down in history as Black Friday , including Billinghurst. She was arrested again four days later when she tried to break through a police cordon with her tricycle at another demonstration. After using her tricycle as a weapon against police officers again in November 1911, she was sentenced to five days in prison, but was probably able to avoid the penalty by paying five shillings .

In March 1912, Billinghurst was arrested again when she and Janie Allan and other activists were throwing up shop windows with stones. As a result, she was sentenced to one month of forced labor. She served this time in Holloway Prison , but the execution of the forced labor was suspended due to her state of health. In December of the same year, Billinghurst was taken into custody again, this time she had emptied paint bags into mailboxes. The sentence this time was eight months imprisonment.

In response to her re-conviction, Billinghurst went on hunger strike , which forced prison staff to force- feed. These were performed with considerable use of force, which, among other things, resulted in some of her teeth being damaged. The fact that it took eight men to feed Billinghurst through a hose created a public outcry. Members of Parliament George Lansbury and Keir Hardie protested in Parliament and after the prison doctor raised concerns for their health, Billinghurst was released after just ten days.

After a short break, Billinghurst launched further campaigns for women's suffrage and against forced feeding of prisoners. Because of the hoped-for publicity, she tried to provoke arrests again and for this purpose chained herself to the railing in front of Buckingham Palace . However, there was no further conviction before the WSPU ceased its militant activities in the wake of the First World War .

After the First World War

After the war, Billinghurst only appeared sporadically. In 1918 she supported Christabel Pankhurst 's parliamentary candidacy for the Women's Party . In 1922 she moved to live with her brother near Regent's Park . She learned to drive and became an active member of the scout organization Kibbo Kift .

In public she appeared again on the occasion of Emmeline Pankhurst's funeral in 1928 and at the inauguration of a statue of Pankhurst behind the House of Commons in 1930. She remained a member of the Suffrage Fellowship and the Women's Freedom League throughout her life .

Billinghurst died in July 1953 of heart failure due to pneumonia . She left her body to the London School of Medicine for Women after her death .

literature

  • Fran Abrams: Freedom's Cause: Lives of the Suffragettes. Profile, 2003, ISBN 1-86197-425-6 .
  • Iris Dove: Yours in the cause: a brief account of suffragettes in Lewisham, Greenwich and Woolwich. Lewisham Library Service and Greenwich Libraries, 1988, ISBN 0-901637-56-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Hayley Trueman: Billinghurst, (Rosa) May. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB) . Volume 5: Belle-Blackman. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861355-5 , ( oxforddnb.com ), as of September 2004, accessed September 4, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Biography on brinsmead.net (English) accessed on January 21, 2016
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Biography on spartacus-educational.com, accessed on January 21, 2016
  4. ↑ a b biography on disabledlives.blogspot.de accessed on January 21, 2015
  5. ↑ a b Biography on sheilahanlon.com accessed on January 21, 2016
  6. ^ W. Sydney Robinson: The Last Victorians: A Daring Reassessment of Four Twentieth Century Eccentrics. Biteback Publishing, 2014 ( online )
  7. ^ Biography of Janie Allan on spartacus-educational.com accessed on January 22, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Billinghurst, Rosa May
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cripple suffragette
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1953
Place of death London