Rebel Girls Their Fight for the Vote

Rejecting the deadening conventions of their Victorian elders, the rebel girls demanded new freedoms and new rights. They took their suffrage message out to the remotest Yorkshire dales and fishing harbors to win Edwardian hearts and minds. Heroic women who have disappeared from written records have been restored by Jill Liddington's painstaking research into sources including back copies of local newspapers, diaries, census records, and recently uncovered government records disclosing details of covert surveillance carried out on women prisoners. The intriguing characters to emerge include 16-year-old Huddersfield weaver Dora Thewlis, who was arrested at a demonstration and found herself catapulted onto the tabloid front-pages as "Baby Suffragette." Dancer Lilian Lenton waited until her 21st birthday before deciding to burn two buildings a week until the Liberal government granted women the vote.