From Suffering to Suffrage
Biographies of Dora Thewlis, Edith Key and Florence Lockwood
Dora Thewlis
1890. Born in Honley to Eliza and James Thewlis.
1907. Working as a weaver. She joins the local Huddersfield branch
of the WSPU.
1907. March. Arrested in London following a protest march. Taken
into custody and remanded for 6 days. Her picture appears on the
front cover of the Daily Mirror. Labelled ‘Baby Suffragette’ by the
media.
1914 (pre). Dora emigrates to Australia with her sisters and begins
work in a blanket-weaving factory in Melbourne.
1918. Dora marries an Australian man named Jack Dow and they
go on to have two children.
1976. Dora dies aged 86.
Edith Key
1872. Born in January at Eccleshill, Bradford to Grace Proctor and
Joseph Fawcett, a local mill owner.
1881. In the census for that year, Edith is named as a scholar,
living with her three aunts.
1885. Edith leaves school aged 13.
1891. In March, Edith marries Frederick Key, a blind musician.
Frederick opens a music shop at 43 West Parade Huddersfield.
1894. A second son, Archibald is born - brother to Lancelot born
two years earlier.
1907. Edith becomes secretary of the Huddersfield WSPU branch.
1913-14. In the attics of her home in West Parade, Edith hides a
number of suffragette ‘mice’.
1937 Edith dies, aged 65 and is buried in Edgerton Cemetery.
Florence Elizabeth Lockwood
1861. October. Born in Devenport, the daughter of a Navy doctor.
1887. Enrols at the Slade in London and rents her own attic studio.
1901. Visits her sister in Huddersfield and meets Josiah Lockwood,
a woollen manufacturer in the Colne Valley.
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1902- July, Florence marries Josiah Lockwood at St Giles’s Church
in London. Following their honeymoon they return to Yorkshire and
live at Black Rock House, Linthwaite.
1907. Meets Emmeline and Adela Pankhurst. Joins the Women’s
Liberal Association and Huddersfield NUWSS branch.
1910 President of Colne Valley Women’s Liberal Association, rallying
women for the election in that year. Around this time designs the
Huddersfield NUWSS banner.
1912. Writes a pamphlet entitled “The Enfranchisement of women.”
1924. Following the death of her husband she moves to London.
1932. Publishes her autobiography “An Ordinary Life 1861-1924.”
1937 Dies March of that year. Remains cremated at Golders Green.
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