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.
Resource provided by www.mylearning.org © Huddersfield Local Studies Library

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.
Resource provided by www.mylearning.org © Huddersfield Local Studies Library