Daisy Solomon

Daisy Dorothea Solomon (1882–1978) was posted as a human letter in the British suffragette campaign using a quirk in the postal system to approach the Prime Minister who would not receive a delegation of women demanding the right to vote. Solomon was secretary to suffragette groups and imprisoned for protest, and went on hunger strike.

Early life and family Daisy Dorothea Solomon was born in 1882 in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa, one of six children, of Saul Solomon (1817–1892) and Georgiana Margaret Solomon (née Thomson 1844–1933). Solomon's father was a newspaper proprietor and a liberal politician in the first Cape Parliament and her mother was an educator and suffragette. and had an original copy of Mary Wollestonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women in his library. sadly their oldest daughter and her governess were drowned in an accident in 1881, before Daisy was born. Solomon had an elder brother, also Saul, who became a judge in the Supreme Court of South Africa; sister Margaret; brother George and brother William Ewart Gladstone Solomon, an artist who followed their mother into education as principal of Bombay School of Art, and also designed a WSPU banner. Solomon's mother, Georgiana campaigned in South Africa for the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, rising to be an international representative and later world vice-president, and later engaged in militant activism for women's suffrage in Britain and returned for a short time (1902) to support campaign for women in South Africa.

The Solomon family returned to Britain in 1888 due to father Saul's poor health; he died in Scotland in 1892. Daisy Solomon lived in Bedford, then Sidcup, before the family moved to West Hampstead. The Solomons took part in a number of suffragette events during the WSPU's ongoing campaign; it organised protests and publicity stunts to get politicians' and the public's attention.

On 23 February 1909, Solomon and McClelland got a rousing cheer on joining the Caxton Hall event. After that meeting a delegation including Solomon tried again to approach the Prime Minister, while he was dining out, and twenty-seven women were arrested with leader Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. For Solomon and others like Constance Lytton, Caprina Fahey, Rose Lamartine Yates, and Sarah Carwin, this was their first arrest for activism.

Constance Lytton quoted Solomon writing about the sparseness of the furniture in prison: 'a thin hard mattress, and an even thinner pillow' and conveyed in a brief statement the joy of finding a brush and comb in her book Prisons and Prisoners: some personal experiences. Solomon went on hunger strike and was force-fed.

In 1906, Solomon was joint branch secretary of the WSPU Hampstead branch but resigned in 1913. at the branch premises, and Solomon may be one of the holder standing in the Kilburn Times image. The large banner was marched in the 'Prison to Citizenship Obituary - The Black Sash, Aug. 1978 Item Details for Daisy Solomon Collection (NLSA) Wikidata item for brother William E. Gladstone Solomon Image of banner designed by brother (WEGS 1910)