Dora Thewlis

Early life Thewlis was born on 15 May 1890, at Shady Row in Meltham Mills, near Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She was one of seven children born to James and Eliza (née Taylor) Thewlis, who was from Woodbridge, Suffolk. She was labelled the 'Baby Suffragette ' and the 'little mill hand' by the press. She appeared on the front page of the Daily Mirror (picture to the right) after the event, with the caption "Suffragettes storm the House," This kind of adverse publicity was not welcomed by the suffrage movement.

The judge suggested her parents might take her in hand and sort her out. Their reply was she was her own person and they fully supported her. The family were socialists and her mother Eliza was quoted in the Huddersfield Weekly Examiner as saying that she had brought Dora up to read newspapers since the age of 7 and to debate politics. The family had also supported Mrs Pankhurst at the local by-election. Dora's sentence was two weeks in prison, but she served one. On her departure escorted by a wardress, she met with Edith How-Martyn.

Thewlis emigrated to Australia before the start of the First World War, therefore never seeing the passage of women's suffrage in England, and in 1918 she married Jack Dow, who predeceased her in 1956. They had two children,