Ellen Crocker

Ellen Crocker (1872–1962) was an English suffragette.

Life and activism Ellen Crocker (also known as Nelly or Nellie) was born in 1872 in Stogumber, Somerset. Her father was a doctor, and she had a sister, Emma Crocker. Her cousins were WSPU treasurer Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Dorothy Pethick.

Crocker joined the suffragette movement but left when her cousin Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and husband Frederick were expelled from the Women's Social and Political Union by the Pankhurts.

In 1906, Crocker was a strong Liberal Party supporter, honorary secretary to the Wellington's Women's Liberal Association but became disillusioned in 1907 and left the party of 'a Government which persecutes women' to join the campaign for women's suffrage to avoid being a 'traitor to her sex'. and was the first suffragette prisoner to stay at Emily Blathwayt's Eagle House. She eventually planted a tree at Annie's Arboretum on a later visit in February 1911, to commemorate her imprisonment suffering (an Abies magnifica). She helped WPSU campaigns at seven by-elections, once having a driver with an iron bar for protection in his vehicle. as Nottingham organiser by Charlotte Marsh. Crocker was arrested with fellow activists in 1909 including at the House of Commons and at a meeting of Winston Churchill in Leicester. eight times for suffragette activism and on 1 March 1912 went to Holloway Prison to serve three months with hard labour. Her crime was breaking the Post Office windows with Nellie Taylor in Kings Road. In Bow Street court she explained her actions were against police brutality following the events on Black Friday when women protestors were violently abused and assaulted, leaving a 'dark shadow'. She also objected to the severe sentences for Alan MacDougall and William Ball.

Crocker took part in the play An Allegory by Vera Wentworth once whilst in Holloway, and played the part, Fear. The Museum of London has a postcard of Crocker with Theresa Garrett, Gladys Roberts and Edith New at the Hawick by-election.

Crocker died in Maida Vale in 1962, leaving the residue of her estate to the Suffragette Fellowship.