Ellison Scotland Gibb

Ellison Scotland Gibb (6 March 1879 – 1970) was a Scottish suffragette and chess player. She was an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union.

She was one of six siblings, one of whom was fellow suffragette Margaret Skirving Gibb. She was a descendant of William Skirving, one of the five Scottish Martyrs for Liberty.

Suffragette activism

Gibb was an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union (1910) and of the Actresses' Franchise League in Glasgow, where she was the honorary secretary. In 1911 she refused to partake in the census, along with her mother and the rest of the family.

She was arrested on five occasions in London between 1910 and 1912., and once in Dundee

On 30 October she and Frances Parker smashed one window, and attempted to smash another in Dundee. In November 1910, she and eight other women were arrested for throwing stones at the premises of the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

In March 1912, she and Frances Parker sat next to Winston Churchill on a train from Stranraer to Glasgow, and asked him his opinion on votes for women and told him of the sufferings of women imprisoned in Holloway. Churchill described his experience with Gibb as "intolerable, disgusting, a nuisance, you are a low woman". In November 1912, she was assaulted by a man named Edwin Heath Smith while she was attempting to protest to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in Ladybank, Cupar., and brought a successful legal case against him

There are description and pictures of newspaper articles, prizes and medals on the Chess Scotland Gibb family page, which also shows the Hunger Strike medals awarded to both sisters . In 1921, she drew against chess player, Blackburne when he visited the Glasgow Ladies' club on 26 October for a 14-boards simultaneous display. In the same year, she was appointed President of the Glasgow Ladies' Chess Club. She played in the Glasgow Ladies' team that reached the final of the 1922-23 season's Spens Cup.