Elsa Gye

Elsa Gye (1881–1943) was a music student at Guildhall who became a suffragette and involved in disruptive events in London and Scotland and was imprisoned for the cause of women's suffrage.

She married the brother of fellow suffragette Daisy Bullock, William Ewart Gye in 1911 whilst he was a medical student at Edinburgh, and had her first child in 1912. He took her surname. Later he went on to work with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Gye helped the creation of the Suffragette Record Room in London.

Early life Elsa was educated at Croydon High School and the Guildhall School of Music.

Life as a suffragette Gye was one of a large number of women who hid in furniture vehicles and rushed on Parliament on 11–13 February 1908, and was arrested and sentenced to six weeks in prison. She had met Daisy Bullock in 1907 and was with Gladice Keevil, Nellie Martel, Emmeline Pankhurst, Aeta Lamb when they disrupted Chancellor H. Asquith speaking at a meeting in Nottingham. In 1908, Gye worked with Minnie Baldock to open a local branch of Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Nottingham.

Daisy Bullock's brother William Ewart Gye had studied chemistry in Nottingham and then was a medical student at Edinburgh, when he married Elsa Gye in 1911, whilst a student, with financial support or friends, including Elsa herself.

The mother of fellow suffragette, Elsie Howey wrote to Gye in 1928 to complain about the effect of force feeding on her daughter's voice.

Later life After the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918, in which some women within the United Kingdom were first given the right to vote, Elsa Gye's husband worked on cancer research with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, and on infection in World War I.

Legacy Gye helped the creation of the Suffragette Record Room in London. At one time no photograph of her was known to exist. She died in 1943.