Florence Balgarnie

Florence Balgarnie (19 August 1856 – 25 March 1928) was a British suffragette, speaker, pacifist, feminist, and temperance activist. Balgarnie held this appointment till 1895, and thereafter made time for speaking and writing on behalf of temperance and other causes. Balgarnie was the author of A plea for the appointment of police matrons at police stations.

In 1902, in Washington, D.C., she represented the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) at the First Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. She was also affiliated with the International Arbitration & Peace Association, the British Anti-lynching League, the Society for Promoting the Return of Women as County Councillors, Personal Rights Association, Moral Reform Union, and the Men and Women's Club. She was a co-founder of the executive committee of the People's Suffrage Federation. She was later fired from employment at Women's Signal for her exposure of issues in the WCTU's stance on state colour lines, before being supported by Frederick Douglass' widow Helen Pitts Douglass in her stance.

She died in Florence, Italy, on 25 March 1928, aged 71, and was buried at Cimitero degli Allori, in Florence.

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