Lilian Lenton

Lilian Ida Lenton (5 January 1891 – 28 October 1972) was an English dancer and militant suffragette, and later a winner of a French Red Cross medal for her service as an orderly in World War I. She committed crimes, including arson, for the suffragette cause. In 1970 she was invited to unveil the Suffragette Memorial.

Early years Lillie Lenton was born in Leicester in 1891, the eldest of five children born to Isaac Lenton (1867–1930), a carpenter-joiner, and his wife Mahalah Lenton (née Bee; 1864–1920), a housewife. On leaving school she trained to be a dancer, but, after hearing Emmeline Pankhurst speak, she " ... made up my mind that night that as soon as I was twenty-one and my own boss ... I would volunteer".

Lenton and her mother evaded the 1911 census as part of the suffragette boycott. On attaining the age of 21, Lenton joined the Women's Social and Political Union, and with fellow members took part in a window-smashing campaign in March 1912. She was jailed for two months under the alias "Ida Inkley".

Notoriety

In early 1913, with Olive Wharry, she began a series of arson attacks in London, and was arrested in February 1913 on suspicion of having set on fire the Tea House at Kew Gardens. In Holloway Prison she held a hunger strike for two days before being forcibly fed, which caused her to become seriously ill with pleurisy caused by food entering her lungs. It took two doctors and seven wardens to restrain her. She was quickly and quietly released.

Her case created an outrage among the public, made worse by the fact that the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, denied that she had been force fed and that her illness was actually caused by her hunger strike.

A letter to The Times in 1913, from Victor Horsley, a leading surgeon, claimed "...the Home Secretary's attempted denial that Miss Lenton was nearly killed by the forcible feeding is worthless...she was tied into a chair and her head dragged backward across the back of the chair by her hair. The tube was forced through the nose twice . . . after the second introduction when the food was poured in, it caused violent choking." To avoid more such political embarrassment, to enable her to escape in a delivery van, driven by Leonora Cohen dressed as a baker's man while Lenton swapped places with Nora Duval dressed as an errand boy reading a comic and eating an apple. Taxis took her to Harrogate, then Scarborough, from where she escaped to France in a private yacht. and while on remand went on a combined hunger and thirst strike, for which she was again forcibly fed. Her physical health again being seriously affected by this treatment, she was released on licence for 5 days into the care of a Mrs. Diplock of London, but again absconded. She received a Hunger Strike Medal "for Valour" from the WSPU.

The Women's Social and Political Union suspended their militant campaign in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I to focus on the war effort. During this time women worked in jobs traditionally done by men, proving they could do them just as well and silencing one of the last arguments against women's suffrage. After the war the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed awarding the vote to women householders, or the wives of householders, aged 30 and over. Lenton was unimpressed by this concession, later relating in a BBC documentary, "Personally I didn't vote for a very long time because I hadn't either a husband or furniture, although I was over 30."

Lenton turned 30 in 1921. Women were given equal voting rights to men including lowering the voting age to 21, by the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 when she was 37.

Later years

Just before the First World War Lenton met author D. H. Lawrence when she fled from the police and escaped to the Lake District. He was introduced to her as "a man who's only got one subject, and that's sex". During World War I Lenton served in Serbia with the Scottish Women's Hospitals Unit and was awarded a French Red Cross medal. After the Russian Revolution she travelled in Russia with fellow suffragette Nina Boyle. Lenton later worked in the British Embassy in Stockholm. She was a speaker for the Save the Children Fund, and from 1924 to 1933 was a speaker and travel organiser for the Women's Freedom League, as well as the editor of the League's Bulletin for over 11 years. After working in Scotland in animal welfare, Lenton became the financial secretary of the National Union of Women Teachers until 1953. She was again filmed in 1959 when she discussed the Cat and Mouse Act. This item was broadcast in January 1960. Finally, she was interviewed for BBC News in October 1961 when she discussed her meeting with D. H. Lawrence. She confessed during the interview that the only one of his books she had read since meeting him was Lady Chatterley's Lover, stating "it must have been an expurgated edition, because I don't remember anything special about it".

In 1970, as Treasurer of the Suffragette Fellowship, Lenton unveiled the Suffragette Memorial in Christchurch Gardens, Westminster, dedicated to all the women who had fought to get the vote.

Lilian Lenton died in 1972. She never married.