Lilla Durham

Alice Lilian "Lilla" Durham (1871 – 25 October 1935) was a British suffragette and musician. She was a member of the militant Women's Social and Political Union and was arrested and imprisoned for breaking windows in the West End of London in 1911 and 1912. She was also a violinist and translated the biography of Joseph Joachim in 1901.

Life Durham was born in 1871 in Mayfair, London. Her father, Arthur Edward Durham (1833–1895), was a surgeon at Guy's Hospital, London and her mother, Mary, was the daughter of the economist and school founder William Ellis. She was one of nine siblings including the anthropologist Edith Durham, the scientists Herbert Durham and Florence Margaret Durham, and the civil servant Frances Hermia Durham.

Durham trained as a violinist at the Royal Academy of Music and with Andreas Moser in Berlin and worked as a music teacher at Saint Felix School, Southwold. She also produced an English translation of Moser’s German biography of the violinist Joseph Joachim, which was published in 1901.

Durham died on 25 October 1935 at Mitchells in West Chiltington, West Sussex, aged 64.

Politics

In July 1911, along with Lady Muriel Sackville, Marie Corbett and Helen MacRae, Durham was part of the group who founded the East Grinstead Suffrage Society in East Grinstead, East Sussex to campaign for the right to vote for women. The EGSS was a suffragist group aligned with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which aimed to use legal means. Durham had a house at Hartfield, a village near East Grinstead.

Also in 1911, Durham joined the Women's Social and Political Union and helped launch a new branch in Tunbridge Wells. The WPSU, known as suffragettes, were prepared to break the law in their campaign.