Rose Emma Lamartine Yates

Rose Emma Lamartine Yates ( Janau; 23 February 1875 – 5 November 1954) was an English social campaigner and suffragette. She was educated at the Sorbonne and Oxford.

Together with her lawyer husband she worked for female suffrage from 1908 and during the First World War, and was willing to suffer arrest and incarceration for her beliefs. She travelled widely, giving lectures. She and her husband were also leading members of the Cyclists' Touring Club. After the war she was elected to the London County Council, where she campaigned for equal pay for men and women, better public housing, and the provision of nursery education. She later led the building of an archive of the suffrage campaign.

Life and career Yates was born in Dalyell Road, Lambeth, London, to a language teacher, Elphège Bertoni Victor Janau (b. 1847), and his wife, Marie Pauline (1841–1909), both French-born and naturalised British citizens. From 1896, she attended the Royal Holloway College where she studied modern languages and philology. She passed the Oxford final honours examination in 1899.

In 1900, she married a widower, Thomas Lamartine Yates ( Swindlehurst; 1849–1929). He was a solicitor, with a successful practice in Court of Chancery. Eight years after the marriage their only child, Paul (1908–2009), was born; he became an agricultural economist. Both Thomas and Rose Lamartine Yates were keen cyclists, and were leading members of the Cyclists' Touring Club. In 1907 she was the first woman elected to the governing council of the club. She did not at that point consider herself a suffragette, but soon concluded "on looking into the matter seriously I find I have never been anything else [and] I came to realise that I was and must remain one at whatever personal cost". She said of her actions that "every woman must have the courage of her convictions, and not slink back when she has taken her first step". Her political activism had the full support of her husband, who defended her at the trial.

In 1911, Thomas Lamartine Yates was arrested during a demonstration against the government for blocking a bill to allow limited female suffrage. He was not charged, but the publicity damaged his law firm for a time. Together with Mary Leigh, Rose was at the dying Davison's bedside, and headed a guard of honour for the funeral procession.

At the beginning of the First World War the Wimbledon WSPU converted its meeting room and shop into a soup kitchen and opened another in nearby Merton. The war precipitated a split between Lamartine Yates and the leading suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst. Under the latter's leadership the WSPU suspended its militant campaign for female suffrage, instead backing the government in the fight against Germany. Lamartine Yates and others disagreed with this policy. She chaired a meeting of WSPU members and ex-members on 22 October 1915 where a resolution was passed that "this meeting protests against the action of the W.S.P.U. officials whereby the Union's name and its platform are no longer used for women's suffrage and to remedy the innumerable disabilities of unenfranchised women". They also called for a full financial audit of the organisation and a copy of the resolution was sent to Pankhurst. The following year she was elected to the London County Council, its only independent member. She served for three years, championing equal pay, increased public housing, and the provision of nursery education.

Lamartine Yates led the way in building an archive of the suffrage campaign, and, in 1939, she opened the Women's Record House in Great Smith Square, London. The building was bombed during the Second World War, but some of its records were saved and were moved to the Suffragette Fellowship collection in the Museum of London.

Rose Lamartine Yates died of colon cancer at home in Wandsworth, London at the age of 79.

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