Violet Tillard

Violet Ellen Anstey Tillard (29 December 1874 – 19 February 1922) also known as Nelly Tillard was a British suffragette, nurse, pacifist, supporter of conscientious objectors, international famine relief worker and devout Quaker. She trained as a nurse at the Poplar and Great Ormond Street hospitals in London.

Work with the Women's Freedom League

Caravan tour

Tillard became involved with the Women's Freedom League (WFL) in 1908 and soon rose to the position of Assistant Organising Secretary. From May to mid-October of that year she helped establish branches of the League on a caravan tour of the southeast counties of England, such as in Norwich. The 'Votes For Women' caravan tour passed through Kent, East Anglia, Surrey and Sussex. It was on this tour that Tillard met Muriel Matters who was to remain a lifelong companion. Matters would later write of her friend's courage, sympathy, generosity and selflessness, stating that Tillard, "set one a standard to live by".

Role in the Grille Protest

The Grille Incident took place on 28 October 1908, when the Women's Freedom League organised a large demonstration to take place at the Palace of Westminster. It was an organised protest that took place at similar times throughout the Palace of Westminster – outside St Stephen's Entrance, the Old Prison Yard and in the House of Commons. The purpose of the protest was to draw attention to the struggle of women and remove the 'Grille', a piece of ironwork placed in the Ladies' Gallery that obscured their view of parliamentary proceedings.

Violet's role was in the latter part of the demonstration – to remove the offensive grille from the Ladies' Gallery. Tillard was joined in the House of Commons with her close friend Muriel Matters, Helen Fox and two male supporters in the Strangers' Gallery. Fox and Matters both chained themselves directly to the Grille and Matters began addressing the MPs directly, while the males in the Strangers' Gallery showered the house with handbills. Tillard's role was to force a WFL proclamation through the Grille and lower it on to the floor of the House using string. All four protagonists were set upon by attendants but were later released that night without charge. After they were permitted to leave Matters and Tillard immediately rejoined the protest outside St Stephen's portals but were subsequently arrested for attempting to break the police lines.

The pair and eleven other members of the Women's Freedom League spent the following month in Holloway Gaol. Matters later recounted that, despite the ugly prison garb, "Till managed to look so graceful. How Cheerful she was, how philosophic when many were either 'edgy' [or] 'weepy with strain, or rebellion." As was the suffragist tradition they intended not to pay the fine and serve their imprisonment. However, as paying the fine did not require the consent of the incarcerated, the group's fines were anonymously paid against their will.

Work between 1910 and the outbreak of war

From May to early August 1910 Tillard accompanied Muriel Matters to Australia where her friend gave lectures focusing on her experiences in Britain agitating for change.

When the 1911 census was taken, Tillard was living with Matters and Margaret Jewson in Lambeth and they participated in the suffragette census boycott. Tillard wrote on the household census form: “No Vote No Census. Should women become persons in the eye of the law this session - full information will be forwarded.” However, on 23 May 1918 Tillard found herself once again in court for her agitations. She was on trial for refusing to disclose to police the name of the person who printed the March edition of the No-Conscription Fellowship News. Tillard was found guilty under the Defence of the Realm Act and was sentenced to 61 days imprisonment to be served once again at Holloway.

Famine relief worker in post-war Germany and Russia

In 1919 Tillard travelled to war-torn Germany to help people recover from the effects of the war. She went with a Quaker mission organised by Joan Fry and in December of that year Tillard formally applied to become a member of the Religious Society of Friends. Whilst in defeated Germany she was confronted with immense misery and helped some students in Berlin survive the hardship. She provided relief in Germany as a nurse until October 1921 where she was transferred to famine-ravaged Buzuluk in Russia to help organise the relief work. There she found famine on a grand scale with an estimated five million dead at the conclusion of the food shortage. Confronted with mass impoverishment she wrote:

"One feels horrible to live in such good conditions when the people are literally starving at our doors – a boy of sixteen lies dead a few yards away... It isn't so harrowing to see them lying dead. They suffer no more. It is the doomed shadows one sees around the streets and in the homes that are most horrible."

Legacy In 2023, to mark the centenary of the Volga famine (1921–1922), an art competition named after Violet Tillard was held.