Miss Rosa May Billinghurst

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/rosa-may-billinghurst-suffragette-campaigner-cripple/
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m0bsf75
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3218/rosa-may-billinghurst

Additional Information: May (as she preferred to be called) joined the WSPU in 1907, understanding through her experience in workhouses (see Other Activities) that votes for women were crucial for social progress. May was disabled, having suffered from paralysis as a child, and got around using what was known then as an 'invalid tricycle' ? today we would describe it as a wheelchair. Using her tricycle, she took part in the NUWSS procession of 13 June 1910, distributing leaflets as she went, and she helped the WSPU in local campaigns. In 1910, she founded the Greenwich branch of the WSPU, acting as secretary. Later that year, in November, May took part in the 'Black Friday' demonstration and was thrown out of her tricycle. She was arrested a year later in Parliament Square for obstructing the police and was sentenced to five days in prison. In 1912, she took part in the WSPU's organised window-smashing campaign, receiving one month's hard labour. She was arrested again later that year on suspicion of damaging letter boxes in Deptford. For this, she was sentenced to eight months in prison and immediately went on hunger strike. Like other women, she was forcibly fed but was released after two weeks, following numerous interventions and appeals on her behalf. She was hurt during force-feeding ? her nose was ripped and one of her teeth broken when the feeding tube was forced down her nose and throat. Having recovered in 1913, she took part in the funeral procession for suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, dressed in white and in her tricycle. In May 1914, as part of a larger WSPU demonstration, she chained herself in her wheelchair to railings at Buckingham Palace. Later, May was also a member of the Women's Freedom League (WFL).

Other Suffrage Activities: May suffered from paralysis probably through contracting the disease polio as a child. She worked among the very poorest people in society in London's workhouses, and this led her into the votes for women campaign because she wanted to have a say in changing things for the better. When the war broke out in 1914, she stayed loyal to the Pankhursts and actively supported Christabel Pankhurst when she stood for election in Smethwick in the West Midlands in 1918.