Miss Susan Ada Flatman

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/suffragettes/8302.shtml
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote (2014)

Additional Information: Ada joined the WSPU in 1908 after hearing Christabel Pankhurst speak. She quickly became an organiser for the WSPU in the Pembrokeshire by-election campaign. Shortly afterwards, she helped Mary Blathwayt in the WSPU shop in Bristol and later that year was arrested and imprisoned for one month for taking part in a 'raid' on the House of Commons. In 1909, she was sent to Aberdeen to help smooth the ruffled feathers of some of the original Scottish WSPU workers in Aberdeen, who were resentful of the English organisers coming in. Soon afterwards, she took over as organiser in Birmingham, and then in Liverpool, where she opened the first 'Votes For Women' shop in 1909. By 1911, she had moved again to Cheltenham, where she was appointed organiser, and in 1912 she organised in Hereford. In 1911, she organised a mass 'evasion' of the government census survey, letting suffragettes stay at her address at Bedford Lodge, College Road, Gloucestershire, to avoid giving legally required details. Ada was clearly an immensely talented organiser to be so much in demand, and when she was recruited to organise during election campaigns for the WSPU, to ensure that Liberal candidates (representing the goverment, who refused to give votes to women) were defeated, she either substanially reduced their majority or succeeded in bringing about their demise (for instance, in Crewe). Despite her hard work, and it is not clear why, Ada resigned from the WSPU in July 1912. She kept a suffrage scrapbook, which is now in the Museum of London.

Other Suffrage Activities: Ada continued to travel around a lot during and after the First World War, spending time in the USA, Canada and South Africa ? frequently, it seems, looking for work with women's societies so that she could use her extensive organisational skills. She eventually returned to England and settled in Eastbourne, Sussex.