Miss Rose Elsie Neville Howey

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/g11cn5r6r0k
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3214/how-effective-was-the-votes-for-women-campaign-in-bristol

Family information: Father a church rector. Sister to WSPU supporter Mary Howey.

Additional Information: Elsie (her preferred name) joined the WSPU in 1908 and quickly got herself arrested in February, taking part in a 'raid' on Parliament. She was sentenced to six weeks in prison. She spent much free time drumming up support for the WSPU in Worcestershire and appeared as a speaker on the WSPU platform for its large Hyde Park demonstration in June. Many women at Hyde Park signed and sent a resolution to the Prime Minister, who refused to recognise it. Elsie was subsequently arrested for the second time for 'disturbances' and obstruction related to this refusal, when she tried to make a public speech about it to people in Parliament Square. She was sentenced to three months in prison. After her release, she travelled straight to Newcastle, where the WSPU were campaigning to encourage people not to vote in a by-election for a local Liberal Party candidate (thus a goverment representative). Elsie's recent imprisonment was used to show people how the Liberal Party were not so 'liberal' after all. Elsie became a paid organiser in the West Country for a while, moving from Plymouth to Penzance, to Paignton and Torquay in Devon. In July 1909, she was sentenced to seven days in prison for demonstrating at an Exeter meeting, interrupting Lord Carrington, to be served in the third class prisoner division and not the first, usually reserved for political prisoners. Elsie went on hunger strike in protest and was eventually moved up to second division. When she threatened to continue the hunger strike, the doctor threatened to certify her insane. She recovered on release, to participate in further activities such as pestering and throwing stones at the windows of key politicians when holidaying. Elsie moved to Liverpool to campaign in 1910 and was arrested there for breaking a window at the Governor's House in Walton Prison. She was sentenced to six weeks' hard labour. She was released into nursing care after hunger striking. In 1912, she was sentenced to four months for breaking windows in London's Regent Street as part of a WSPU window-smashing campaign. She was sentenced to four months in prison and to another two months later that year for setting off a fire alarm. Elsie went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. Her throat never recovered and she had difficulty speaking for the rest of her life. Elsie was also a member of the Young Hot Bloods (YHB), a daring and secretive group within the WSPU made up of of women aged under 30.