Miss Eleanor Grace Watney Roe

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/suffragettes/8310.shtml
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/undaunted-the-arrest-of-miss-grace-roe/hgHEkc8E1ufmOg
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Additional Information: Grace joined the WSPU in 1908, having seen Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence speak. She had a small independent income, which allowed her to commit herself to the suffrage cause because she didn't need to work to earn money. She began organising in the London area and was first arrested taking part in a deputation to the House of Commons in 1909. Grace later moved to East Anglia as an organiser, and was based in Ipswich. She arranged many meetings and holiday campaigns along the east coast. She was an organiser for women's suffrage supporter and parliamentary candidate George Lansbury in the Bromley and Bow by-election in 1912. Sylvia Pankhurst, among others, held Grace responsible for the poor handling of the campaign, ending in Lansbury's defeat. Grace was a devotee of Christabel Pankhurst and, when her usual right-hand woman Annie Kenney was arrested in 1913, Grace stepped into her role. When the WSPU offices in London were raided and many key workers arrested, Grace ensured that the printing and publication of the WSPU newspaper The Suffragette continued. That edition was topped by the headline 'Raided', summing up the recent events. A warrant was issued for Grace's arrest for 'conspiracy', but the Actresses Franchise League (AFL) provided her with various disguises from its stage wardrobe and she managed to evade capture until 1914. In prison in late May that year, she went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed until her release under the Home Office amnesty in August. Grace had also been a member of the Young Hot Bloods (YHB), a secretive group within the WSPU who undertook daring deeds and were all under the age of 30.

Other Suffrage Activities: The WSPU effectively ended its campaigning for the vote when war broke out in 1914, instead focusing on aiding the government's war effort. Grace remained devoted to Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst and so helped their new campaigns, such as organising the Women's War Work Procession and their fight against the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1914. She lived wth Annie Kenney and her husband until the birth of their son, and then emigrated to America in the 1920s to help Christabel Pankhurst, who was now living there. Grace was at her side when she died.