Miss Dora Thewlis

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/suffragists-and-suffragettes
Jill Liddington, Rebel Girls: Their Fight for the Vote (2006)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3208/working-class-women-in-the-suffrage-movement

Additional Information: Dora was nicknamed the 'Baby Suffragette' by the newspapers because she was arrested for taking part in a women's suffrage deputation to Parliament aged 16 years old. Her arrest was photographed and she appeared on the front page of a number of newspapers. She joined the local branch of the WSPU likely in 1907, and had travelled to London to take part from her home in Huddersfield. There she had been working as a part-time weaver for a few years. In court, the magistrate expressed his astonishment at her age ? that she was but a child and should be in school and with her parents. His remarks illustrated his lack of understanding of child labour and the very short schooling that was a feature of industrial working life. In a letter to Dora, her mother wrote, 'I am very proud of you... You ought to have told the magistrate, when he said you were too young and ought to have been at school, "What about working at Huddersfield [on] a loom for 10 hours at a stretch?"'