Miss Minnie Sarah Turner
Gender: Female
Marital Status: Single
Born: 1866
Died: 1948
Place of birth: Kingsland, Middlesex, England
Occupation: Owner of holiday guest house and boarding house in Brighton
Main Suffrage Society: WSPU
Other Societies: WTRL
Arrest Record: Yes
Recorded Entries: 1
Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)
Additional Information: Minnie joined the WSPU in 1908. She was arrested in 1910 after taking part in a deputation to Downing Street but was discharged. In 1911, she was sent to prison for 21 days for taking part in a WSPU window-smashing campaign, when she broke a window at the government's Home Office. Minnie ran a guest house at the seaside in Brighton and welcomed suffragettes who were recovering from time spent in prison, from hunger striking or from forcible feeding. She advertised her guest house widely in many suffrage society newspapers and it was very popular. Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison stayed there and was especially fond of the homemade bread and the chance to sleep outdoors in the fresh sea air as well as indoors. Minnie was well known as a suffragette locally and her guest house had its windows broken out in 1912 in retaliation for the new WSPU window-smashing campaign that year. In 1912, Minnie, who was also a member of the Women's Tax Resistance league (WTRL), also had some of her belongings seized and sold by the government to pay for taxes she had refused to pay.