100 YEARS ON.. THE MILL GIRL
And when this picture was splashed across the cover of the Daily Mirror, she became an overnight sensation.
It was March 1907 and the 17-year-old mill worker was in the thick of the fight for women to have the right to vote.
Their actions were not in vain. The Representation of the People Act was finally passed on February 6, 1918 – 100 years ago this Tuesday – giving women in Britain the vote for the first time.
The part played by Dora and others like her was one in the eye for those who tried to belittle the suffragettes’ struggle as a pastime for middle class ladies.
Her arrest and imprisonment and her refusal to kowtow to a magistrate fired the public’s imagination.
The working girl in clogs and shawl became known as the Baby Suffragette.
But while others such as campaign leader Emmeline Pankhurst remain household names, it looks as if Dora simply disappeared from history.
Now the Sunday Mirror has tracked down her proud 10 grandchildren – after discovering she emigrated to Australia.
Granddaughter Kerrie Bartholomew, 66, a retired mum of two in Melbourne, said: “It is such a shame Nanna has been forgotten in Britain after being so involved in the suffrage movement.
“She never bragged about her achievements. She was a feisty and opinionated woman who instilled in all her children and grandchildren a sense of social justice. We are all very proud of her fight to get women the vote.
STORM
“She stood up for women in an age of terrible inequality.
“Without women like her, we would not have the rights we have today.”
Dora was born in 1890, the fifth of seven children of weavers James and Eliza Thewlis, and grew up in the Yorkshire mill town Huddersfield.
Like her siblings, she began to work in the mill aged 10, earning £1 a week.
Dora was an intelligent girl and read newspapers at seven.
A socialist, she joined Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union and campaigned for women’s suffrage.
Pankhurst urged women to storm Parliament to demand the vote and Dora volunteered, telling Eliza: “Let me go, Mother. I’m quite capable. I understand what I’m fighting for and am prepared to go to prison for the cause.
“Women ought to have their rights. It will be an honour to go to prison.”
On March 20, 1907, she joined a contingent of Yorkshire women as they travelled by train to London to march to Parliament Square.
Dora was one of 75 women arrested for disorderly conduct and sent to Holloway prison.
A picture of her being marched away by policemen appeared on the front of the Mirror with the line: “Suffragettes storm the House – desperate encounter with the police – wholesale arrests.”
Appearing in court in her mill dress, she defiantly told magistrate Horace Smith: “I don’t wish to go back, sir. I shall remain here
Kerrie in Australia