Suffragette Indian princess’s blue plaque commemoration at London home

A BLUE plaque honouring a suffragette Indian princess has been unveiled at her former London home.

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of the last ruler of the Sikh empire, goddaughter to Queen Victoria and a campaigner for female enfranchisement, was commemorated by English

Heritage at Faraday House, Hampton Court.

As a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant group led by Emmeline Pankhurst, she used her status and wealth as a member of the Punjabi royal family to support the cause for gender equality.

Film director Gurinder Chadha, actress Meera Syal, Professor Helen Pankhurst and Lord Singh were among the guests.

Anita Anand, author of Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary, said: “We owe Sophia such a debt of gratitude because without her courage and the courage of women like her you can’t take it for granted that we would have the right to vote in this country.”

Sophia lived in Faraday House, a grace and favour apartment granted to her by Victoria in 1896, with her sisters Bamba and Catherine.

Her early childhood in Suffolk was turbulent, with her father, abandoning his young family to live in Paris, and her mother suffering with alcoholism.

In their parents’ absence the sisters grew up in Folkestone and Brighton with their guardian Arthur Craigie Oliphant and his family, before moving to Faraday House as adults.

WSPU member Una Dugdale persuaded Sophia to join the union in 1908, and from 1909 onwards she was active in the suffragette organisation.

Sophia would sell copies of The Suffragette newspaper at her pitch outside Hampton Court Palace, and once threw a suffragette poster reading “Give women the vote!” at Herbert Asquith’s car at the state opening of Parliament in 1911.

Beyond her campaigning for women’s enfranchisement, she also supported the Indian Women’s Education Association in London. In 1915 she was one of 10,000 women who took part in the Women’s War Work Procession led by Ms Pankhurst.

A film partly based on her life, Lioness, premiered at Cannes Film Festival this week.