SUFFRAGETTE ENGLANDLet me go, Mother. I am quite capable. I understand what I am fighting for and am prepared to go to prison for the cause. I feel that women ought to have their rights, and it will be an honor to go to prison.
—DORA THEWLIS, ASKING HER MOTHER TO LET HER JOIN A PROTEST MARCH
Dora heard it clearly. The great clock, Big Ben, struck four. It was time. She linked arms with the women beside her, forming a human chain. “Ready . . . march!” she heard called from up ahead. It was too crowded to see.
She and the others began to march up the street toward the Palace of Westminster, which housed British Parliament. It was a magnificent procession. The girls and women, all dressed in clogs and shawls—the suffragette uniform—were a thousand strong! How could the police stop them?
Dora chanted along with the other protestors: “Rise up! Votes for women!”
The women of England had waited far too long for their right to vote. Dora was tired of working long hours in a factory with no other opportunities—no school, no other job prospects. She wanted to have a say in her future! Getting to vote was the only way.
“Rise up! Votes for women!” she yelled again.
Suddenly, the police descended on the suffragettes, blowing whistles and shouting, “Break it up, ladies! Move along now.” There were hundreds of them! Many protestors broke ranks and ran as police grabbed women out of the crowd and began hauling them away.
Dora tightened her grip and kept marching. She wouldn’t let them stop her—not yet. She had to make it to the House of Commons, where the backstabbing politicians could hear her voice. That was the goal. Then they could arrest her, not before.
“Rise up! Votes for women!”
Whenever a policeman got near, Dora and her line dodged and ran. Miraculously, they made it all the way to the Old Palace Yard without being captured. Dora could see the House of Commons dead ahead. Perhaps the men inside could see her as well. She hoped so.
“Rise up! Votes for women!” she called up to the windows.
Suddenly, Dora felt a hand grip her arm firmly. A policeman. She tried to shake him off. “Let go!” she cried.
“Why, you’re just a child,” he said in surprise. “Time to go home to your mum.”
Dora struggled, so a second policeman gripped her other arm. They were big and burly—twice her size—but Dora fought anyway.
She twisted and pulled and shouted, “Rise up, women!” at the top of her lungs as they hauled her off to jail. The next day, sixteen-year-old Dora made the front page of the Daily Mirror newspaper. In the picture, her hair is a mess, her skirt and shawl askew, her face angry. The headline read: “Suffragettes Storm the House—Desperate Encounter with the Police—Wholesale Arrests.”1
The “Baby Suffragette” was born.
In 1890, Dora Thewlis was born in an industrial town in northern England. Her parents were poor, which meant the women and children had to work to help pay the bills and buy food. Dora’s father was a weaver, and her mother and older sister worked in a mill where they made cloth. When Dora turned ten, she joined them, working part-time—an occupation of little interest to her. Dora was really smart. Her mother said, “Ever since she was seven, she has been a diligent reader of newspapers and can hold her own in politics.”2 Yet by age twelve, Dora had to quit school and work full-time to help to support her family.
Dora wanted more for herself. Working conditions were dangerous, and the pay was low. But girls and women had few other options. If they wanted or needed to earn money, they could either teach (if they could afford an education) or they could work in the factories.
Some suffragette groups like the WSPU were radical and militant, using force to make their point. Suffragettes led protests and hunger strikes, chained themselves to railings, smashed windows, lit fires, and even set off a few small bombs. It took decades of fighting, but eventually, British women over the age of 30 won the right to vote in 1918 (it was age 21 for men). By 1928, all British women could vote.3 (American women got the vote slightly sooner, in 1920.)4
Dora’s parents may have been poor, but they were passionate about politics. The cause they were most passionate about was women’s suffrage (women’s right to vote). At that time, British women couldn’t vote. Even though they worked, paid taxes, and took care of their households, they had no say in the laws that very much affected their lives. Dora and her family thought that needed to change. Women had been pushing for the right to vote for decades, with no progress from the politicians. Some women were fed up and wanted to take a more active, even militant approach.
In Manchester, another northern industrial city, Lady Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903, to fight for suffrage. (The media dubbed them the “suffragettes.”) Their motto was “deeds, not words,”5 and Pankhurst recruited women who were willing to take action—to protest and get arrested, two things women were not supposed to do. The suffragettes were unpopular with many who felt that women voting was a ridiculous notion. The police spied on them, and at protests and gatherings they were often booed, heckled, and spit at. Some critics even threw eggs and rotten vegetables at them.
In 1906, when she was sixteen, Dora saw Lady Pankhurst speak and was inspired. She, too, believed it was time to fight, so she and her mother helped to form a local chapter of the WSPU. Dora passed out leaflets and spread the message. The next year, Pankhurst called on chapters to recruit one thousand marchers for an extraordinary protest. Their mission: to storm the Houses of Parliament, the seat of British government, and take it over until the male politicians agreed to give women the vote. The suffragettes knew that many women would be arrested, but that was the point. They wanted media coverage—wanted to shock England. It was a bold plan, and Dora was dying to be a part of it.
Past protestors had been thrown in jail for months, so Dora’s mother couldn’t risk going. If she lost her job, who would take care of the children? Dora begged her parents to let her go in her mother’s place. They agreed, and in February of 1907, she joined the crowd boarding the train to London. The station was packed with well-wishers. “Mothers said farewell to daughters, aunts wished nieces well,” said Jill Liddington, a women’s suffrage scholar.6
As planned, the march was a media feeding frenzy. Five hundred burly policemen awaited the girls and women who marched on Parliament.7 Dora was arrested, along with many others, and sent to Holloway Prison. The next day, her face and the story of “the little mill hand” grabbed the nation’s attention.8 Overnight, Dora became a teenage celebrity, but she hated the media’s nickname for her. She snapped at one reporter, “Don’t call me the ‘Baby Suffragette.’ I am not a baby. In May next year, I shall be eighteen. Surely for a girl, that is a good age?”9
Dora didn’t want to be treated any differently just because of her age. When a judge tried to give her a lighter sentence than the older suffragettes, Dora demanded the same punishment. And when a judge actually ordered her to go home, she again refused: “I don’t wish to go back, sir. I shall remain here as long as the WSPU women want me.”10
If you want to learn more about the women’s suffrage movement and the girls and women who fought for their rights, check out the excellent 2015 movie Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep.
In the end, Dora did go home and back to the mill. Perhaps the media attention was too much for her. Or perhaps she didn’t want to work at the mills for the rest of her life. Whatever the reason, Dora left in 1914 for Australia, where she married and had two children. She never returned to England, even after British women finally won the right to vote in 1918. But feisty young Dora’s contributions to the suffragette struggle certainly helped to get them there.
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
I will rock the world by making sure that everyone has the nutrition and resources to survive. I will also make sure everyone has healthcare, even if they cannot pay. I will be an educator and mentor to unprivileged kids.
LEXI SMITH 
AGE 11