Social worker

50

Single

Oakdene, Spout Hill, Rotherfield, East Sussex.

WSPU

Evades

Honnor trained as a midwife and lectured and wrote extensively on health care, The Nurse’s Dictionary being among her many publications. The newspapers and periodicals to which she contributed included the WSPU’s Votes for Women. She was elected to the London School Board in 1897. An active social worker, Honnor had Oakdene designed and built for use as a holiday home for disabled London children. Like (see) Maud Roll, Honnor seems to have supported the WSPU, then joined the Women’s Tax Resistance League (WTRL). In 1911, she too appears to have taken part in the WSPU boycott of the Census in protest at women’s exclusion from the franchise. Honnor supported Maud Roll’s first public act of tax resistance in 1912, as reported in the local papers - the Kent and Sussex Courier and the Crowborough Weekly. In 1913, the supportive Daily Herald carried a notice of another public auction and protest meeting to be held at Mark Cross on 24th of May. According to the Kent and Sussex Courier, Honnor and Maud had again refused to pay their taxes and had yielded to the police a silver salver and a gold ring for public auction. The Daily Herald described these items being sold from a wagonette on the village street attended by a crowd of more than 150 people. Immediately after this second distraint sale, the usual protest meeting was held by the WTRL at which Maud Roll presided. However, Honnor was absent from this meeting because of illness. Obituaries in the Times, the Kent and Sussex Courier and Votes for Women (see images) paid tribute to the indomitable enthusiasm with which, while her health and strength lasted, Honnor advocated and fought for the causes in which she believed in the face of all opposition. Contributed by Frances Stenlake, Sussex suffrage researcher.