Private means

55

Unmarried

14 Clifton Terrace, Brighton.

NUWSS

Complies

Flora de Gaudrion Merrifield, born in Brighton in 1856, retained the name of her maternal grandfather, Colonel Victor Pierre-Jean de Gaudrion, of Saint-Malo in Brittany. Her father, barrister Frederick Merrifield, became Clerk to both East and West Sussex County Councils. He and his wife were NUWSS leader Millicent Garret Fawcett’s strongest supporters when she delivered her first suffrage speech in Brighton in 1870. Following her mother’s death in 1894, Flora remained at home with her father at 14 Clifton Terrace, with, according to the 1911 Census, a cook, parlourmaid and housemaid. In 1908 Flora became secretary of the Brighton and Hove Women’s Franchise Society, not only arranging meetings in the town itself, but undertaking ‘outreach’ along the coast and inland. The BHWFS became affiliated to the NUWSS and the meeting to inaugurate the Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire Federation of NUWSS branches was held at Flora’s home in 1910. Flora and fellow members attended NUWSS Council meetings and took part in NUWSS ‘demos’ in London, and Flora led the Brighton Road contingent in the July 1913 Great Suffragist Pilgrimage to the capital. At the outbreak of WWI, Flora organised a local relief committee, and in 1916 was joint secretary of Brighton’s Patriotic Housekeeping Exhibition, held under the auspices of the NUWSS. Following the partial enfranchisement of women in 1918, she became chair of the Brighton and Hove Union for Women’s Local Government and Equal Citizenship, the successor to the BHWFS . In 1920 she attended the 1920 International Women’s Suffrage Alliance Congress in Geneva, taking up the cause of the newly-formed League of Nations. When she resigned from the executive committee of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (the NUWSS's successor) in 1927, tribute was paid to her work ‘that extended over many years’. She died in Surrey in 1943. Contribute by: Independent researcher & writer Frances Stenlake.