Dancer

20

Single

32 Pennywell Rd, St Jude's, Bristol BS5 0SR

WSPU

Evades

Lilian Ida Lenton was born in 1891 in Leicester to Isaac and Mahalah Lenton. She evaded the 1911 census with her mother while living at 32 Pennywell Road in Bristol. The location on the map is approximated due to extensive redevelopment. She joined the WSPU in 1912 after turning 21 and completing her education. She was first arrested as ‘Ida Inkley’ for participating in a WSPU window-smashing campaign and imprisoned for 2 months. When the WSPU continued militancy in 1913, she set fire to the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens with the help of fellow suffragette Olive Wharry. After being arrested, she went on a hunger strike for 2 days, during which she was forcibly fed by a nasal tube. She was released after falling ill due to food entering her lungs. The home secretary faced criticism for claiming it was her hunger strike that led to her illness, and she was not force-fed, despite Home Office papers clearly detailing Lilian Lenton being force-fed. She avoided recapture after her recovery but was re-arrested in Doncaster as ‘May Dennis’ for being on the premises of an unoccupied house that was on fire. Lilian Lenton was released from Armley prison after a multiple-day hunger strike in which she was not forcibly fed. She again escaped police, leading to Leeds police publishing a damming report on how she has evaded their control. She escaped by private yacht to France, leading to the Home Office releasing a wanted picture of Lenton. She returned to England soon after her escape to be rearrested at Paddington station in 1913 after trying to claim a bike from lost property. She again went on a hunger strike and was forcibly fed until her release, where she avoided recapture until the 22nd of December 1913 after setting fire to a house in Cheltenham. After hunger and thirst striking again, she was released into the care of Mrs Impey in Birmingham on Christmas Day. She recalled in an interview with the BBC in 1960 that there was a gap between the Cheltenham police ‘depositing’ her at the house and the arrival of Birmingham police to survey the house and prevent her escape until she could be rearrested under the cat and mouse act. She used that gap to escape and described the Birmingham police as ‘surrounding the house watching for the mouse that had already escaped’. She evaded police until May 1914, when she was arrested in Birkenhead but soon released under the Cat and Mouse act due to Lenton's hunger strike. She was not arrested again as she avoided recapture until the WSPU ended their militancy in August 1914 because of the outbreak of war. Lenton later expressed in a BBC interview that she was not satisfied with the terms of the women's vote granted in 1918, as she could not vote for many years despite being over 30, as she didn’t have a husband or meet the property qualifications. During the First World War, Lenton worked in Serbia with the Scottish Women's Hospital unit and later worked for the British Embassy in Stockholm. From 1924-33, she was a travelling organiser and speaker for the Women’s Freedom League, editing the WFL bulletin. In 1970, she helped unveil a memorial to the women who fought for the vote in Christchurch Gardens, Westminster. She died in 1972, aged 84. Liddington, Jill, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census (Manchester, 2014); Crawford, Elizabeth, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 18661928 (London, 1999); ‘BBC Archive 1960: Lilian Lenton Suffragettes’ (2024)BBC <https://www.bbc.co.uk/videos/c72p2n2479go>; ‌Bell, Bethan (2018) ‘Actresses and Arsonists: Women Who Won the Vote’, BBC News <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42635771> .Contributed by Becca Aspden, URSS student researcher, History Dept., Warwick University.