Rosa Billinghurst: Disabled Suffregette History Detective Podcast

Rosa Billinghurst was a British suffragette and although women in South Australia were granted the vote in 1894—before votes for women slowly rolled out to the other Australian states over the next 14 years—women in England had to wait another 3 decades until they were granted the right to vote on the same terms as men. The suffrage campaign for women was a long, complicated and often violent in terms of atrocities being enacted on women as well as there being violence perpetrated by women.

Let’s look at some of the militant tactics that were used by women to try and get the vote. The militant suffragettes, or WSPU (short for the Women’s Social and Political Union) were led by Emeline Pankhurst. As a side note, there is an episode of Ladies in the House about her daughter Adela, who disapproved of her militant methods and was sent to Australia. Anyway, the militant suffragettes would smash the windows of shops and offices, destroy mail boxes, cut telephone wires, burn down houses of politicians, slash paintings in prestigious art galleries and they even planted bombs in cathedrals. However, what they did not do was commit violent acts towards people, only property. Estimates have been made that their campaigns caused £2 billion worth of damage.  By the way, there was another group of women who campaigned for women’s rights to vote and were non-violent. They were called suffragists. But today, as we are looking at Rosa Billinghurst, she was a part of the militant suffragettes.

So, let’s learn a little bit about Rosa May Billinghurst. As I mentioned earlier, she had a physical disability. She was not born with it, but she had polio as a child which left her partially paralysed. This meant that the needed to use a wheelchair. Well, sort of. She had what was called a tricycle. It had two large wheels on the side, like a modern-day wheelchair and then one smaller wheel at the back. Her legs lay straight out in front of her and there were 2 extra smaller wheels at the front attached to the leg supports. (Google image search if you want to get a clear idea) Polio, as a disease, was eradicated in Australia in the year 2000 due to a successful vaccination campaign, but it does still exist in some parts of the world. According the World Health Organisation, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries that have not stopped transmission. Rosa came from a wealthy family and in her younger years, she volunteered in workhouses. There, she was exposed to the abject poverty of women and children. Seeing these destitute women first hand, was a catalyst for her wanting women to gain the vote.

In 1907, when she was in her early 30s, Rosa May joined the WSPU. She donated a considerable amount of money to the militant suffragettes. Her physical disability did not stop her from becoming increasingly involved in the militant activities of the WSPU. She was arrested on many occasions and the newspapers unkindly referred to her as the “cripple” suffragette.

One of the very brutal occurrences that took place during this time, is now known as “Black Friday”. And no, it had nothing to do with shops selling products at greatly reduced sale prices. You see, in 1910 the government had been considering passing a bill in parliament called the Conciliation Bill. This was going to mean that a female who owned property—generally only rich white women—would be given the right to vote. The suffragettes were happy about this and had eased off on their militant protests. Then, the Prime Minister called an early election, because he was trying to get different bill passed through parliament, and this meant that the Conciliation Bill was no longer being considered.

About 300 women decided to march on the House of Commons (or the parliament house) furious that the bill was no longer being considered. Unfortunately, one of the most disturbing things that arose out from these protests was the blatant sexual assault of the female protesters by both the police and male onlookers. One of the protesters described her treatment in the following manner, “Several times constables and plain-clothes men who were in the crowds passed their arms round me from the back and clutched hold of my breasts in as public a manner as possible, and men in the crowd followed their example… My skirt was lifted up as high as possible, and the constable attempted to lift me off the ground by raising his knee. This he could not do, so he threw me into the crowd and incited the men to treat me as they wished”.

Rosa May Billinghurst later recounted her experience at the Black Friday protests, “At first, the police threw me out of the machine [her tricycle] on to the ground in a very brutal manner. Secondly, when on the machine again, they tried to push me along with my arms twisted behind me in a very painful position, with one of my fingers bent right back, which caused me great agony. Thirdly, they took me down a side road and left me in the middle of a hooligan crowd, first taking all the valves out of the wheels and pocketing them, so that I could not move the machine, and left me to the crowd of roughs, who, luckily, proved my friends.”

Another one of the militant campaigns she was involved in was called the “Pillar Box Campaign”. A pillar box, or what we might now know as a post box, were an integral part of all business transactions during this time. These pillar boxes were set on fire, booby trapped to set alight when they were opened so all the letters would go up in flames and the suffragettes would also pour dangerous chemicals into the boxes, effectively ruining all of the letters inside. There had been an estimated 5000 letters destroyed in their pillar box attacks, so both the public and police were on high alert. Rosa May, whose tricycle provided a great vehicle for carrying around the destructive chemicals, was caught pouring a sticky black substance into pillar box and promptly arrested and jailed for 8 months. 

Another harrowing ordeal that women in the suffragette movement were subjected to while in prison was force feeding. Suffragettes went on hunger strikes while in prison, and the authorities would tie them to a chair, and force a tube up their nostrils and down their throat and milk, eggs and other liquid foods were poured down the tubes. It was an invasive practice that often ended up breaking women’s teeth by the brutal administration of the feeding tube. Rosa May was a victim of this practice. The newspaper reported on the incident with outrage.

“This is nothing less than the deliberate breaking of one of her teeth with an iron instrument in order that the tube might be forced into her mouth against her will. As I understand, one of her nostrils was so torn by the tube that the doctor dare not again attempt to force a tube into it.”

Incidents like this led to the passing of the Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act in 1913. It allowed for the temporary release of prisoners who were ill from hunger striking. They could be rearrested once their health recovered. This was also known as the Cat and Mouse Act. And there was even a board game created called Suffragettes: In and Out of Prison.

After women in Britain gained the vote, Rosa May Billinghurst—during the depression—adopted a daughter called Beth. She was not married, but must have been wealthy enough for this not to have been an issue. Rosa May would have been in her mid 50s by this stage. Her adopted daughter Beth, who apparently loved Rosa May dearly until death in 1953, was taken out of Rosa’s care at age 14 and in 2019 published a book about some of the treatment she had to endure in her care. Unfortunately, this book is incredibly difficult to find, so I am not able to add more information about what she experienced. But I assume her upbringing was far from perfect. Considering the trauma that Rosa May Billinghurst experienced in her lifetime, it is not surprising that she may have suffered from some mental illness. Although she believed she was doing a good deed by adopting an unwanted baby, it would have perhaps been very difficult for her, both emotionally and physically, to raise a child on her own.