We were honoured with a visit by Rose Lamartine Yates (alias Joan Cottle) at last months Trumps Green WI Meeting. Rose marched between our seating arrangement to the front chanting the WPSU song wearing her Suffragette outfit complete with hat and sash.
Rose was born of French parents in 1879. She was a well educated young woman, having studied modern languages at the Royal Holloway College and although she left before completing the course she did go on to Oxford and passed her final honours examination in modern languages and philology.
Rose joined the Suffragette committee of the Wimbledon Branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WPSU) in 1909, becoming it's treasurer & organising secretary in 1910. Their policy was never to harm anyone in their endeavours to gain the vote. Her husband Tom, whom she'd met through a cycling club, was in full support of his wife's activity, proving invaluable in his role as a solicitor to the cause. The treatment of Suffragette's when on hunger strike was barbaric, the force feeding causing so much damage internally that women suffered ill health for the rest of their lives; one woman had asked to be killed rather that undergo this proceedure. Rose claimed that she was at our meeting to obtain new members to join the Suffragettes, we were all eager to put our names on the dotted line as we're all liberated women wishing to obtain our equal rights.
Joan went on to tell us that at the start of the war the offices at Wimbledon were converted into a Distress Kitchen, Rose was the treasurer. Later Rose became a committee member of the new oganisation of the Suffragetts (WPSU) together with Una Dugdale Duval shewas responsible for establishing the Suffragette Record Room, which opened in 1939.
If you wish to see a photo of Rose suggest you visit the London Museum website.
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