1-192-444 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Charlotte Despard, activist and campaigner, c1909. Born in Edinburgh, Charlotte Despard was already a well-known feminist and social reformer by the time she joined the Women's Social and Political Union of which she became joint Honorary Secretary. In 1907 she also became Honorary Treasurer and President of the Women's Freedom League. She was famous for wearing sandals all year round, and always having a Spanish lace mantilla in her hair. She was widowed in 1890, and went to live in Nine Elms, Battersea, where she witnessed the unremitting poverty of working-class women's lives and their treatment by the local Poor Law Administration. As a member of the WSPU, Charlotte went to prison twice; the first sentence was three weeks in Holloway Gaol for leading the deputation from the First Women's Parliament in Caxton Hall to the House of Commons on 13 February 1907. Under her leadership the WFL encouraged its members to take part in non-violent resistance such as evading the Census of 1911, refusing to pay any taxes until women were given the vote, and wearing the League's official colours of green, white and gold.