1-192-446 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Teresa Billington-Greig, Women's Social and Political Union organiser and, after the autumn of 1907, Honorary Organising Secretary of the Women's Freedom League, c1909. Born in Preston, Teresa Billington-Greig became a teacher in 1904 and Honorary Secretary of the Manchester Equal Pay Committee. She was a friend of Emmeline Pankhurst and joined the WSPU in 1905, giving up her teaching career to become an organiser and one of the first militant activists, serving two prison sentences in Holloway Gaol. Known as 'the woman with the whip'. Teresa would interrupt Liberal meetings armed with a whip which she would whirl around her to prevent being ejected by the stewards. She left the WSPU in 1907 and was a senior figure in the WFL and a leader-writer for their newspaper The Vote. Disillusioned with the League she left in 1911 and wrote The Militant Movement, which attacked militancy and the leadership style of the Pankhursts.