1. Dorothy Frances Montefiore, known as Dora Montefiore, was an English-Australian women's suffragist, socialist, poet, and autobiographer active in Britain.
24 Facts About Dora Montefiore
1. 2.
Dora Montefiore's mother was a daughter of George Drew, a property speculator who developed Caterham.
3.
Dora Montefiore was educated by governesses and tutors and at Mrs Creswell's school at Brighton.
4.
In 1874, Dora Montefiore went to Sydney to assist her brother's wife.
5.
When Dora Montefiore learned that she had no automatic right to guardianship of her children, she became an advocate of women's rights.
6.
In 1892 Dora Montefiore left Australia and after spending several years in Paris, settled in England.
7.
In 1898, Dora Montefiore produced a book of verse Singings Through the Dark.
8.
Dora Montefiore continued to be active in the suffrage movement, serving on the executive of Millicent Fawcett's National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and she joined the Women's Social and Political Union that had been formed by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst.
9.
In 1897, Dora Montefiore proposed the formation of the Women's Tax Resistance League.
10.
In 1906, to protest lack of political representation, Dora Montefiore refused to pay her taxes and remained barricaded in her home for six weeks.
11.
For six weeks, Dora Montefiore resisted payment of her taxes, addressing the frequent crowds through the upper windows of the house.
12.
Dora Montefiore later described the experience and the interior of Holloway Prison.
13.
Dora Montefiore joined several socialist organisations around this time, including the Women's Freedom League, the Social Democratic Federation and the British Socialist Party.
14.
Dora Montefiore was a linguist and responsible for the first English translation of the work of Maxim Gorky.
15.
Dora Montefiore was friends with suffragette Adelaide Knight and Minnie Baldock.
16.
Dora Montefiore was one of the speaker's at Baldock's Canning Town WSPU group and wrote to support Baldock's 'noble stand' in visiting the Liberal leader in December 1906.
17.
Dora Montefiore left the WSPU and joined the Adult Suffrage Society, for which she became honorary secretary in 1909, to support the case for full suffrage not based on financial status but for all men and women over the age of majority, rather than the limited option, some argued as a first step of women with property being enfranchised.
18.
Dora Montefiore lectured in Holland, attended the Socialist International Conference and went on a lecture tour of Europe and in the US, then returned to Australia in 1910 to visit her son Gilbert.
19.
In 1912 Dora Montefiore went to South Africa and wrote about the effect of capitalism.
20.
When Dora Montefiore's son died in 1921 from the effects of mustard gas poisoning acquired during his service in the War, the Australian government would not allow her to visit Australia until Holman spoke on her behalf and assured them that she promised not to engage in communist propaganda.
21.
Dora Montefiore was allowed to visit, and used the time to make connections in the Australian communist movement, meeting Christian Jollie Smith.
22.
Dora Montefiore represented the Communist Party of Australia in Moscow in 1924.
23.
Dora Montefiore wrote her autobiography in 1927; it was called From a Victorian to a Modern.
24.
Dora Montefiore died at home in Hastings in 1933, and her cremation was at Golders Green, Middlesex.