24 Facts About Leonora Cohen

Leonora Cohen was an English suffragette and trade unionist, and one of the first female magistrates.

Leonora Cohen was known as the "Tower Suffragette" after smashing a display case in the Tower of London and acted as a bodyguard for Emmeline Pankhurst.

Leonora Cohen lived to the age of 105 and contributed to the second wave of feminism in the 1970s.

Leonora Cohen's father, Canova Throp, was a sculptor but died in 1879 when Leonora was 5 years old, after developing tuberculosis of the spine, which left her widowed mother to raise Cohen and her two younger brothers.

Leonora Cohen's mother worked as a seamstress to provide for the family.

Leonora Cohen apprenticed as a milliner and while she was working as a millinery buyer, she met Henry Cohen, a jeweller's assistant in central Leeds and the son of Jewish immigrants, most recently from Warsaw.

In 1902, Leonora Cohen gave birth to her son Reginald who survived into adulthood.

Leonora Cohen's mother Jane was an influential factor in her life.

Leonora Cohen made many physical acts of protest against the government.

Later, Leonora Cohen was part of "The Bodyguard" to Mrs Pankhurst.

In 1911, Leonora Cohen joined in a protest where she threw a rock at a government-building window; she was arrested and held in Holloway Prison for seven days.

Leonora Cohen defended herself in court and, though found guilty, was released.

Leonora Cohen was "thumped on the jaw with the clenched fist of a policeman and knocked down under a mounted policeman's horse" at a House of Commons protest.

In 1913, Leonora Cohen protested against the government by using an iron bar to smash a glass showcase containing insignia of the Order of Merit in the Jewel House at the Tower of London.

Leonora Cohen was arrested a second time and sent to Armley Gaol where she went on a hunger strike.

Leonora and Henry Cohen then moved to Harrogate to establish a vegetarian boarding house, where they gave refuge to suffragettes fleeing from the police.

Leonora Cohen received a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.

Leonora Cohen explained that voting women would have power to demand higher wages as men had done, which would stop underpaid girls from drifting onto the streets.

Leonora Cohen disguised herself as a baker's van man, with Norah Duval as a boy, swapping places when delivering bread with fellow suffragette Lilian Lenton to let her escape from the art critic Frank Rutter's house in Leeds, which was used for recuperating hunger strikers.

Leonora Cohen became the Leeds district organiser of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers and organised workers in their claims including a three-day strike served a term as president of the Leeds Trades Council.

In 1924, Leonora Cohen was appointed a magistrate; she was one of the first women appointed to the bench and a JP for 25 years.

Since Leonora Cohen lived to the age of 105, she witnessed the second wave of feminism in the 1970s and Leonora Cohen was brought back into the public eye.

Leonora Cohen's scrapbook indicates that she was interested in current affairs because it contained an article about Nurse Edith Cavell's death.

Leonora Cohen spent her last years in a vegetarian nursing home.