1. Lilian Ida Lenton was an English dancer and militant suffragette, and later a winner of a French Red Cross medal for her service as an orderly in World War I She committed crimes, including arson, for the suffragette cause.
13 Facts About Lilian Lenton
1. 2.
Lillie Lenton was born in Leicester in 1891, the eldest of five children born to Isaac Lenton, a carpenter-joiner, and his wife Mahalah Lenton, a housewife.
3.
Lilian Lenton was jailed for two months under the alias "Ida Inkley".
4.
In June 1913 Lilian Lenton was arrested in Doncaster and charged as "May Dennis" with being on the premises of an unoccupied house which had been set on fire.
5.
Lilian Lenton was released from Armley Prison in Leeds after several days; on this occasion there had been no attempt to force feed her.
6.
Lilian Lenton's accomplice in the arson attack was an 18-year-old local journalist called Harry Johnson, who was sentenced to 12 months with hard labour in Wakefield Prison.
7.
Lilian Lenton was rearrested on 22 December 1913, on a charge of setting fire to a house in Cheltenham.
8.
Lilian Lenton was recognised from her police surveillance photograph, and imprisoned, when she commenced another hunger and thirst strike, being released at 11 am into the care of Mrs Impey of Birmingham, from whose home she absconded yet again, remaining at large until early May 1914 when she was rearrested at Birkenhead.
9.
Lilian Lenton received a Hunger Strike Medal "for Valour" from the WSPU.
10.
Lilian Lenton was a speaker for the Save the Children Fund, and from 1924 to 1933 was a speaker and travel organiser for the Women's Freedom League, as well as the editor of the League's Bulletin for over 11 years.
11.
Lilian Lenton was again filmed in 1959 when she discussed the Cat and Mouse Act.
12.
Lilian Lenton confessed during the interview that the only one of his books she had read since meeting him was Lady Chatterley's Lover, stating "it must have been an expurgated edition, because I don't remember anything special about it".
13.
In 1970, as Treasurer of the Suffragette Fellowship, Lilian Lenton unveiled the Suffragette Memorial in Christchurch Gardens, Westminster, dedicated to all the women who had fought to get the vote.