15 Facts About Louise Eates

Louise Mary Eates was a British suffragette, chair of Kensington Women's Social and Political Union and a women's education activist.

Louise Eates took an interest in female workers' conditions, as honorary secretary to the Investigation Committee of the Women's Industrial Council.

In June 1907, Louise Eates hosted other middle-class women in her drawing room in Knightsbridge, where she paid Minnie Baldock from WSPU one shilling and sixpence to give a talk on how important suffrage was to working women.

Louise Eates had encouraged Baldock to bring a 'real' working woman Jane Sbarborough with her.

Louise Eates's guests gave 'many nice compliments' to the speaker.

In one year, Louise Eates's branch sold almost 26,000 copies of Votes for Women and set up an innovative 'Votes for Women' shop in Church Street, Kensington.

Louise Eates was arrested and charged with obstruction, sentenced to one month in prison, along with eight others including Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence who rushed the St Stephen's Entrance to the House of Commons in an attempt to meet the Prime Minister in March 1909.

In January 1910, Louise Eates organised for WSPU in the election campaign in the Kensington Division, and in December 2010 in the constituency of West St Pancras.

Louise Eates marshalled processions in Kensington and spoke on one of the main platforms at the Hyde Park rally.

Louise Eates travelled throughout the country in the Midlands and Wales.

Louise Eates joined the Pethick-Lawrence's United Suffragists, with Agnes Harben and her husband, which welcomed women and men, former militants and non-militants at the start of the Great War in 1914, and continued to publish Votes for Women until the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave women the vote and the group and its newspaper were disbanded.

Louise Eates served on the governing committee of the St John's Wood Infant Welfare Centre and Day Nursery from 1917 to 1923.

Louise Eates taught at the Workers Educational Association and was involved in the Women's Institute in the 1920s in Kent, where she moved in 1924.

Louise Eates had one daughter, Margot Louise Eates, who worked as curator and art historian at the Museum of London during the 1930s and World War II.

Louise Eates died in London in 1944, her last address being 135 Avenue Road, Acton, West London.