Miss Irene Fenwick Miller

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3229/the-womens-freedom-league

Family information: Daughter of suffragist Florence Fenwick Miller.

Additional Information: Irene was attracted to militancy, but wrote to WSPU suffragette Minnie Baldock asking if she could sit by her side when she carried out her first 'heckling' of a political meeting. Minnie went and Irene heckled. In 1906, Irene was on the London committee of the WSPU and was arrested after taking part in a deputation. She helped to organise some other militant 'stunts'. In October 1906, she was arrested and imprisoned for her part in a demonstration in the lobby of the House of Commons. In September the following year, she was one of those WSPU members who disagreed with Emmeline Pankhurst's resolution to make the WSPU, in effect, 'undemocratic' by forcing through her will on how the party would be run. Irene was therefore among the group of women who split to form the Women's Freedom League (WFL). In 1911, she took part in the illegal suffrage boycott of the 1911 census, writing across her census form at her home in Covent Garden, London, 'I refuse to assist in any census whilst women are unenfranchised! The above statement was written with the pen with which I earn my living.'