Miss Lillias Tait Mitchell
Gender: Female
Marital Status: Single
Born: 1884
Died: 1940
Place of birth: Leith, Midlothian, Scotland
Main Suffrage Society: WSPU
Society Role: Organiser
Arrest Record: Yes
Recorded Entries: 6
Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)
Family information: Father ran a timber business.
Additional Information: Lilias joined the WSPU likely in early 1908, after hearing Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence speak. She became 'militant' very quickly, being put in prison for two weeks in 1910 and another four months in 1912 after taking part in the WSPU's window-smashing campaign. She went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. By the end of the following year, she was an organiser in Aberdeen, followed by Newcastle and then Birmingham, where she increased the sale of the Suffragette newspaper significantly. In early 1914, she and Mary Richardson 'deployed a bomb, made by a woman chemist, to destroy a railway station in Birmingham' and later, she caused thousands of pounds' worth of damage to Castle Bromwich Racecourse. She was sent to Winson Green Prison in Birmingham.