A feminist trailblazer

On the evening of 28 October 1908, two unremarkable middle-class women wearing heavy overcoats gained admission to the Ladies’ Gallery, high above the chamber in the House of Commons. Suffragettes had previously hit the headlines by chaining themselves to the railings at 10 Downing Street and, emboldened by this success, the leaders of the women’s movement planned an even more outrageous demonstration. The Ladies’ Gallery was surrounded by a metal grille, and this had huge significance for the suffragettes, as it symbolised their exclusion from the patriarchal political system. The plot was for two of them to chain themselves to the hated grille. One of the women chosen for the job was an Australian named Muriel Matters.

Muriel wore a thick leather belt round her waist and carried chains beneath her coat. At 8.30 p.m. she rushed forward, stripped off her coat and chained herself to the grille with a padlock. She then stood up and made a loud speech demanding the vote for women. Soon policemen and attendants arrived and, after a scuffle, she was removed, still attached to her panel of the grille. She was taken to a committee room, and the chains were filed off. To her disappointment, she was not arrested. She immediately joined the throng of women who were demonstrating in St Stephen’s Hall. Here she did contrive to get herself arrested for disorderly behaviour. She refused to pay the fine and was sentenced to imprisonment in Holloway for a month.

With a name like Muriel Matters (her real name), she was almost born to become a celebrity. She grew up in South Australia, her grandparents having emigrated from Plymouth. In Adelaide she attended high school, and she was trained in elocution by the same man who taught Lionel Logue, the hero of the film The King’s Speech.