About Rosa May Billinghurst
Rosa May Billinghurst (31 May 1875 – 29 July 1953) was a British suffragette and women's rights activist. She was known popularly as the "cripple suffragette" as she campaigned in a tricycle. == Early life == She was born in 1875 in Lewisham, London, the second of nine children of Rosa Ann (Brinsmead) Billinghurst and Henry Farncombe Billinghurst. Her mother came from a family who manufactured pianos and her father was a banker. As a child she survived polio, which left her unable to walk. She wore leg-irons and used either crutches or a modified tricycle. She became active in social work in a Greenwich workhouse, taught in a Sunday School, and joined the temperance Band of Hope. == Politics == She was an active member of a Women's Liberal Association (fifteen of which joined in 1887 to become the Women's Liberal Federation that ultimately grew to 942 affiliated associations) and later, in 1907, a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She took part in the WSPU march to the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington, London, in June 1908. Billinghurst helped organise the WSPU response in the July 1908 Haggerston by-election; polling was on the day that twenty-four suffragettes were released from Holloway prison and came around the area canvassing to 'keep the Liberal out.' In 1909, she was presumed by Annie Barnes to be the wheelchair user seen distracting a police horse, who laughed as another woman seemed to tip the rider off to fall in a horse trough.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.