One of the privileges of working with archives and special collections is having the opportunity to talk to donors and researchers in detail about items held within the collections. Sometimes this leads to finding unexpected stories or traces of individuals in surprising places. In celebration of International Women’s Day, we are delighted to share one of these recent discoveries.

Whilst selecting items from the Dalcroze Society UK Archive for a recent event, the name of an individual who had been a prominent Suffragette between 1912 -1914 was pointed out to us.

Within the collection there are tantalising glimpses of the name and image of Lilian Lenton, who held the roles of Secretary and Honorary Treasurer of the Society, many years after her Suffragette notoriety. But without further evidence could we be sure that the Lilian Lenton in the Dalcroze Archive was the same person as Suffragette Lilian Lenton?

In this photograph taken at The Dalcroze Training Centre, Newton Road, London the individual standing just behind the woman on the ladder has been purported to be Lilian Lenton and there is resemblance with photographs available online which show the Suffragette Lenton in her later years.

After a searching the catalogues of other organisations we found an intriguing reference to a tablecloth owned by Suffragette Winifred Roberts in the Women’s Library Collections held at the London School of Economics (LSE). This tablecloth has the signatures of various Suffragettes embroidered on it. One of these signatures belongs to Lilian Lenton:

This embroidered signature which can be viewed in full has clear similarities to the signature on the Dalcroze Society Eurhythmics teaching certificate that we have in the collection which was awarded to Patsy James in July 1953.

So, who was the Suffragette Lilian Lenton? Lenton was widely known in the press of the time as a militant Suffragette. She was a window breaker, an arsonist, a victim of force feeding, a ‘mouse’ under the 1913 Cat and Mouse Act and a police fugitive. In a BBC interview from 1960 Lenton gives her own account of her illegal activities and her many escapes from the police.

There are many webpages with information about the Suffragette activism carried out by Lenton including her window breaking and fire starting activities.

She was arrested and imprisoned a number of times, using various aliases on her arrest. Her mistreatment in prison is also well documented, with digitised copies of original documents relating to her imprisonment for burning down the Kew Gardens tea pavilion available on The National Archive ‘Outrage at Kew’ resource pages. Whilst imprisoned Lenton went on hunger strike and attempts to force feed her left her gravely unwell.

In an oral history interview conducted by the historian Sir Brian Harrison with Suffragette Leonora Cohen in 1974 (which can be accessed directly from the LSE) there is an account of Cohen nursing Lenton for eight days and nights following her temporary release from prison on licence under the Cat and Mouse Act. Cohen also helped to aid Lenton in her escape from the police. Lenton evaded capture by disguising herself as a man and dressing in suit and cap belonging to Cohen’s son.  

As the Dalcroze Society UK Archive is uncatalogued we have so far only been able to identify a few examples of Lenton’s role with the Society, but we expect that as more work is carried out on the collection further instances of her name will be found in the Society’s records. We look forward to learning more about Lilian Lenton and her links with the Dalcroze Society in the future.

If you are interested in finding out more about the history of the women’s movement a new exhibition has just opened at the LSE Library Gallery in London. The exhibition ‘‘The Women’s Library at 100: celebrating a century of collections’ explores the history of The Women’s Library and features over 60 items from its diverse collections.