Leonora+Cohen


 * Born 15th June 1873, to Jane and Canova Throp.
 * Her father, Canova, died when she was 5 yrs old of TB.
 * Leonora also suffered TB as a child, and was schooled at home.
 * She started working in a mill as an apprentice, and worked for a year without pay.
 * By 16 she was a skilful worker and was promoted with a pay rise.
 * In her mid-20s she met her husband-to-be, Henry Cohen.
 * Henry and Leonora married and had a daughter, Rosetta, but she died a day before her 1st birthday. They moved into a new house and had a son, Reginald.
 * From then, Leonora concentrated on being a good wife and mother.


 * With more time on her hands, she became more aware of women’s campaigns for higher pay and equal rights. She supported these views, as this opinion had been pressed upon her by her mother.
 * Henry also supported his wife’s political views, as did her brothers.
 * When two well-known suffragettes were arrested, her brothers willed Leonora to get involved.
 * By 1911, Leonora was branch secretary of the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union), having helped out previously, selling newspapers and fund-raising.


 * After the Prime Minister scrapped plans to give women the vote, having said he would, Leonora felt betrayed, along with many others, and vowed to fight until women had the vote.
 * In February 1913, Leonora committed her most daring act of public damage. She was originally going to go round smashing windows in London, but instead decided to go to the Tower of London. Here, on February 1st, she threw a metal bar through the glass case containing the Crown Jewels.
 * When she was asked why she had done this, she said, **“This is my protest against the Government’s treachery to the working women of Great Britain.”**
 * She was not sent to jail for this because the glass case repairs were valued at less than £5, so she could not be sent to trial before a judge.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">One headline of this story read, **“Leeds Suffragette Acquittal follows Smashing of Tower Show Case”.**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Leonora continued damaging public property and at one point, after smashing windows in Leeds city centre, she was sent to jail with another suffragette (the cost of repairs was £27).
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">They went on a hunger strike, and she was released due to poor health after two days.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Often, the authorities would then re-arrest these women when they got better, so the whole hunger process began again.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">When she was released, her husband said that should Leonora be re-arrested, he would not collect her when she was released, effectively putting any blame on the possible death of Leonora on the government. They did not re-arrest her, and the family moved from Leeds to Harrogate, where Leonora joined Harrogate’s WSPU and opened a vegetarian boarding house (Leonora had been a vegetarian since she had suffered TB as a child). She often let women released from jail ‘on licence’ to stay at the boarding house.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">After WW1, women over 30 were given the vote, and ten years later, women had the same voting rights as men.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">She was elected as a magistrate after the war, and gained an OBE for public services in 1928, ultimately working as a magistrate for 30 years.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Her husband Henry died in 1949, and left this tribute to his wife in his will: **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">“ ****<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">I have lived in perfect appreciation of all her loving and unselfish devotion throughout our life together…My love for her has been the one perfect happiness that life has given to me, and I leave my son the solemn duty of taking my place to make her declining years as happy and comfortable as she deserves of us both”. **
 * <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Leonora spent her last years in a Welsh nursing home, and died in 1978, on the 4th September, at the age of 105.