SUFFRAGETTE, LEONORA COHEN – responsible for the smashing of a glass case in the Jewel House at the Tower of London in 1913

She was born in  Ireland in 1873 to Jane and Canova Throp of Hunslet. Her father Canova Throp, a sculptor whose works adorned the Royal Exchange building in Leeds, died of TB when she was 5 years old. Leonora had two brothers, John C. Throp and Francis R. Throp.

Leonora herself suffered from TB as a child, and was taught at home by her mother because of her delicate health. Jane Throp believed firmly in a healthy diet to combat the return of TB, and the family turned to a vegetarian diet. Leonora remained vegetarian for the rest of her life.

On leaving school at about 14 years of age, Leonora was apprenticed to a city centre milliner and worked without pay for a year. By the time she was 16, she had proved herself to be a skilled and efficient worker and was promoted to head milliner, with a pay rise to accompany her new position.

Her career blossomed, and by her mid-twenties Leonora was a millinery buyer in Bridlington. By this time she had met Henry Cohen, her future husband whom she married in 1900.

As a widow living in genteel poverty, but with no political voice, Jane Throp had strong views on emancipation. The story goes that, one day, bemoaning their lot to her daughter, Jane commented on the unfairness of a drunken lout of a man living opposite having the vote, simply because he was male. This incident made a strong impression on Leonora.

Despite all this, Leonora and Henry began their married life very conventionally, and moved into a house in Harehills. Leonora gave up her millinery job, determined to lead a tranquil life of domestic bliss. Their first daughter Rosetta, named after Henry’s mother, was born in November of 1900, leading to speculation that Leonora may have been pregnant at the time of their marriage. Sadly, baby Rosetta died just one day short of her first birthday, of tubercular meningitis. The couple moved to another house nearby, and the following year their son, Reginald Cohen, was born. Reg survived, and for the next nine years Leonora devoted herself to being a wife, mother and homemaker.

Henry, a watchmaker and jeweller, was a successful businessman, and they were able to send young Reg away to boarding school. During this time Leonora and her mother were reconciled. There seems to have been something of a rift between mother and daughter when Leonora got married, which must have been very hard on both women, as they both loved and admired each other tremendously.

There seem to have been many influences at play which steered Leonora in the direction of politics. With more time on her hands, Leonora started to take more of an interest in the sweated industries campaign and low pay for women. She also shared her mother’s grievance over the unfair disenfranchisement of women. Henry was a staunch liberal, and always supportive and encouraging of his wife’s political activities. Furthermore, her two brothers were supporters of women’s suffrage, and when two well-known suffragettes were imprisoned, they challenged her to do something, to get involved.

Leonora always insisted, however, that it was the harshness and unfairness of her mother’s life that influenced her.

By 1911 Leonora was branch secretary to the local branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), having played a supportive role for a number of years prior to this – selling newspapers, and fund-raising. In November of that year, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, broke his commitment to votes for women by announcing a manhood suffrage bill. This betrayal was enough to spark a passionate commitment to the cause of women’s suffrage in Leonora, and she vowed to fight until women had the vote.

One of her first political acts after this was to volunteer to join a deputation to Westminster on 21st November. The intention of this deputation was to join a larger demonstration in protest against Asquith’s action, and the women fully expected to be arrested, and possibly imprisoned. Henry, although concerned for his wife’s safety, was in full support of these actions.

One of her boldest exploits was on 1st February 1913 when she smashed a glass case in the Jewel House of the Tower of London.

The original plan had been for volunteers to go down Bond Street smashing all the windows. This had arisen from a meeting with Mrs. Pankhurst at Caxton Hall, which Leonora had attended. The thought of walking along busy London street smashing windows worried her considerably so, not wanting to let the side down, Leonora went one better. She bought a London guide book and looked through it for inspiration. When she got to the Ts, she saw the Tower of London listed, and her course of action was decided. She and two others got hold of a file, and cut out an iron bar from a fire grate, which they then wrapped in a piece of paper.

Arriving at the Tower, she spotted a group of schoolboys making their way in, and joined them  pretending to be a teacher. When they got to the Jewel House she took her chance and hurled the bar at the glass case, smashing it. She was immediately grabbed by the Beefeaters and put into one of the dungeons, then taken to the police station.

On being asked “What did you do that for?” her reply was, “This is my protest against the Government’s treachery to the working women of Great Britain.”

Leonora was committed for trial by jury, but only because the police had got an obliging glass-case maker to value the cost of repairs to the glass case at £7.00. If he had valued it at £5.00 or under, then she would have got off with a fine, but the higher valuation meant that she would be charged with malicious damage to public property, and would therefore appear before a judge.

The case was heard on 4th February, and Leonora conducted her own defence. She also called in her own expert witness to challenge the original estimate of £7.00 to repair the glass case. Her notes that she took in with her indicate how she planned to cross examine this witness: “Ask him how he makes the price out at £7.00. How could he have arrived at the value of the case when he had never even looked at it? I say, if the State pays £7.00 for that case it is money wasted by the Government. Women would not pay it. What is the size? How much per foot? What is the thickness of the glass?”

Clearly, having a husband in the jewellery trade was a decided asset!

Leonora’s expert witness was called the following day, 5th February. He had, on the previous day, made his own careful examination of the smashed case, and presented his technical (and much fuller) report to the jury. He estimated the cost of repairing the damage to be £4. 10s, and declared that the damage did not exceed £5.00.

The jury was directed to retire and consider their verdict, the outcome of which hinged almost entirely on the cost of the glass case. They deliberated for a long time, and eventually decided that they would have to give Leonora the benefit of the doubt regarding this cost. A verdict of Not Guilty was returned.

The press had a field day with this – “Leeds Suffragette Acquittal follows Smashing of Tower Show Case”, ran one stunned headline. Although Leonora’s acquittal demonstrated the public’s sense of fairness, and a degree of sympathy, the cause was still some years away from success, and suffragette violence escalated in the weeks following the case. * Leonora continued her militant activities up to the beginning of the Great War, and at one point fell victim to the notorious “Cat and Mouse Act”.

In 1913, Leonora was imprisoned after smashing windows in Leeds city centre. The estimated damage was £27, and once again she was remanded for trial before a judge and jury. Sent to Armley Jail with her fellow suffragette, Leonora declared that they would go on hunger and thirst strike. Two days later she was released on licence, her health having deteriorated rapidly.

A desperate and extremely angry Henry wrote to the Home Secretary protesting at this treatment of his wife, and to state categorically that should Leonora be re-arrested and subsequently released on licence when her health was affected once again, he would refuse to receive her back from the prison. On the surface, this seems like a callous thing for him to do, but in fact his aim was to place the responsibility for Leonora’s health, and possible death, squarely on the shoulders of the government.

This action was a bold and potentially dangerous one to do, and eventually someone in authority seems to have advised Henry to leave Leeds and take his wife and family somewhere safer.

Following this latest protest, Henry, Leonora and Reg packed up their house in Leeds and moved to the highly respectable and sedate town of Harrogate. Here, Leonora started a vegetarian boarding house, and advertised the establishment in the Suffragette journal. The address was ‘Pomona’, Harlow Moor Drive, Harrogate, and the house looked out over the moors.

Leonora did not give up her suffragette work, however, and joined the Harrogate branch of the WSPU, where she was welcomed with open arms.

At one point, she and Henry gave shelter to another suffragette who was out on licence, another victim of the Cat and Mouse Act. This was Lilian Lenton, a passionate and fiery speaker, who had eluded the authorities several times.

Lilian was taken to the Cohen’s boarding house by the police, who immediately surrounded the house with detectives, and erected a light in the next door garden, trained on to the Cohen’s windows, so that no-one could get in or out unseen.

Over the next few days, Leonora nursed Lilian back to health, and when she was strong enough, young Reg loaned her some of his clothes so she could disguise herself as a boy. Not wanting to take the risk of going out by the front door, even in disguise, Lilian went down to the cellar and crawled up the coal chute, and escaped through the back garden, thus eluding the police once more.

The outbreak of World War 1 brought a temporary cessation to the suffragette’s activities, and women over thirty were finally given the vote in February of 1918.

She died in Septenber 1978, at the great age of 105.