Leonora Cohen

Cohen was born Leonora Throp in Hunslet,{{Cite web|url=https://www.thoresby.org.uk/content/people/cohen.php|title=Leonora Cohen (1873-1978) - They Lived in Leeds - Thoresby Society|website=www.thoresby.org.uk|access-date=20 February 2020}} Leeds on 15 June 1873 to Canova and Jane{{cite web|title=Leeds' forgotten suffragette|website=BBC|date=30 November 2009|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/leeds/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8387000/8387247.stm|accessdate=27 September 2014}} ({{nee}} Lamie) Throp.{{cite web|url= https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_returns/marriages_1870/11367/8173475.pdf

| title=Marriage certificate of Canova Throp and Jane Lamie, Christ Church Belfast| date=16 February 1870| publisher= irishgenealogy.ie| accessdate=25 February 2018}}"On Wednesday, at Christ Church, Belfast, by the Rev. Edward Busby, M.A., Canova Throp, sculptor, of Leeds, to Jane Lamie, of Belfast." Leeds Times 19 February 1870 Her father, Canova Throp, was a sculptor but died in 1879{{Cite web|url=https://www.thoresby.org.uk/content/people/cohen.php|title=Leonora Cohen (1873-1978) - They Lived in Leeds - Thoresby Society|website=thoresby.org.uk|access-date=20 February 2020}} when Leonora was 5 years old, after developing tuberculosis of the spine,{{cite book |author=Liddington |first=Jill |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e6wICgAAQBAJ&pg=PT231 |title=Rebel Girls: How votes for women changed Edwardian lives |date=3 September 2015 |publisher=Little, Brown Book Group |isbn=978-0-349-00781-6 |pages=231–241}} which left her widowed mother to raise Cohen and her two younger brothers. Her mother worked as a seamstress to provide for the family.{{cite web |url=http://blog.royalarmouries.org/2013/a-continuing-story-of-museum-ffoulkes-the-tower-armouries-february-1913/ |title=A continuing story of museum ffoulkes – The Tower Armouries – February 1913 |last=Clifford |first=Bridget |work=Royal Armouries Blog |publisher=Royal Armouries |date=1 February 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130312081516/http://blog.royalarmouries.org/2013/a-continuing-story-of-museum-ffoulkes-the-tower-armouries-february-1913/ |accessdate=5 April 2019 |archive-date=12 March 2013 }} Cohen became a vegetarian in 1891 which she remained for the rest of her life.Crawford, Elizabeth. (2003). [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a2EK9P7-ZMsC&pg=PA135&dq=Leonora+Cohen&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3xoiDg_KIAxXRV0EAHRb-KF84ChDoAXoECA0QAg#v=onepage&q=Leonora%20Cohen&f=false The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928]. Taylor & Francis. p. 135. {{ISBN|978-1135434021}}

She apprenticed as a milliner and while she was working as a millinery buyer, she met Henry Cohen, a jeweller's assistant in central Leeds and the son of Jewish immigrants, most recently from Warsaw. Henry was a childhood friend but both families opposed the marriage.

The couple's first child, Rosetta, died in her first year. In 1902, Cohen gave birth to her son Reginald who survived into adulthood. For the next nine years, the small family enjoyed a peaceful life as Henry's business as a jeweller flourished.

Cohen's mother Jane was an influential factor in her life. Because her mother was a widowed seamstress who raised three children alone, it was obvious to Cohen that her mother had few rights as a woman living in Britain in the late nineteenth century. In an interview late in life, Cohen stated that, "Life was hard. My mother would say 'Leonora, if only we women had a say in things', but we hadn't. A drunken lout of a man ... had a vote simply because he was a male. I vowed I'd try to change things." Cohen recognised at a young age that her mother had to overcome huge obstacles in her life simply because she was a woman. It was "her mother's lack of empowerment that radicalised her."

Cohen made many physical acts of protest against the government. In 1909, she joined the Leeds Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903. Later, Cohen was part of "The Bodyguard" to Mrs Pankhurst.{{cite news|title=Obituary|newspaper = The Times}}{{subscription required}}

In 1911, Cohen joined in a protest where she threw a rock at a government-building window; she was arrested and held in Holloway Prison for seven days. She defended herself in court and, though found guilty, was released. She was also "thumped on the jaw with the clenched fist of a policeman and knocked down under a mounted policeman's horse" at a House of Commons protest.{{Cite book|title=Rise up, women! : the remarkable lives of the suffragettes|last=Atkinson|first=Diane|publisher=Bloomsbury|year=2018|isbn=9781408844045|location=London|pages=368, 381, 518, 532|oclc=1016848621}} As Cohen began to take more bold steps as a suffragette, her family supported her suffrage allegiance but her friends did not; she received hate letters and her son reportedly faced persecution at school.

In 1913, Cohen protested against the government by using an iron bar to smash a glass showcase containing insignia of the Order of Merit in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. Cohen was arrested a second time and sent to Armley Gaol where she went on a hunger strike. Because of the Cat and Mouse Act, Cohen was released from prison after a few days to allow her to recover from self-induced starvation. Leonora and Henry Cohen then moved to Harrogate to establish a vegetarian boarding house, where they also gave refuge to suffragettes fleeing from the police. She received a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.

In 1913, suffragettes Annie Kenney and Flora Drummond arranged for WSPU representatives to speak with leading politicians David Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey. The delegates explained the pay and working conditions that they suffered and their hope that a vote would enable women to challenge the status quo in a democratic manner. Cohen told the politicians that women in the textiles industry worked for 3 1/2d an hour whilst men were paid 6 1/2 d for the same job.{{Cite book |last=Meeres |first=Frank |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PJqIAwAAQBAJ&dq=Leonora+Cohen+leeds&pg=PA83 |title=Suffragettes: How Britain's Women Fought & Died for the Right to Vote |date=2013-05-15 |publisher=Amberley Publishing Limited |isbn=978-1-4456-2057-2 |pages=83 |language=en}} She explained that voting women would have power to demand higher wages as men had done, which would stop underpaid girls from drifting onto the streets.{{cite news |last1=Cowman |first1=Krista |title=Let's not forget the working class suffragettes |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2018/02/suffragettes-women-100-years-working-class |accessdate=2 May 2019 |work=New Statesman |date=6 February 2018}}

Cohen disguised herself as a baker's van man, with Norah Duval as a boy, swapping places when delivering bread with fellow suffragette Lilian Lenton to let her escape from the art critic Frank Rutter's house in Leeds, which was used for recuperating hunger strikers.

The dress that she wore to the 1914 Leeds Arts Club Ball was adorned with suffragette symbols and the logo of the Women's Social and Political Union. The dress is held by the Leeds Discovery Centre.{{Cite web|url=https://news.leeds.gov.uk/object-of-the-week--leonora-cohens-dress/|title=Object of the week- Leonora Cohen's dress|website=Object of the week- Leonora Cohen’s dress|language=en|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=20 February 2020}}

Cohen became the Leeds district organiser of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers and organised workers in their claims including a three-day strike{{Cite web|url=http://annesebba.com/journalism/discovering-a-new-relative-leonora-cohen/|title=Anne SebbaDiscovering a New Relative - Leonora Cohen - Anne Sebba|language=en-US|access-date=18 October 2019}} served a term as president of the Leeds Trades Council. After the First World War, Leonora and her family moved back to Clarendon Road, Leeds.

By 1923, Cohen became the first woman president of the Yorkshire Federation of Trades Councils. In 1924, Cohen was appointed a magistrate; she was one of the first women appointed to the bench and a JP for 25 years. In the 1928 Birthday Honours, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire for recognition of her social work.{{London Gazette |issue=33390 |supp=y |pages=3855 |date= 4 June 1928}} "Leonora, Mrs. Cohen, J.P., Chairman of the Women's Sub-Committee of the Leeds Local Employment Committee."

Cohen retired to Colwyn Bay in north Wales. In 1970, she attended the unveiling of the Suffragette Memorial in London, and, in 1973, revisited the scene of her Tower of London action.{{Cite news|last=Edwards|first=Margaret|date=14 June 1973|title=Woman who went to jail to win vote attacks Women's Lib|page=2|work=The North Wales Weekly News}}

Since Cohen lived to the age of 105, she witnessed the second wave of feminism in the 1970s and Cohen was brought back into the public eye. Brian Harrison interviewed 183 people, including Cohen, as a part of his oral history Suffrage Interviews project, Oral Evidence on the Suffragette and Suffragist Movements: the Brian Harrison interviews.{{Cite web |title=Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews |url=https://www.lse.ac.uk/library/collection-highlights/the-suffrage-interviews |access-date=17 November 2023 |website=The Suffrage Interviews}} The collection includes 2 interviews with Cohen in 1974, and a third conducted in 1976. In the 1974 interview, Cohen discussed her role in the 1911 rally and her experience of her first arrest: "[At the rally] it was so packed. And the mounted police were out. And when we got up to the palace gate, I can also remember so clearly the police there on horseback and that is where I was knocked down."{{cite web |title=Suffrage interview with Leonora Cohen |url=https://www.lse.ac.uk/library/collection-highlights/the-suffrage-interviews |accessdate=17 November 2023 |work=The Suffrage Interviews |publisher=The British Library of Political and Economic Science}} Cohen described the violence and huge crowds at the rallies.

In 1974 she appeared on the cover of Radio Times to promote the series Shoulder to Shoulder on the history of the women's suffrage movement; she was photographed wearing her Holloway brooch and Hunger Strike Medal.{{Cite web|url=https://womanandhersphere.com/2012/10/19/collecting-suffrage-the-wspus-holloway-brooch/|title=Collecting Suffrage - the WSPU Holloway Brooch|last=|first=|date=19 October 2012|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=}}

Scholars later analysed Cohen's life as a suffragette. Jemal Nath argued that vegetarianism was linked to feminism.{{cite journal|last=Nath|first=Jemal|title=Gendered Fare?: A qualitative Investigation of Alternative food and Masculinities|journal=Journal of Sociology|year=2011|volume=47|pages=261–278|doi=10.1177/1440783310386828|s2cid=145318627}} The suffrage movement in the late nineteenth century was used as an example. Cohen's vegetarianism, along with other suffragists, was seen as a way for women to spend less time in the kitchen because they did not have to prepare meat, therefore, they could spend more time pursuing interests outside of the home.

File:Leonora Cohen.jpg, Leeds]]

In the 1960s, Cohen donated her scrapbook, large collection of papers and other memorabilia to Abbey House Museum, Leeds.{{Cite web|url=https://www.yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk/blog/ask-the-expert-qa-26-november-the-leonora-cohen-suffragette-collection-with-nicola-pullen/|title=Ask the Expert Q&A 26 November – Leonora Cohen Suffragette Collection with Nicola Pullan {{!}} York Museums Trust|website=www.yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk|access-date=2020-02-20}} While her scrapbook does not give a comprehensive account of her time campaigning, it does provide an insight into what inspired her to become a suffragette. Her scrapbook also indicates that she was interested in current affairs because it contained an article about Nurse Edith Cavell's death. The collection included a painting of her as a child by her father.{{cite web |title=Canova Throp 1849–1879 |url=https://artuk.org/discover/artists/throp-canova-18491879 |accessdate=2 May 2019 |website=Artuk.org}}

Cohen spent her last years in a vegetarian nursing home. She died in 1978, aged 105.{{Cite web |title=10 famous suffragettes (and suffragists) |url=https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/history/famous-suffragettes |access-date=2024-10-03 |website=www.findmypast.co.uk |language=en}} The Times newspaper published Cohen's obituary. This mentioned her OBE, her job as a bodyguard for Mrs Pankhurst, her imprisonment and hunger strike and her title as the "Tower Suffragette" for the damage she did with the iron bar in the Tower of London. She was seen as a regional activist.{{cite journal|last=Cowman|first=Krista|title=Carrying on a Long Tradition': Second-Wave Presentations of First-Wave Feminism in Spare Rib c. 1972—80|journal=European Journal of Women's Studies|year=2010|volume=3|issue=17|pages=193–210 [205]|doi=10.1177/1350506810368909|s2cid=145119476}}

Cohen attached a note to the iron bar that she threw to smash the glass cabinet in the Tower: "Jewel House, Tower of London. My Protest to the Government for its refusal to Enfranchise Women, but continues to torture women prisoners – Deeds Not Words. Leonora Cohen"/ reverse "Votes for Women. 100 years of Constitutional Petition, Resolutions, Meetings & Processions have Failed."

An interview with Cohen on the occasion of her centenary appeared in the North Wales Weekly News. In it, she explains why and when she joined the suffrage movement and her subsequent actions.

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Category:1873 births

Category:1978 deaths

Category:English vegetarianism activists

Category:English justices of the peace

Category:English suffragettes

Category:Hunger Strike Medal recipients

Category:Leeds Blue Plaques

Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire

Category:Politicians from Leeds

Category:Trade unionists from Leeds

Category:English women centenarians

Category:English women trade unionists