She was a daughter of Louisa Henrietta (née Clarke) and Edward Cole, an eloped couple, and was one of ten children, of whom only five survived infancy.

The suffering of cab horses had already prompted Anna Sewell's famous tale, Black Beauty, first published in 1877 by Jarrolds of Norwich.

Cole was just as dismayed as that author at seeing overworked cab horses collapsing in the street from exhaustion and ill health.

One day, while passing the docks with her sister, Cole saw lines of horses who, ill and exhausted at the end of their working lives, had been sent from Britain to be disposed of in overseas abattoirs.

[9] She did not object to the eating of horses or their slaughter for meat per se but wanted more humane conditions for their transport to slaughterhouses.

By 1906, nearly 50,000 worn-out horses per year were being exported on British ships to the continent for meat or vivisection without anesthetic.

[11] Cole researched the situation,[5] working with the RSPCA and the Brussels Society for the Protection of Animals, watching and recording the journeys of horses and mules, often without access to food or water.

She also helped allied soldiers to escape back to their homes via underground networks that included her sister's convent.

Interrogated and at times in solitary confinement, she then stood trial on November 1, 1918, and was sentenced to a year in prison in Germany.

Cole continued to work with help from, for example, the RSPCA, the Belgian SPCA, and Lord Mark Lambourne, to pressure the Minister of Agriculture to improve inspections and slaughter conditions in France and Belgium.

Newspaper articles, posters around London and a meeting at the Royal Albert Hall in May 1921, at which Cole spoke, all helped to sway public opinion so that a tax of £20 was levied on every horse, mule or ass exported live from Britain, thus making the trade uneconomic for horse dealers.

[6] In the 1920s, Cole spoke publicly all over the country, gathering high-profile supporters such as John Buchan, who later became Governor General of Canada, and the Swedish anti-vivisectionist Emily Lind-af-Hageby and the Duchess of Hamilton.

Her aim was to stop the export of horses completely as it was hard to verify that the slaughter techniques in continental abattoirs were humane.

[17] In 1925, Cole and Jules Ruhl produced a controversial film for the RSPCA depicting the inhumane slaughter of export horses in Belgium that featured graphic footage taken at the village of Terhagon in 1914.

[18][19] The Departmental Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture alleged that the film featured staged slaughter footage by paid butchers.

[24] Edward G. Fairholme, chief secretary of the RPSCA requested for a requisition with at least 150 secured signatures to summon an "extraordinary general meeting".

[27] There was divided opinion about Cole organizing a new special department of the Society to end the practice of exporting horses to Europe for slaughter.

Her remains were cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, among those president were Sir Robert Gower of the RSPCA and De Vere Summers.

[6] Parallels have been drawn between Cole and another courageous Norfolk nurse, Edith Cavell, whose execution by Germans in 1915 made all aware of the danger of resistance work.