Bertha Brewster

Bertha Brewster (27 May 1887 – 1 August 1959) was a British peace activist and suffragette who achieved fame with her letter to the Editor of The Daily Telegraph in February 1913.

[1] She was arrested five times,[2] imprisoned twice and received the Hunger Strike Medal[citation needed] from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).

In 1908 she and her mother joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), with Mrs Brewster later becoming the secretary of the Ombersley branch.

Bertha Brewster was first arrested in August 1909 when she and a number of other suffragettes rented a house next door to a hall in Liverpool where Richard Haldane, a Liberal Member of Parliament and the Secretary of State for War was scheduled to speak at a meeting.

Press reports of the incident claimed that slates and other items were hurled from the roof of the house at the windows of the hall, resulting in Haldane having to interrupt his speech.

The authorities claimed that as Brewster had been ill in prison owing to her hunger strike she had been in no fit state to be punished.

In September 1909 a summons was issued for her arrest, and Brewster's mother engaged a barrister to defend her daughter and to pay any damages.

While serving her sentence the WSPU held a protest meeting outside the prison, while in London Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, the Treasurer of the WSPU, complained of the injustice of Brewster's sentence, comparing it unfavourably to a 5 shilling fine recently given to a man who had attacked a woman holding a baby, knocking both to the ground.

The day earned its name from the violence meted out to protesters, some of it sexual, by the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders Brewster was again arrested in November 1911 for smashing two windows at the National Liberal Club valued at 20 shillings.

[9][10] Her letter to the Editor of The Daily Telegraph of 26 February 1913 read: Everyone seems to agree upon the necessity of putting a stop to Suffragist outrages, but no-one seems certain how to do so.

Brewster was actively involved, becoming a member of the governing committee as Secretary and also helped to found a branch of the United Suffragists in Birmingham.

Also in 1914 her younger brother, Philip Brewster, later to be imprisoned as a conscientious objector, married suffragette Clara Giveen.

[4] Brewster latterly lived on "private means" in Weobley, a village in Herefordshire[15] and died at Sallanches Hospital at Haute-Savoie in France in 1959.