Dora Beedham

Initially working in the poorest areas of London, Tottenham and Battersea, Spong was a nurse and midwife[4] and sanitary inspector to slum residents.

[5][4] Spong was involved in WSPU poster protests, where small groups of women carrying and selling Votes for Women or other publications for handing out could progress through London streets, raising awareness and publicity, with less risk of violent reactions from objectors, compared to mass demonstrations.

A picture in the Museum of London (see above) shows Spong with Dorothy Hartopp Radcliffe, Hilda Dallas and Charlotte Marsh with a placard promoting the "Women's Parliament" in Caxton Hall on 30 June 1908.

[4] In 1911, Beedham (née Spong) was one of the seventeen WSPU members of the forty-two signatories to the petition from Ellen Avery to Constance Lytton's brother Lord Lytton expressing gratitude for his faith in women's suffrage movement such that "in the years to come the Women of our Race - strong in the Freedom that you have done so much to win - will abundantly justify that faith.

[5] Beedham's grand-daughter Joanna Wickenden Ibarra wrote about her brother Peter discovering her WSPU certificate signed by Emmeline Pankhurst stating she was 'ever ready to obey the call of duty' and her Holloway brooch - a portcullis with a broken chain - which her family knew from childhood 'celebrated victory in the fight for women's suffrage.

'[11] Her great-nephew Roger Spong was an English international rugby player and a director of her father's company (which continued in business until the hardware division was finally taken over by Salters in the 1980s).

[13] With her sister the singer Irene Spong she performed in the Greek drama Lysistrata at the Royal Court Theatre.

Sister Irene Osborn Spong (1882-21 June 1960) was a singer and put on concerts to raise money for the WSPU, and gave elocution classes to suffragette speakers.

Irene also was imprisoned in Holloway for suffrage activism, and although married to her father's company managing clerk, Norman Parley in 1910, she retained her maiden name for her singing career.

[14] Florence and her sister Minnie Spong became poultry farmers in Felbridge, East Grinstead and advertised in Votes for Women for female students.