Lilian Ida Lenton (5 January 1891 – 28 October 1972) was an English dancer and militant suffragette, and later a winner of a French Red Cross medal for her service as an orderly in World War I.

[3] On attaining the age of 21, Lenton joined the Women's Social and Political Union, and with fellow members took part in a window-smashing campaign in March 1912.

[4] In early 1913, with Olive Wharry, she began a series of arson attacks in London, and was arrested in February 1913 on suspicion of having set on fire the Tea House at Kew Gardens.

Her case created an outrage among the public, made worse by the fact that the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, denied that she had been force fed and that her illness was actually caused by her hunger strike.

To avoid more such political embarrassment,[7] the Government rushed through its "Cat and Mouse Act" in April 1913, which stated that hunger-striking suffragette "mice" could be released on temporary licence to recover their health, when the security forces could re-arrest them.

[4] In July 1913, the police in Leeds were searching for Lenton when an elaborate plot was hatched, while she way staying with Frank Rutter, Director of the Leeds Art Gallery,[9] to enable her to escape in a delivery van, driven by Leonora Cohen dressed as a baker's man while Lenton swapped places with Nora Duval dressed as an errand boy[10] reading a comic and eating an apple.

[7] The Criminal Record Office issued a surveillance photograph of her (see above right) taken secretly in the exercise yard of Holloway Prison, in the accompanying details of which she is described as being 5 feet 2 inches tall with brown eyes and hair.

She was arrested in October 1913 while collecting a bicycle from the left luggage office at Paddington Station,[11] and while on remand went on a combined hunger and thirst strike, for which she was again forcibly fed.

She was recognised from her police surveillance photograph, and imprisoned, when she commenced another hunger and thirst strike, being released at 11 a.m. into the care of Mrs Impey of Birmingham, from whose home she absconded yet again, remaining at large until early May 1914 when she was rearrested at Birkenhead.

[14] During World War I Lenton served in Serbia with the Scottish Women's Hospitals Unit and was awarded a French Red Cross medal.

She confessed during the interview that the only one of his books she had read since meeting him was Lady Chatterley's Lover, stating "it must have been an expurgated edition, because I don't remember anything special about it".