Lilian Dove-Wilcox
Early Life
Lilian Mary Dugdale was born on 25 January 1877. In 1903, she married Arnold Dove-Wilcox who died four years later.
Activism
Lilian joined the WSPU in Bristol and was arrested in June 1909 at the House of Commons. While imprisoned in Holloway, she went on hunger strike and was sentenced to an additional ten days after assaulting a wardress. Upon her release, she was met with a carriage drawn procession at Bristol station. The following year, she was arrested at Downing Street.
By 1911, she was playing a leadership role in the Bristol WSPU and her home was used as a place for suffragettes to recuperate following hunger strikes. This included Mary Richardson who became a friend, dedicating a poem to Lilian. She occupied an important position as one of Emmeline Pankhurst’s bodyguards and was acting in this capacity when Mrs Pankhurst was arrested in Scotland. However, she later joined Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes.
Lilian Dove Willcox planted a Picea Orientalis on 10th May 1910.
Later Life
In 1914, at St Pancras, London, Lillian married journalist Reginald Buckley. She gave birth to a daughter, Diana, in 1915 before her husband died, aged 37, in 1919. Lilian lived around Hampstead for most of the rest of her life, in part with an unmarried sister and died in Ealing in 1963.
Quote
'I worked with Annie all the years she was in Bristol and for me, they were wonderful years.'