Beatrice Sanders

Beatrice Helen Sanders (1874 – 29 November 1932) was a British suffragette.

Born Beatrice Martin, her mother was a hairdresser and she worked as an assistant in her fathers' tobacconist shop before marrying a progressive social politician, William Stephen Sanders. A keen women's suffrage activist, from 1904 until 1914, she was employed, at a salary of £3 a week, as the financial secretary of the Women's Social and Political Union.  Annie Kenney recalled in her memoirs Sanders strong control of members' expenses, as they would be expected to correct errors or deficits "out of our own pocket".  

Sanders worked closely with Sylvia Pankhurst, and was imprisoned for her activities on multiple occasions. On one occasion, she was sentenced to fourteen months for taking part in the events at the House of Commons in February 1907, and for  a month for throwing stones on Black Friday in November 2010. By 1913, as financial secretary of the Women's Social and Political Union, she was arrested with Harriet Kerr after a struggle with police which was front-page news in The Suffragette, when the premises at Clement's Inn was raided, the sentence was fifteen days. She went on hunger strike and was temporarily released under the terms of the Cat and Mouse Act, and although her sentence was never annulled, she was not re-arrested.

Sanders was given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.

Sanders and her husband were longstanding members of the Fabian Society, and during the 1920s served as chair of the Fabian Women's Group. For a period when her husband was working in Geneva, she became an organiser in the Swiss women's movement.

References

Category:1874 births
Category:1932 deaths
Category:English suffragettes
Category:Members of the Fabian Society
Category:Women's Social and Political Union