DAME ETHEL SMYTH
Composer, writer, Suffragette (1858-1944)
Ethel Smyth found fame as a composer in the late 19th century and as the author of novels such as Female Pipings for Eden. She became a driving force in the Women’s Social and Political Union Suffragette movement, which led to repeated arrests.
Stories are told of how, when in prison, she conducted fellow prisoners in a performance of her self-composed ‘The March of the Women’ with a toothbrush through the cell window. In 1922 Ethel Smyth was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Ethel Smyth lived in Frimley, Surrey for most of her life, and then Woking, near the golf course, next to which her ashes were scattered in the woodland.
