Votes for Women. Miss Muriel Matters (of Australia). Lecturer

This postcard was one in a series of portraits by Lena Connell produced by the Women's Freedom League to raise funds for the Votes for Women cause and raise the profile of leading members. The portrait photographer Lena Connell was a member of the Hampstead Branch of the Women's Social & Political Union and was regularly commissioned to photograph her fellow Suffragettes.
The WFL was formed in September 1907 by former members of the Women's Social & Political Union opposed to the authoritarian style leadership of the Pankhursts and Pethick-Lawrences. The breakaway group was led by Teresa Billington-Greig, Charlotte Despard, Edith How Martyn and Caroline Hodgson. Although a militant organisation the constition of the WFL did not approve of 'injury or attack on persons or property'.
Muriel Matters (1877-1969) was an Australian actress who, on coming to London in 1905, began attending Women’s Social and Political Union meetings. In 1907 Muriel left the WSPU and joined the newly founded Women's Freedom League. On 28th October 1908 Muriel along with her fellow WFL members Violet Tillard and Helen Fox entered the Ladies’ Gallery at the House of Commons. As Matters and Fox chained themselves to the Grille of the Gallery proclaiming ‘Votes for Women’, Violet Tillard lowered a banner to the MPs below. Unable to undo the chains attaching Matters and Fox to the Grille the police were forced to remove the Suffragettes to a nearby room with the grille still attached where a blacksmith was called to detach the women. On their release without charge the women joined other members of the Women’s Freedom League protesting outside the Commons. Muriel Matters subsequently became one of 14 members of the Women’s Freedom League arrested on a charge of obstruction. Matters, found guilty was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment in Holloway.
In 1909 Matters hired an airship painted with the slogan 'Votes For Women', and sailed over the House of Commons distributing WFL leaflets. Matters later campaigned on behalf of the Tax Resistance League and spoke for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. When World War I began, Matters ceased her suffragette campaigning, and felt free to marry the man who she had been refusing for the past three years.