Rosa May Billinghurst was a suffragette and women’s rights activist known as the “cripple suffragette” as she campaigned using a modified tricycle.

Billinghurst had survived polio as a small child and as a result was unable to walk unaided, she wore leg-irons and used either crutches or a modified tricycle. Billinghurst was active in social work, she assisted in a Greenwich workhouse, taught in a Sunday School and joined the temperance Band of Hope, which was created to keep children off of drugs and alcohol.

Billinghurst joined the Women’s Liberal Association, and then in 1907 became a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). She took part in the WSPU march to Royal Albert Hall in 1908, and then assisted in the organisation of the WSPU’s response to the Haggerston by-election in July that year. In 1910, Billinghurst founded the Greenwich branch of the WSPU and became secretary. She participated in the ‘Black Friday’ demonstration, in which police  pushed her from her modified tricycle and left her stranded in a side street after letting her tyres down and stealing the valves. Billinghurst was arrested for the first time for her participation in the demonstration.

Billinghurst continued to fight for women’s suffrage, and after damaging letterboxes she was arrested once again. In protest, she went on hunger strike in Holloway Prison. She was force fed, and became so ill that she was released early. Billinghurst was still not discouraged from her activism, and chained herself to the gates of Buckingham Palace in 1913.

During WWI, Billinghurst joined Emmeline Pankhurst and her fellow suffragettes in campaigning for women to be allowed to equal work. After the passing of the Representation of the People Act in 1918, Billinghurst retired from political activity.