Rose Lamartine Yates
In 1907, Rose Lamartine Yates was the first woman elected to CTC’s council, despite women at the time not even having the parliamentary vote. Rose was an avid cyclist, having joined CTC in 1900, the same year she married fellow member Tom Lamartine Yates.
Although a sympathiser with the cause, and frustrated by the denial of an Oxford degree on the basis of her sex, Rose did not identify as a suffragette from the offset. It wasn’t January 1909 that she joined the Wimbledon branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union, marching on Parliament the following month. For her part in the demonstration, Rose was arrested, but her time in prison only hardened her commitment.
Read Rose’s incredible story in full in a piece by Cycling UK’s historian Shelia Hancock, a celebration of Rose’s part in forging the way for the Representation of the People Act one hundred years ago this year.
