1869-1923
Suffragette

Aristocratic Background. Lady Constance Georgina Lytton's father was the first earl of Lytton and the queen's viceroy, or ruling representative, of India. She spent most of her childhood in India and then returned to England with her parents. After her father's death, her mother was appointed a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria. Her brother, the second earl of Lytton, was a Conservative member of the House of Lords and, like his sister, a supporter of the women's suffrage movement. In 1908 Lytton met Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Annie Kenney, two of the leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a militant suffrage organization. The meeting changed her life. The suffrage movement already appealed to Lytton because of its cross-class alliances. Through the WSPU she found a way to channel that interest and to escape from a life of domestic and charitable caretaking. In...