General Drummond

Portrait postcards of leading members of the Women's Social & Political Union were issued by the WSPU to raise the profile of its leaders amongst supporters and the wider general public and also to raise funds for the campaign. The portrait of Flora Drummond, (c.1879-1949), a Senior organiser within the WSPU was taken by the photographer Lizzie Caswall Smith (1870–1958) who also photographed other leading figures in the Votes for Women campaign including Millicent Fawcett & Christabel Pankhurst.
Nickamed the 'General' by her fellow suffragettes Flora was a keen horsewoman and is photographed with her riding crop and regalia supplied by the firm Toye & Co.in time for Women's Sunday, 21st June 1908.

Flora was one of the original members of the Women's Social and Political Union. In 1905 she was one of the speakers touring Lancashire towns as part of the Women's Social and Political Union campaign. In October, after the imprisonment of Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst for an altercation at Manchester's Free Trade Hall (the first militant act), she helped to capitalise on the ensuing publicity by organising meetings and printing leaflets. Like the Pankhursts she left the Inderpendent Labour Party, believing it only paid lip-service to women's rights.

In 1906 Flora moved with Annie Kenney from Manchester to London and became a paid organiser for the campaign but also kept close links with the WSPU campaign in Scotland. Within a year of this photograph, taken on the occasion of the Hyde Park demonstration of June 1908, Flora gave birth to a son, Keir.

In 1909 Flora was sent to Glasgow to organise the WSPU's general election campaign in Scotland and the Glasgow Women's Exhibition of 1910. When Drummond returned to London late in 1911 she was put in charge of co-ordinating all WSPU branchs throughtout the country. In January 1913 she led a deputation of working women, alongside Annie Kenney to Lloyd George, who was reported to have congratulated Drummond on her handling of the event.

Flora was imprisoned nine times for Suffragette militancy including once when pregnant. She took part in the prisoner hunger strikes but was never forcibly fed by the authorities. Similarly to Emmeline Pankhurst, she was regarded as too prominent a personality to be subjected to such a controversial procedure.