Photograph

Photograph of the Suffragette militant Ella Stevenson, also known as Ethel Slade. The portraits show Ella seated, pointing at a paper on her lap.
Ella Stevenson served three terms of imprisonment for Suffragette militancy. In 1911 she was one of 220 Suffragettes arrested for window smashing on the evening of 21st November 1911. On her arrest after having thrown a stone at the window of the London and North West Railway at 34 Parliament Square, she was found to have a bag containing 4 large flint stones. As the damage caused to the property was over £5 Ells was sent for trial and sentenced to two months imprisonment without the option of paying a fine. The following November, 1912 Ella was sentenced to four months in Holloway for smashing windows in Bond Street and Oxford Street in protest against the rejection by the Commons of an amendment to the Irish Home Rule Bill that would have provided for female suffrage. In March 1913 she was sentenced at the Old Bailey to 9 months in the second division having been found guilty of 'unlawfully sending for transmission by post a postal packet containing a dangerous substance likely to injure other postal packets, and placing in a Post Office letter box a dangerous substance likely to injure the said letter box and contents.' Aged 53, she undertook hunger-strike and force feeding whilst in prison.
Ella's Father was originally from Australia and her mother from Tasmania. She was one of 12 children and was born c.1860. According to the 1911 Census Ella's Mother was a widow living in 10 Cumberland Road, Kew with two of her unmarried daughters. It is possible Ella, also unmarried lived in the property but, like other Suffragettes evaded the 1911 census. By 1918 Ella was living with two of her sisters at 35 Still Hall Gardens, Chiswick where she remained unmarried and without issue until her death in 1934.