Mrs Matilda Louisa Sowdon examined – I am the petitioner. My maiden name was Hutton. I was married to the respondent at St Saviour's Church, Jersey, on the 8th November, 1860. The respondent was then residing at Jersey, and was of independent means. He had been in the army. I have had three children by the respondent – one son and two daughters. Shortly after our marriage my husband began to give way to intoxication, and after a time he used very bad language to me; his conduct soon became worse; he frequently stayed away from home for several days together – often remained out late at night, and sometimes all night. On one occasion he remained away a whole week…

Shortly after the birth of my first child, the respondent struck me with his fist in the side, while I was sitting in bed nursing my child, and then locked me in the bedroom and took the key away, and my aunt was obliged to force the door open…

As soon as I was able I followed him to England, and found him at Reading; this was in October 1862. We took a house in Shirley, near Southampton. After a while we went to live in Sydney Terrace, Reading…

At the beginning of 1864, the respondent struck me with his fist while I was in bed, and I was obliged to go into the next room in the middle of the night. The next night he struck me, and also kicked me and swore at me… I gave evidence against him before the magistrates, and he was committed to prison for 14 days….

The Judge Ordinary said he was satisfied. There would be a degree nisi, with costs, the petitioner to have the custody of the children till further order.

To have lived and to live in stirring times and to be part of them, to have known intimately and spoken from the same platform as the great reformers of our century, to have the courage to voice unpopular views, and at the same time to carry on a busy professional life full of exactions and complexities and never to fail those who depend on one's public or one's professional exertions is a fine record for anyone, man or women; and this is the record that Mrs Thomson Price has made during her working life, and one of which she is slow to speak. The daughter of a captain in the 2nd Life Guards (Blue), and belonging to a family whose records were unbrokenly orthodox and Tory, she developed her own education and intelligence on the lines that appealed to her most, and found herself presently a secularist and a Radical.

"For Charles Bradlaugh I have always had the most profound admiration," said Mrs Thomson-Price." When he was President of the National Secular Society I was one of its members, and spoke for that body many times. Misunderstood and maligned as he was, he was a man of magnificent courage and of high and pure principles. His public life was passed in the defence of the oppressed. In the House of Commons he was known as the Member of India, and to that country he was always a staunch friend. He took part in the great Peace movement, lectured and wrote in support of the abolition of the death penalty, and other great humanitarian reforms. In spite of derision and abuse from a section of the public, he went on his way, always actuated by high motives and conscientious aims, and I felt it an honour to work, in however humble a way, with such an apostle of freedom.

My first husband, Mr John Samson, was on the Executive Council of the NSS. I have often spoken at open-air meetings for the National Secular Society when it was necessary for a strong body of stalwarts to form a cordon round the platforms. Suffragists are not the only reformers who have had to gradually win a hearing.

"And when John Burns came out of the prison to which he had been sentenced as a result of claiming the right of free speech in Trafalgar Square, I was one of those who assembled to welcome him. It is strange to think that the John Burns of today, who would deny us free speech, was the same man who desired it sufficiently for the working men of England that he was not afraid to suffer for it."

I was for several years secretary of the North Hackney Women's Liberal and Radical Association," continued Mrs Thomson Price," and I was a member of the old constitutional society for obtaining the franchise; but I left the latter because I believed that the time had come for new departures. There had been a slump in constitutional methods since Gladstone betrayed the Liberal women in 1884, when in the Bill to extend the franchise he refused to accept the amendment to include women as voters on the same terms as men. He declared that it would "sink the ship", and to avoid any catastrophe to himself he threw the women overboard.

"My professional work? It has been very varied. I have been a journalist for twenty-four years, and the the early part of it I did a good deal of political writing – at the time an unusual occupation for a woman – on the Liberal and Radical , and I also did cartoons for the Political World and other papers.

The humorous cartoons which Mrs Thomson-Price has done for us will be remembered. They were for several months a popular feature in The Vote, that of "Little Jack Horner" having been by special request transformed into a poster during the General Election. She was editor and past proprietor of a weekly paper for women and was one of the first contributors to Ariel, Mr Israel Zangwill's papers. She has done illustrated articles for the Daily Mail, articles on finance for financial papers, and is at present on the editorial staff of three well-known weekly papers, beside being consultant editor of The Vote and a frequent contributor of interesting matters to its columns.: Miss Thomson-Price is also a director of an accident insurance company and of the Minerva Publishing Company. She is also a member of Council of the Society of Women Journalists and of the Journalists' Advisory Board of the Lyceum Club.

"Do I approve of militancy? Most certainly I do, and I was glad to be one of those who picketed the House of Commons – one of the most effective militant protests which have been made since the militant movement began. During our long wait we learned a good deal of human nature. Like the House itself and the Abbey close by, the "waiting women" were one of the "sights" of London to the country cousin and the stanger. On the whole we met with much sympathy during that trying time, and some of it came from the most unexpected quarters. An old couple, obviously working folk, halted in front of me one afternoon, and the old gentleman took off his hat to me. "We be with you, ma'am," he said.

Boundless energy, an unshaken belief in humanity, a great optimism, a profound knowledge of the questions of the day, and a rare intuition with regard to the "chosen people and the chosen causes" are perhaps the most distinguishing characteristics of the most delightful of colleagues, whose career – to describe it fully – would require a volume of "our organ".

One has heard so much during the last five years of the "unwomanly" woman, who in the minds of some people, at any rate, it personified by the "rampant, raging suffragette," that is one is led sometimes to wonder who is to be the ultimate authority as to what constitutes a "womanly" woman. In the old days, the stigma "unwomanly" was cast upon every association in which women were endeavouring to gain a livelihood outside the only two admissible ones for respectable young persons. To be a governess or a lady or a lady's companion was perfectly permissible, and a young woman lost none of her womanliness in following those ill-paid and ill-conditioned occupations.

Education in the real sense of the word was not necessary for the old-time governess. The curriculum of the young ladies' seminary, so delightfully described to us in "Vanity Fair," included only a smattering of general information, the "use of the globes," and a "knowledge of deportment". The early Victorian young lady with adorable ringlets, sloping shoulders, and frequent fits of "the vapours" was, no doubt, from the male standpoint of that period, an embodiment of perfect womanliness. The "womanly" woman need to faint at the sight of a mouse, or was supposed to do so. She had lily-white hands, tiny feet, and a wasp-like waist. It was "womanly" to defy Nature by squeezing a twenty-seven-inch waist into a twenty-inch corset, and "unwomanly" to suggest that comfort and health were higher than restriction and convention. 

Florence Nightingale was an "unsexed creature" according to the general consensus of opinion of her day. The "Lady of the Lamp" was the very embodiment of unwomanliness in daring to undertake the self-imposed task of tending the wounded soldiers of the Crimea. Today the hospital nurse is no longer considered unwomanly, but the medical woman has still to fight a prejudice which dies hard.

As I have said, there are certain avocations which public opinion, or, at least, public male opinions, considers unwomanly. Strangely enough, these avocations are always the better-paid ones. It is not "unwomanly" to stand at a wash-tub all day, to scrub the stone steps and long-corridors of city offices, to bathe verminous patients in infirmaries, to wash and attend to the dressing of foul wounds in hospital wards, to make chains at Cradley Heath, or to work at the pit's mouth in a mining district. It is not "unwomanly" to manufacture match boxes at 2 ¼ a gross (finding one's own paste and string) or to make blouses at 1s 6d a dozen, but it is "unwomanly" for a person of the female sex to pass the necessary examinations to qualify as a doctor, to give medical advice on women's aliments, to perform a surgical operation, or to become a university lecturer.

The WFL owes much to the brave and valiant men who have helped us by their sympathy and active support on many public occasions. I am of the opinion that if our League elected to be the pioneer Suffrage Society in throwing open its portals to men and women alike, our work would gain immeasurably by consolidation and expansion....Now is the day and the hour for this great step.

At Hampstead on May 18 a large group of tax resisters had their goods sold at Fitzjohns Estate Auction Rooms. They were Mrs Thomson Price, Mrs and Miss Hicks, Mrs How Martyn , Mrs Milligan, Mrs Hartley, the Misses Collier, and the Misses Dawes Thompson. A procession with a band marched from Finchley Road station to the auction rooms at Swiss Cottage and after the sale an excellent meeting was held at the corner of the Avenue Road. From a gaily decorated wagonette speeches were made by Mrs Thomson Price, Mrs Nevinson and Mrs Kineton Parkes, explaining the reason of the protest.

Louisa must have received a good education because in 1886, aged 22, she published a book, ‘Comic Sketches and Sober Thoughts’. Two years later she married John Samson, a journalist and editor of the South American Journal, 16 years her senior. They lived in Stoke Newington, where Louisa became involved in the North Hackney Women’s Liberal Association. She was a gifted illustrator, providing drawings for books and newspaper features where she signed herself ‘L.S.’. She also edited the official magazine of the Ladies Needlework Guild, the Spinning Wheel for four years. The Guild had over 100,000 members and the weekly ‘penny paper’ was highly regarded for its literary content, positioning itself as The Queen in miniature.

In 1897, Louisa and John were living on Fitzroy Road in Primrose Hill, where Louisa hosted the wedding breakfast for one of her half-sisters, Jessie, in September. Jessie was also a writer and artist, signing her work ‘Jess C’ and her marriage to another magazine editor, Stanhope Sprigg, made for a wedding of ‘some interest in literary and art circles.’ Two of their children, Christopher and Theodore, also became authors.

By 1899, Louis and John had moved to Parkhill Road in Hampstead, the area where Louisa remained based for the rest of her life. Louisa wanted to register this address in her own name so that she could pay the rates and as a result be placed on the role of local electors. She was eventually successful and penned a letter to the local paper to inform other women of the precedent she had set, even it had been at the cost of ‘almost endless correspondence and many hours of valuable time, which, as a busy journalist I could ill spare, to say nothing of solicitor’s fees etc.’

John died in 1905 and in 1907 Louisa married George Thomson-Price and changed her name again. George moved in with her to the house she had shared with John. The information on him is scanty but he was clearly very supportive of Louisa’s commitment to the cause of women’s suffrage: he won a competition to see who could spend most on items sold by advertisers in The Vote, the official newspaper of the Women’s Freedom League, in 1910.

Mrs Louisa Thomson Price was born Louisa Catherine Sowdon in 1864 and died in 1926. She was the daughter of a Tory military family but from an early age rebelled against their way of thinking and became a secularist and a Radical. She was impressed by Charles Bradlaugh of the National Secular Society. In 1888 she married John Samson, who was a member of the executive of the NSS. She worked as a journalist from c 1886 – as a political writer, then a very unusual area for women, and drew cartoons for a radical journal, ‘Political World'. She was a member of the Council of the Society of Women Journalists. After the death of her first husband, in 1907 she married George Thomson Price. She had no children from either marriage.

Louisa Thomson Price was an early member of the Women's Freedom League, became a consultant editor of its paper, The Vote, and was a director of Minerva Publishing, publisher of the paper. She contributed a series of cartoons to The Vote, which were then produced as postcards. The ‘Jack Horner' cartoon was also issued as a poster for, I think, the January 1910 General Election. Louisa Thomson Price took part in the WFL picket of the House of Commons and was very much in favour of this type of militancy. In her will she left £250 to the WFL. and £1000 to endow a Louisa Thomson Price bed at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

Louisa Thompson-Price came from a strictly Tory family, but claimed that through education she became a "secularist" and a "radical". She was an admirer of Charles Bradlaugh, one of the earliest birth control advocates. She served as secretary of the North Hackney Women's Liberal and Radical Association and was a member of the NUWSS. She resigned from both when militancy began, and was one of the earliest members of the WFL. Later she took part in the WFL's picket of the House of Commons in 1909 and shortly after became a director of the Minerva Publishing Company. Louisa Thompson-Price gained a brief notoriety following her article in The Vote in 1911 calling for men to be admitted to the WFL. There are no records of any subsequent involvement, but Louisa seems to have maintained links with the WFL, as after her death in 1926 she left it a legacy of £250!- in her will.

It is unusual, even in these days, for a woman to wield such an influence in the business world, but in her case it was the more remarkable in that those great abilities were a treasure held in an earthen vessel of the frailest, most sorely afflicted type. Few people who heard her resonant voice speaking from a platform had any idea that to walk across a room was a painful, sometimes an impossible feat.

With unflinching courage she held to her duties to the last, and passed away able to say: "I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do." That work has been to lift higher the banner of business integrity and to make the lot of every worker with whom she had anything to do a pleasant, healthful, interesting, and properly paid occupation.

But those who knew Mrs Thomson-Price as personal friend and literary comrade saw another side of her jewel-like personality. It was one fall of charm and unexpectedness. A little sketch, a few verses, a humorous recollection were always ready to light up the most ordinary subject. An ardent enthusiast, with very broad sympathies, she never stayed her hand when her pen could be used, nor her voice when speech could help any cause. 

Our friend and gallant colleague, Mrs Thomson-Price, was born into a high Tory family, the daughter of a Captain in the Life Guards. She early began to think for herself, was a lecturer for the Women's Liberal Association, spoke on Suffrage (with Lord Haldane in 1891, and welcomed John Burns when he came out of prison to establish the right of free speech in Trafalger Square used by us to such good purpose ten years later.

For 40 years she was a busy journalist, attached for 28 years to the editorial staffs of two London dailies; but she was also an artist and a poet, writing illustrated articles for the dailies, authoritative articles for the financial press, political articles and political cartoons, designing humorous Suffrage cartoons (types of anti-suffragettes, etc.) for The Vote, and contributing to it many much appreciated articles. She edited several papers, and was Consulting Editor and Director of The Vote .

An exceeding able businesswoman, she was a Governor of the Universal Cookery and Food Association, sat on many directorates, and was Vice-Chairman of the art firm of S. Hildersheimer & Co, Ltd.

Mrs Thomson Price specialised in company law and procedure, and was a keen critic of shareholders' meetings. In 1922 she organised and presided over a Committee of Investigation into the affairs of the Smithfield and Argentine Meat Co., Ltd under whose advice the company was, later, successfully reconstructed.

Ten years ago she became a director of Slaters, Ltd, at that time paying no dividend, and with £1 shares at 5s 3d. Here too, she presided over a Committee of Investigation, being elected Deputy Chairman in the following year. Last May, after a discreditable attempt of a few persons to oust her from command, she was unanimously elected to the Chair, and announced a profit for the year of over £26,000.

All this time she never missed a weekly meeting of her Board, and when too ill to walk arranged to be taken to the boardroom, and by her indomitable will carried out her duties. The last few months, unable to leave her room, she still went through all the business of the week with the officials of her firm.

A wonderful union of high qualities of head and heart inspired affection and admiration in all who knew her. With all her splendid courage, self-control, integrity, boundless energy, and industry, Mrs Thomson-Price was a most loyal comrade – cherry, friendly, optimistic, and of ready wit. She followed eagerly the fortunes of The Vote, and was delighted with our "strike issues".   

Mrs Louisa Thomson-Price of Belsize Park Gardens, Hampstead, for nine years vice chairman and afterwards chairman of Slaters Ltd, caterers and restaurants, a leader of the Suffragists and at one time editor of Votes for Women, died on June 14 leaving property of the value of £34,761, with net personally £31,734. Among other bequests, she leaves the household furniture and wearing apparel and the income from £6,000 to "my dear friend Mary Ann Mcintosh, in recognition of many years of faithful friendship and of great tenderness, unremitting care, and unselfish devotion"; and, on her death, as to £1,000 part thereof, to the Homes for the Aged Poor, £1,000 to endow a bed in the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, Euston Road, and £500 to the Women's Freedom League.

Louisa Catherine Sowdon was born in Reading, Berkshire, on 18th April 1864 and baptised at Saint Mary's Church, Reading on 30th June 1864. She was the youngest of three children born to Matilda Louisa Hutton (1841-1897) and William Henry Sowdon (1837-1869), described variously as a former army officer, a "landed proprietor", a "gentleman" and a man of "independent means".

Louisa's father, William Henry Sowdon was born in the St. Giles parish of Reading, Berkshire, on 22nd July 1837, the son of Louisa and Harry Sowdon (1799-1862), a former wine & spirit merchant who owned a brewery in Bridge Street, Reading. William Sowdon was educated at Marlborough College and after attending a military college, he enlisted in the British Army in 1855. William Sowdon served as a junior officer in the 95th Regiment of Foot. He claimed to have risen to the rank of Captain but according to a report in the London Gazette, dated 13th March 1857, Ensign William Henry Sowdon of the 95th Foot had been superseded "he being absent without leave". After leaving the British Army, William Sowdon took up farming and in the 1861 Census he gave his occupation as "Landed Proprietor". On 8th November 1860, at St Saviour's parish church on the island of Jersey, William Henry Sowdon married 19-year-old Matilda Louisa Hutton, the daughter of Mary Ann Davis and the late Henry Hutton (died 1860), a pianoforte dealer of St. Helier. When the 1861 Census was taken in the Channel Islands, William Sowdon and his young wife were recorded at Over Dale Cottage, St. Helier, Jersey. On the 1861 Census return, William H. Sowdon, is described as a "Landed Proprietor", aged 25. (His actual age was 23). The young couple employed a single house servant at their cottage. On 27th August 1861, at St. Helier, Jersey, William's wife, Mrs Matilda Sowdon, gave birth to their first child, a son named Harry Wilson Sowdon. Matilda later testified that shortly after the birth of their son, her husband "treated her with great neglect and frequently used abusive and insulting and threatening language to her". Matilda also alleged that, whilst she was feeding her new-born baby, her husband "struck her with his fist".

According to Mrs Matilda Sowdon's divorce petition, in August 1862 William Sowdon deserted her and returned to his hometown of Reading in Berkshire. The couple were eventually reconciled at the end of 1862 and settled in the port of Southampton in Hampshire. On 24th February 1863, whilst residing in Southampton, Matilda gave birth to their second child, a daughter named Eleanor Matilda Sowdon. After the birth of her daughter, Mrs Sowdon reported that her husband continued to abuse her verbally and physically and on one occasion, in a Southampton shop, "William Henry Sowdon struck her a violent blow in the face with his fist". Mrs Sowdon complained that her husband was frequently intoxicated and would abandon her for days "without letting her know where he was going".

By the beginning of 1864, Mrs Matilda Sowdon, together with her husband and their two young children, was residing in the Berkshire town of Reading. While living in Reading, Matilda continued to suffer abusive, threatening, and violent behaviour from her husband. Whilst lying in bed and pregnant with her third child, Matilda claimed that William Sowdon violently kicked her and "threatened to throw her out of the window". She further alleged that before the birth of her third child, her husband had "wilfully infected" her with a venereal disease. Matilda gave birth to a baby daughter on 18th April 1864. This child was Louisa Catherine Sowdon. According to Mrs Sowdon's statement to the divorce court, her husband deserted her on 14th February 1864, and she did not see him again until 8th October 1865, when "he came to her residence at No. 4 Zinzan Terrace, Reading …and abused and threatened and violently assaulted her".

On 20th October 1865, Mrs Matilda Sowdon petitioned for a divorce from her husband William Henry Sowdon on the grounds of his abusive and threatening behaviour, his violence towards her, his desertion, his cruelty, and his adultery with several women. In a signed statement to the court dated 25th November 1865, William Henry Sowdon denied all the charges against him, but the judge decided that the marriage should be dissolved on the grounds of William's adultery and cruelty towards his wife. Matilda's divorce from William Sowdon was finalised on 19th February 1867. Two months after the divorce, on 22nd April 1867, William Henry Sowdon married Annie Wright at the parish church in Romsey, Hampshire. A couple of years later, on 17th November 1869, at Winchester in Hampshire, William Henry Sowdon died at the age of 32. The cause of death was given as diphtheria and paralysis.

Matilda ("Tilly") Louisa Hutton (1841–1897): Born 16th August 1841, Plymouth, Devon, England – Died 30th April 1897, Reading Berkshire.

In 1907, at Hampstead, Louisa Catherine Samson married George William Thomson Price (1857–1916) The family name of her husband was 'Price' - George's surname Thomson-Price appears to have been an affectation.

George William Thomson-Price died at 42 Park Hill Road, Hampstead, Middlesex, on 17th June 1916.
To his widow, Louisa, he left effects valued at £1,759. 1s 6d.

Louisa Catherine Thomson-Price, widow, of 17 Belsize Park Gardens , Hampstead, Middlesex, died on 14th June 1926. The executors of her will were: William Thomas Robert Gilkes, retired shipper, Ralph Hall,
barrister-at-law, and Mary Ann McIntosh. spinster. According to the probate calendar, Louisa Thomson-Price's effects were valued at £34,761. 10s .5d.

In the Scotland, National Probate Index, she is recorded as Louisa Price aka Louisa Catherine Thomson-Price.
This Scottish record confirms that she died at home at 17 Belsize Park Gardens , Hampstead, Middlesex.
Louisa's death was registered under the surname 'Price'

According to Paul Marshall, [Family Tree & Photos on Ancestry], Louisa suffered from curvature of the spine from birth.