There has been a week's open air campaign in Hastings by the Suffragettes.  Using the Women's Suffrage Van, it began on Tuesday 14th. The two orators were Miss Muriel Matters and Miss Eustace Smith. A meeting was held at Wellington Square on the evening of the 15th, with no opposition offered.  At an open air meeting at the Fishmarket on Thursday evening (16th) about 30 youngsters surrounded them, to some amusement.

Suffragettes cause of another scene in the House of Commons on Wednesday evenings. Two women chained themselves to the grille in front of the Ladies' Gallery, and a portion of the grille had to be removed by the police in order to release them…

Disturbances also occurred at the same time outside the House, leading to numerous arrests for disorderly conduct outside St. Stephen's Hall, and for attempting to harangue a throng at the base of the monument in front of the House of Lords. The two women who were the principal figures in the disturbances in the Ladies Gallery gave their names of Helen Fox and Muriel Matters…

No less than fifteen arrests were made in connection with the disturbances in St Stephen's Hall. They gave their names as follows: Arnold Cutler, Miss Violet Tillard, Miss Edith Bremer, Mrs. Emily Duval, Miss Margaret Henderson, Miss Alison Neilans, Miss Marion Leighfield… They were taken to Cannon Row Police Station, and were bailed out later.

In October of 1908 a deputation was sent to the House of Commons, and by taking the precaution of chaining themselves to the grille in the Ladies' Gallery Miss Muriel Matters and Miss Helen Fox were able to address the House of Commons for a few minutes without interruption. The attendants tore down portions of the grille, which were carried behind the women to a committee room for the chains to be filed off. At the same time a protest was made in the men's gallery and handbills thrown on the floor of the House, while further protests were made in St. Stephen's Hall and entrance. All the galleries of the House were closed to visitors, and only re-opened months later. Twelve members were sent to prison in the third division for a month.

At the end of the month (24 August 1917) some members of the Women's Freedom League made a protest in the House of Commons. An extra dull debate was going on when suddenly the bored audience was electrified at hearing a woman's voice, clear and very earnest, from the gilded cage, calling upon the Legislature to give justice and freedom to women. Officials and reporters rushed breathlessly up the stairs, and the former, after attempting to drag away by force Miss Muriel Matters and Miss Helen Fox who had chained themselves to the Grille, were obliged to cut down the barrier; and the two protestants, with about twenty square feet of grating attached to them, were conducted to one of the committee rooms, where the chain was sawn through. Subsequently Miss Matters and fourteen other women were arrested and sentenced to fines of £5 or one's month imprisonment in the third division.

She has not been much celebrated in her homeland but Muriel Matters – an Australian-born suffragist who achieved notoriety in Britain after pulling off a series of brave and quirky stunts there in the early 1900s - is finally getting the recognition she deserves. New docudrama Muriel Matters!, featuring the suffragette's story, will premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival on Sunday, 13 October, and will also screen on ABC1 the following Tuesday.

Matters, an actor who left Adelaide for Britain when she was 28 to further her musical career, once sailed over London in an airship emblazoned with "Votes For Women", dropping leaflets for the militant Women's Freedom League (WFL).

She was also charged with disorderly conduct and imprisoned after chaining herself to "that vile grille" in the Ladies' Gallery of the British House of Commons in 1908. Obscuring women's view of parliamentary debates, the piece of ironwork was considered a sign of female oppression.

And yet the South Australian has gone relatively unrecognised in her birth country. Frances Bedford MP, the secretary of The Muriel Matters Society, which was founded four years ago in Australia, thinks that part of the problem is that Matters didn't do much for the franchise in her birth country – not least because women in Australia got the vote earlier than women in Britain.

The suffragist, who was also a lecturer, elocutionist and journalist, called Britain home from 1905, by which point most Australian states had granted many women, although not Aboriginal women, the right to vote.

"While in UK, she was from the colonies, and as not one of the Pankhurst people, she was outside their recognition," says Bedford. "Also, as one of the WFL people, she was against the war – another problem at the time – and she married a divorced person, who seems to have left his wife for her."

Matters in fact turned down dentist William Arnold Porter three times. She finally married him in 1914, only when the suffrage campaign was put on ice for a while, points out Elizabeth Crawford, author of The Women's Suffrage Movement.

During her time in Britain, Matters lived in Kennington, south London. She died in Hastings, where she stood unsuccessfully for election as an MP and where a where a plaque today honours her. Bedford recently visited the town and other locations in Britain on a Matters promotional tour.

While the Australian may have been a "cog in the wheel" during the British suffrage campaign, Crawford argues that she was an "important one in a way because of the fact that she was a vote-carrying woman". This could also explain why the suffragist didn't become a household name back home. "Those women had the vote in Australia. I don't know if they were greatly concerned about what was going on over here in this backward realm," she says.

Crawford argues that Matters is "more of a role model than the window breakers", and describes Emily Wilding Davison, who died after being trampled upon by King George V's horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913, as a "bit of a one-off".

Martyrdom is not the only way by which to measure these campaigning women. "Muriel Matters I find rather more appealing. You don't have to die," says Crawford. "There was Muriel doing her stunts but in a more lighthearted way."

All of the suffrage campaigners I have featured so far as Turbulent Londoners have been British. London has always been a city of migrants, however, and many of the activists involved in the campaign for women's suffrage were born elsewhere. Muriel Matters was an Australian lecturer, journalist, actress, and elocutionist who put her flair for the dramatic to good use fighting for a right that South Australian women had had since 1894.

Muriel Matters was born on the 12th of November 1877 to a large Methodist family in Adelaide, South Australia. As a child she was introduced to the writing of Walt Whitman and Henrik Ibsen, who strongly influenced her political consciousness. In 1894, when Muriel was still a teenager, South Australia became the first self-governing territory to give women the vote on the same standing as men.

Muriel studied music at the University of Adelaide, and by the late 1890s she was acting and conducting recitals in Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne. In 1905, at the age of 28, Muriel moved to London to try and further her acting career. Leaving a country where women had the right to vote in all federal elections, Muriel arrived in a country where women could not vote at all. Facing stiff competition for acting work, Muriel also had to take on work as a journalist. She interviewed the exiled anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin, and later performed at his home. Kropotkin challenged Muriel to do something more useful with her talents than acting - she later identified this as a defining moment in her life. She joined the Women's Freedom League (WFL), a group which had broken away from the WSPU in 1907 because of the lack of democracy in the organisation. The President of the WFL was Charlotte Despard, a formidable woman who is one of my favourite Turbulent Londoners.

Between early May and Mid-October 1908, Muriel was the ‘Organiser in Charge' of the first ‘Votes for Women' caravan tour around the South of England. WFL activists visited towns in Surrey, Sussex, East Anglia, and Kent, with the aim of talking about women's suffrage and forming new branches. Despite problems with hecklers, the tour was very successful, and many of the other suffrage societies would later run caravan tours of their own.

Not one to rest on her laurels, on the 28th of October 1908 Muriel took part in a dramatic protest at the House of Parliament organised by the WFL. They were protesting against an iron grille in the Ladies' Gallery that obscured the view of the House of Commons and was seen as a symbol of women's oppression. Muriel and another activist called Helen Fox chained themselves to the offending grille, and loudly lectured the MPs below on the benefits of women's enfranchisement. The grille had to be removed so that a blacksmith could remove the two women. Released without charge, Muriel rejoined the protest outside the House of Commons, and was eventually arrested for trying to rush the lobby. The next day she was sentenced to one month in Holloway Prison.

A few months later, the state opening of Parliament on the 16th of February 1909 was marked by a procession led by King Edward. In order to gain attention and promote the suffrage cause, Muriel hired a dirigible air balloon. With ‘Votes for Women' on one side, and ‘WFL' on the other, she planned to fly over central London, showering the King and Parliament with pro-suffrage leaflets. The weather conditions and a poor motor meant that Muriel didn't make it to Westminster, but she did fly over London for one and a half hours, dropping 56lbs of leaflets. The stunt made headlines all over the world.

Muriel Lilah Matters (1877-1969), suffragist, was born on 12 November 1877 at Bowden, Adelaide, third of ten children of John Leonard Matters, cabinetmaker and later stockbroker, and his wife Emma Alma, née Warburton. She studied music and elocution, reciting Whitman and Ibsen, then lived for a time in Sydney and Melbourne, acting with the Robert Brough Comedy Company. In 1901 she settled again in Adelaide, where she performed at the Cowandilla Salon, Mrs R. Quesnel's music rooms and elsewhere. In 1902 she directed Pinero's play Sweet Lavender for the Appendreena Dramatic Club. She later moved with her family to Perth.

Both in Adelaide and Perth Muriel Matters was influenced by European friends who imbued her with socialist ideals. In 1905 she left for London where Peter, Prince Kropotkin, Russian revolutionary anarchist, and the journalist W. T. Stead encouraged her to further radical activity. She soon abandoned acting and in 1907 joined the Women's Freedom League.

Miss Matters lectured in Hyde Park and in 1908 took the first 'Votes for Women' caravan on a tour of villages in the south of England where she met Henry James, a supporter, at Rye. On 28 October she gained notoriety by chaining herself to an iron grille in the ladies' gallery of the House of Commons and declaiming women's suffrage aims. She was removed, still attached to the grille, and sent to Holloway Prison for a month; she adopted the cause of prison reform. Matters spent a year in Wales advocating votes for women and held meetings in Dublin. In 1909 she flew over London in an airship inscribed 'Votes for Women', scattering handbills over parliament. But she objected when more violent militants took over the movement.

In Australia next year Matters lectured in several States on feminism and socialism: her manner was earnest but humorous and she excelled at repartee. She denounced sweating and advocated women's unions, equal divorce laws, equal pay for equal work, endowment of motherhood, and support for unmarried mothers. With Vida Goldstein she secured a resolution from the Senate to the British prime minister detailing the good results from the enfranchisement of Australian women. In London in 1911 she helped to form a women's settlement to further educational opportunities in the Lambeth slums. In 1916 she attended a training course by educationalist Maria Montessori at Barcelona, Spain, and later addressed the British Montessori Society. Muriel was a Christian.

Muriel Lilah Matters (November 12, 1877 - November 17, 1969) was an Australian born suffragist, lecturer, journalist, educator, actress, and elocutionist. Based in Britain from 1905 till her death, Matters is best known for her work on behalf of the Women's Freedom League (WFL) during the height of the militant struggle to enfranchise women in the United Kingdom.

Matters was an extremely prominent member of a critical mass of people agitating for women's suffrage. Largely active between 1905-1924, she began her life of activism aboard the Women's Freedom League caravan which toured England's south-east. Although tirelessly campaigning for women's voting rights in the English Counties for many years, Matters is most recognised for chaining herself to the grille of the Ladies' Gallery in the British House of Commons on 28 October 1908. The ‘grille' was a piece of ironwork placed in the Ladies' Gallery that obscured the women's view of parliamentary debates. A symbol of the oppression of women in a male-dominated society, it was her firm conviction the grille should be removed. Her non-violent solution to chain herself to the grille was the centre-piece of a larger protest conducted by the Women's Freedom League. While attached to the grille Matters, by a legal technicality, was judged to be on the floor of Parliament and thus, the words spoken by her that day are still considered to be the first delivered by a woman in the House of Commons.

Matters is also identified with attempting to shower King Edward VII and the British Houses of Parliament with handbills dropped from an airship on 16 February 1909. With the overriding aim to garner attention to the cause of women, she took to the skies armed with 56lb of Women's Freedom League pamphlets and an airship emblazoned with the words ‘Votes for Women'. However, due to adverse wind conditions and the rudimentary motor powering the balloon she never made it to the Palace of Westminster but instead hugged the outskirts of London. Nevertheless, her exploit was a success as it created publicity for the suffrage movement generating headlines in newspapers around the world.

Although these two deeds punctuate Matters' life, they mask a hard working and strong willed activist who spent an entire life acting upon deeply held principles. These convictions orbiting around thoughts of gender equality, universal access to education and a career open to talent may seem commonplace in contemporary society but at the beginning of the twentieth century they were ideals which had to be won. All the different elements contained within her life of activism culminated in 1924 when she ran as the Labour Candidate for the seat of Hastings in the General Election. Although she did not gain enough votes to unseat the incumbent (Lord Eustace Percy), this actualization of her belief that women had a natural right to participate in parliamentary decision making bodies was a victory in itself and provided an example which others soon followed.