Dr. Octavia Lewin's refusal to take out a licence for her armorial bearings was followed by a visit, on March 27 th , to Marylebone Police Court. Here she took the opportunity to explain to Mr Plowden that her motive in refusing this tax was in order to protest against bearing the burdens of citizenship as long as she was denied its privileges. Mr Plowden characterised this attitude as "ineffably silly," a remark which was indignantly hissed by the members of the Women's Freedom League who were present. The fine of £10 which was imposed, presumely represents the damage to the state done by the appearance of an engraved stag's head on Dr Lewin's teaspoons without a licence. To some minds it would undoubtedly seem "ineffably silly" to part with £10 in order to uphold a principle, but it is the kind of silliness which makes for the righteousness of a people, and we hope to see more of it.

Greetings of the Women's Freedom League may the New Year bring with it more than ever before a keen realisation that tyranny and repression are synonymous with the process of destruction and death; and may the long-sown seeds of freedom which are beginning to send forth shoots from long-tilled soil grow till they spread their branches into the heart and minds of all those in whose hands lie the destiny of others.

Influenza is on the increase, and the appalling lack of the most rudimentary knowledge as to its causes makes it surprising that the disease is not even prevalent.

The germs of influenza, as of nearly all other diseases, are air-borne; it is, then, of primary importance that the nose, of all organs, should be in a condition to bar them; the mouth, obviously can do nothing to help.

The obstinate and almost scandalous neglect of this organ is responsible for more harm than most people realise.

By permitting the nose to become stopped up it is actually turned into an incubator for germs, instead of having the properties of a sanatorium as nature intended it to have.

Proper attention to the nose and throat means keeping the passages clear and free from waste. Too much stress can hardly be laid on the danger of sniffing and drawing the germ-laden mucus back into the system, where it either remains packed up against the brain or travels down into the stomach, to interfere with appetite and digestion, or delivers up its poisons into the blood stream.   

The most wonderful teachers even known in any country or any age taught us a lesson which we should never forget - they emphasised the immense importance of the early years of life. Given control of a child for the first seven years, they could establish an ascendancy that was life-long.

During that formative period, they were untiring in the cultivation of the habits they desired to establish. When that was done, they cared little what might happen to the child's environment.

The formation of right physical habits is just as important, and the first seven years settle them much more firmly than many people imagine. Indeed, it is true that the first seven months are responsible for some habits that are lifelong habits that can be broken – if at all – only with great difficulty.

Many a promising career is ruined by ill-health, which is the direct during infancy. Broadly considered, health is necessary to success in life. Now and again we hear of individuals who, by sheer strength of will, break through their bonds and astonish the world by their achievements, but these are the exceptions.

At Colchester a car overturned after hitting a lamp standard, and Dr. Octavia Lewin, living at Wimpole Street, London, and a woman friend were taken with head injuries to the Essex County Hospital.

According to The Times of January 7th, Dr Octavia Lewin, Vice President of the Women's Public Health Officers' Association, addressed the Winter School for Health Visitors and Social Nurses at Bedford College for Women on the previous day, on the importance of nasal hygiene. She urged that every baby should be given its own handkerchief. This was the first lesson which should be learnt by all mothers who wished their children to grow up healthy and strong. All sorts of diseases were caused by the neglect of the nose. They must not regard nasal hygiene as a local matter. It was something which affected the whole body. The more you thought about the respiratory system the more marvellous you realised it was. It was marvellously good if looked after properly, and terribly destructive if neglected.

Dr. Lewin strongly deplored the habit of thumb sucking in children and denounced tight collars which she said, were extremely destructive if neglected.

Tax resistance and resistance to enumeration under the Census of that year were mild forms of militancy now in vogue. The Women's Freedom League had hoisted the standard of "no vote, no tax" in the early days of its formation, and Mrs. Despard and others had suffered a succession of distraints, to the accompaniment of auction sale protest meetings. In November, 1910, the WSPU first adopted the same policy, and the Women's Tax Resistance was formed about this time. In May, 1911, two women were imprisoned for refusal to take out dog licences. A little later, Clemence Housman, sister of the author-artist, Laurence Housman, was committed to Holloway till she should pay the trifling sum of 4s. 6d., but was released in a week's time, having paid nothing.

This was manifested through the practice of tax resistance which was first publicly linked with modern suffrage protest in the latter months of 1907 and in early 1908, although it was not until 1909 that members in regional branches began to resist certain taxes in any significant numbers. One of the earliest references to this policy was made in November 1907 under the heading of "New Suffragist Scheme of Passive Resistance", where it was reported that women tax payers were being asked to resist income tax, property tax and inhabited house duty.' In March the following year, the Daily Chronicle, a regular reporter of suffrage activities, reported that the "First 'Passive' Resister", WFL member Dr Octavia Lewin, was to be taken to court. It was announced in the same report that "the WFL intends to organise a big passive resistance movement as a weapon in the fight for the franchise."

Octavia qualified in Medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women (founded by Sophia Jex-Blake, another Old Queen), the Royal Free Hospital and the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin and became the assistant physician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. She specialised in diseases of the ear, nose and throat.

World War I was one of the first opportunities for female doctors to gain a wider acceptance and to demonstrate that they could work in the medical profession at a higher level than nursing. Octavia served as assistant surgeon to the English Military Hospital at Dieppe and as chief physician at the French Military Hospital at Charenton.

Later in the war, she worked at "Endell Street" in London, the only British army hospital to be staffed and run entirely by women for the duration of the war. In an unnerving parallel to current events, the team at Endell Street that had saved thousands during the war had no effective weapon against the "Spanish" ‘flu that killed many of its younger staff, as well as patients. Perhaps this explains Octavia's lifelong passion for hygiene education.

After the military hospitals closed in 1919, the UK's medical schools returned to barring female students, and female doctors were sidelined once again. Octavia – who sounds from her prolific letters to the newspapers like someone not easy to sideline – joined the Central London Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital. She became an advocate of breathing exercises for children and visited schools as a rhinologist for London County Council.

She was also a campaigner for female suffrage. The 1911 census was conducted at the time the Votes for Women campaign was growing vigorously. Suffrage organisations decided to boycott the census in protest at women's exclusion from the franchise. The Women's Tax Resistance League achieved considerable success in encouraging its small but determined membership to rebel. Octavia wrote on her census form: "I absolutely refuse to give any information", before listing her impressive academic credentials.

Octavia was in practice at 25 Wimpole Street, London in 1911, and at 8 Manchester Square, London in 1948 (the year Girton was granted full status by Cambridge University). She died in 1955.

Octavia Margaret Sophia Lewin MB, BS (London) 1896, MD (Chicago) (2 February 1869 – 27 December 1955) was a Registrar and Assistant Physician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH) and an active suffragist.

Lewin was a colleague of Andrew Tocher Cunningham and Dudley d'Auvergne Wright at the Hopital de L'Alliance in France from 1914-1915.

Lewin practiced at 25 Wimpole Street, London in 1911, and at 8 Manchester Square, London in 1948.

Octavia Lewin was born in Widford, Ware, Hertfordshire, in February 1869, the daughter of Spencer Robert Lewin, a solicitor, and Jessie Augusta Cantwell. She was educated privately by a German governess, and at the Frances Holland School, Queens College in Harley Street and then at Girton College, Cambridge, where she read Natural Sciences.

Lewin qualified in Medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women and became Assistant Physician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.

A committed suffragist, in 1906 she joined the Women's Social and Political Union. The following year, in 1907, Lewin became a founder member of the Women's Freedom League, active between 1907 and 1961, and was a militant, non-violent women's suffrage society formed by dissidents from the WSPU. She would have met Jane Addams and Helena Swanwick at the International Women's League of Peace and Freedom in 1915, and known many of the women in the movement.

Lewin was also a supporter of the Tax Resistance League, the second annual meeting of which was held at her home.

It is not clear when Lewin chose to practice homeopathic medicine but shortly after qualifying in 1901 she joined the British Homeopathic Society.

In 1903, on her return from America, where she had studied under James Tyler Kent, Lewin became the first woman to read a paper to the British Homeopathic Society. This paper, inspired by Kent was titled "Cases Illustrating Constitutional Treatment," and helped bring about a revolution in British homeopathy, particularly influencing Lewin's homeopathic successors Margaret Lucy Tyler and Marjorie Blackie.

During World War I, Lewin worked in France alongside fellow suffragist, old Girtonian, and homeopathic physician, Mabel Hardie. Lewin was appointed Assistant Surgeon at the Military Hospital in Dieppe and at the French Military Hospital in Charenton. She later served as the Aural Surgeon to the Women's Hospital Corps at the Endell Street Military Hospital run by Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray.

After the war Lewin continued in practice. She was Resident Medical Officer at Chorlton Union Infirmary and the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. She was an Assistant Anaesthetist at the Royal Free Hospital, specialising in Rhinology, and she was Rhinologist for the Almeric Paget Corps, Medical Advisor to the Westminster Health Society and Rural Surgeon to the WAAC. Lewin was also the Clinical Assistant at the Central London Throat and Ear Hospital and Honorary Rhinologist for the Society of Women Journalists.

In the 1930s, she was a member of the Council of Management of Bedford College.