SUFFRAGETTE PIONEER

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29270, 30 July 1960, Page 2

SUFFRAGETTE PIONEER

Death In Sydney At Age Of 84

(NuZ. Press Association—Copi/rtgM) SYDNEY, July 29. A woman whose proudest recollection was a five-month prison term in England died in Sydney this week at the age of 84. She was Mrs Louisa Cullen, a pioneer of the suffragette movement. Mrs Cullen was one of the speakers at a Hyde Park rally on June 21, 1908, when an estimated 750.000 women demanded the vote. At the height of the suffragette demonstrations a year later, she led a group pf women which stormed the House of Commons. She was sentenced to five months’ detention in Holloway Gaol for her part in the demonstration. A silver brooch, given to those who had served prison terms in the suffragette cause, was one of her most valued possessions. The brooch is in the form of a barred gate. Mrs Cullen was bom in London and apprenticed as a seamstress in her early teens. Dissatisfaction with the poor conditions under which women worked drew her to the suffragette movement, under the leadership of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst.

Mrs Cullen and her husband came to Australia in 1913. She continued to work for women's rights. She was an active worker for the Australian Labour movement for many years. Mrs Cullen died on Monday at Hammondville Hospital, where she had been a patient for two years. She bequeathed her body to the school of anatomy at Sydney University for arthritis research.