October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Princess Sophia Alexandrovna Duleep Singh isn’t everyone’s idea of a typical suffragette. Her father was a maharajah from the Punjab who had been forced to abdicate his kingdom to the East India Company, her mother was of German and Abyssinian descent and brought up by missionaries, her godmother was Queen Victoria, and she lived in Hampton Court.

On returning from a trip to India in 1909, Princess Sophia took up the cause of votes for women, not only in Britain but also in the colonies. In 1910 she accompanied Emmeline Pankhurst and other suffragettes to the House of Commons hoping to speak with the Prime Minister, but they were thrown out and many of them seriously injured.

She raised funds for women’s suffrage, sold The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court, and appeared in court charged with failing to pay licence fees, part of her campaign of withholding taxes as a protest.

During WWI she volunteered as a British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, serving at an auxiliary military hospital in Isleworth from October 1915 to January 1917, and tended wounded Indian soldiers who had been evacuated from the Western Front.

In 1918 the law was changed to allow women over the age of 30 to vote. Princess Sophia joined the Suffragette Fellowship and remained a member for the rest of her life.

Princess Sophia died in 1948 and was cremated at Golders Green.

More about Princess Sophia Duleep Singh at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Duleep_Singh