Leonora Cohen was born in Hunslet, Leeds in 1873
and it's her early life which really informs her activism
her father unfortunately died when he was very young
so her mother throughout her life always had to work to support her sons and Leonora
From a very young age, she joined in with her mother in the textile work that they brought in
having been a working woman and being the child of a working woman
what really motivated her was the plight of the working women of Leeds
very often, women were not paid as much as men
and so for her what getting the vote meant
was the ability to have a law change for equal pay for women
In 1913, she comes down to London alongside other groups of working women
to make deputations to Parliament
Her speech is said to have moved David Lloyd George the Chancellor of the Exchequer so much
that he said to her, "I wish you could have said that on the floor of the House of Commons"
and that gives Leonora great hope, finally we might start seeing some change here
However, the Speaker of the House of Commons comes up with a technicality
so as not to include women's suffrage in their reform bills
Indeed, three days after that, they drop the whole idea of parliamentary reform altogether
She's feeling pretty gutted by this point so she decides to stay in London for a week
and in that week, she listens to the leader of the WSPU, Emmeline Pankhurst
make an impassioned speech saying, "Now is the time to really get active"
She takes her time and really thinks about what she wants to do
she wants to do an act that is going to get maximum coverage
but is going to attack the establishment of Great Britain
and so she goes and buys a guidebook of things to see in London
and she thinks to herself, "I know what I'm going to do. There's never been a woman
who has done anything like this before at the Tower of London"
She makes her way to the Tower of London by tube
and she has her crowbar concealed in her coat
She's so nervous, sitting on the tube considering what she's about to do
that she gets to the Tower of London stop and can't bring herself to get off the tube
and so she goes round the whole tube line all over again
and then finally makes the brave step of stepping off the platform and walking towards the Tower
She spots her moment when she sees a line of schoolchildren
and Leonora by all accounts is a very elegant woman
she is mistaken for their teacher
She sees that the Yeoman Warder's attention is turned away
so she reaches inside her coat and throws the crowbar
over the heads of the schoolchildren, hitting the Jewel Case
When you go into the Wakefield Tower, you'll realise that she has no means of escape
there is only one exit in and one exit out
so she does this very brave thing knowing that she can't get out
Written on the crowbar is a label saying, "This is my protest against the treachery of the Government
against the working women of Great Britain"
After her arrest, she is taken to trial where she represents herself
Remarkably, the jury rules in her favour
so she's free and then for the rest of her life she continues her activism
Almost five years to the day after Leonora Cohen smashes a display case at the Tower of London
giving her the name the 'Tower Suffragette'
women over the age of 30 with a certain amount of property had the vote for the first time
it opens the gateway for women to have the vote
The significance of the vote is that it's not the act of putting a piece of paper in a ballot box
what this does is it gives women representation
and the power to start making changes to the law which had affected them so badly
Leonora Cohen kept on fighting for women's rights throughout her entire life
She fought not only for suffrage in 1918
she fights and wins the right for all women to vote in 1928
Amazingly, she fought again in 1970 where you see the marking of the Equal Pay Act
giving men and women by law equal pay for equal work
which is what she was fighting for right from the very start
I know that because we still have problems like a gender pay gap
that Leonora Cohen would be fighting still