About Muriel Matters

Muriel Lilah Matters (12 November 1877 – 17 November 1969) was a South 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 a prominent member of a critical mass of people advocating for women’s suffrage. Largely active between 1905 and 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 the Grille Incident, 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 that the grille should be removed. Her nonviolent act of chaining herself to the grille was the centrepiece of a larger protest 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.1

Matters was also the key figure in the Balloon Raid, which sought 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 56 lb 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 generated publicity for the suffrage movement and made headlines around the world.

Although these two deeds punctuate Matters’ life, they mask the hardworking, strong-willed activist who spent a lifetime acting on deeply held principles. These convictions, centred on 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 that had to be won.

All the elements of her life of activism culminated in her running as the Labour Candidate for the Hastings constituency in the 1924 British General Election. Although she did not gain enough votes to unseat the incumbent Conservative Party Member of Parliament, Lord Eustace Percy, this actualisation of her belief that women had a natural right to participate in parliamentary decision-making bodies was a victory in itself. It provided an example which other women soon followed.2

Muriel Matters in History Resources

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The Society is always on the lookout for anything related to Muriel Matters. If you have any documents, pictures or ephemera that is, in any way, relevant to her life, please contact us.

Members of the Society are continually collecting information about this remarkable woman, and your help would be greatly appreciated.

Footnotes and Sources:

  1. The Grille Incident, Palace of Westminster. Parliament of the United Kingdom, London ↩︎
  2. 1924 General Election Results, Constituency of Hastings ↩︎

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