Dora Montefiore

Dorothy (Dora) Frances Montefiore (née Fuller) (20 December 1851 – 21 December 1933) was an English-Australian women's suffragist, socialist, poet, and autobiographer.

Montefiore was born at Kenley Manor near Coulsdon, Surrey, daughter of Francis and Mary Ann Fuller. Her father was involved with railway engineering and was a driving force behind the Great Exhibition. Her Mother was a daughter of George Drew, a property speculator who developed Caterham. She was educated by governesses and tutors and at Mrs Creswell's school at Brighton. In 1874, she went to Sydney to assist her brother's wife. She returned briefly to England, and on her return to Sydney married Jewish merchant George Barrow Montefiore, son of Joseph Barrow Montefiore. They had two children.

In 1889, her husband was lost at sea. When she learned that she had no automatic right to guardianship of her children, she became an advocate of women's rights. The first meeting of the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales was held at her home on 29 March 1891. In 1892 she left Australia and after spending several years in Paris, settled in England.

In 1898, Montefiore produced a book of verse Singings Through the Dark. She also continued to be active in the suffrage movement, serving on the executive of Millicent Fawcett's National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and she joined the Women's Social and Political Union that had been formed by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. In 1897, she proposed the formation of the Women's Tax Resistance League. In 1906, to protest lack of political representation, she refused to pay her taxes and remained barricaded in her home for six weeks. The League used this occasion as an opportunity for demonstrations and publicity:

The house, surrounded by a wall, could be reached only through an arched doorway, which Montefiore and her maid barred against the bailiffs. For six weeks, Montefiore resisted payment of her taxes, addressing the frequent crowds through the upper windows of the house.

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