page_title: Louie Cullen
section_title: Suffrage, imprisonment and recognition
hierarchical_section_title: Louie Cullen / Life / Suffrage, imprisonment and recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: Head of the procession, Women's Sunday (suffragette march), Hyde Park, London, 21 June 1908. At the front: Emmeline Pankhurst and Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy of the Women's Social and Political Union
context_page_description: Louie Cullen was a British suffragette and hunger striker who emigrated to Australia to continue her feminist activism. She was imprisoned for her activist work, and was awarded a Holloway brooch.
context_section_description: Cullen became a radical suffragette, joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) near its start, when there were no formal branches and by 1906 was the organiser of the Kensal branch in London.  In that year, Cullen and Hannah Mitchell had smuggled a 'Votes for Women' banner into the House of Commons whilst there with nineteen others and Emmeline Pankhurst and left during the scene caused when they opened up their banners there. Cullen was  arrested following the 1908 attempt by suffragettes to rush into the House of Commons hidden in a pantechnicon to get their voices heard on women's suffrage.
  Cullen was jailed in Holloway prison and went on a hunger strike for the cause of women's suffrage. Cullen was awarded a Holloway brooch by the WSPU and also spoke on a main platform  No. 3 at the Women's Sunday march in Hyde Park on 21 June 1908. Cullen was encouraged to go for a few days to 'rouse' people to have a crowd ready to greet Winston Churchill, on his speech-giving in Norwich, in a 17 July 1909 letter from Christabel Pankhurst.
  Cullen's health suffered from her imprisonment, and she and her husband moved in December 1911, initially for a two-year period, to Melbourne, Australia. They ended staying for the rest of their lives in Australia.
caption: Women's March to Hyde Park, 1908
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