Helen Fraser

Helen Miller Fraser, later Moyes (14 September 1881 – 2 December 1979), was a Scottish suffragist, feminist, educationalist and Liberal Party politician who later emigrated to Australia. Background Fraser was born in Leeds, Yorkshire to Scottish parents, James Fraser (1856 - 1908) and Christina Sutherland. She was one of ten children. Her father began work as a tailor's cutter, moving from Caithness to Edinburgh to Leeds, before finally settling in Glasgow when Helen was a child. There, he opened a wholesale clothing firm. She was educated at Queen's Park Higher Grade School, Glasgow. She opened a studio in Glasgow that specialised in black and white illustration work, embroidery and painting. In June 1908, Votes for Women, the newspaper of the Women's Social and Political Union reported that she had given up her art work to become an organiser for them. She was also an honorary treasurer of the Glasgow branch. Her family was progressive politically, believing that conditions for workers should be improved. As a middle class young woman in Glasgow, her life involved dances and balls, theatre, raising money for charity, playing tennis, and visiting poor families in the city. Political career in suffrage movement She joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) after hearing Teresa Billington speak in Glasgow. She travelled to England to help the WSPU campaign at the 1906 Huddersfield by-election. She became Treasurer of the Glasgow WSPU and a WSPU Scottish Organiser, one of the fifty-eight funded branches in the UK. On 20 December 1906, with Flora Drummond, Fraser and three others attempted to enter the Stranger's Lobby in the Parliament, and after a skirmish Drummond was arrested.