A hundred years ago today a 40-year-old woman breathed her last.
This 40-year-old was different though.
A nice middle-class upbringing hit a brick wall when she was 21. Her father died and she was forced to drop out of university for lack of cash, and she was forced to do the only thing well-brought up impoverished ladies could do, and become a governess - a servant who once used to have servants of their own.
She was determined though and saved up enough to get her degree. She won first class honours at Oxford, but because they refused to admit women wasn't allowed to graduate.
After a stint teaching she went back to university full-time, and in 1906 joined the Women's Social and Political Union - the Suffragettes.
The Pankhurst family which led it felt that 50 years of asking nicely had got women no nearer the vote, and vowed to step things up a gear.
They leafleted the 1908 FA Cup Final. They started chaining themselves to railings, disrupting men-only political meetings, firebombing post boxes, smashing shop windows, cutting newly-installed telephone wires. They burned down rich men's empty stately homes, dug up golf courses, and even tried to blow up the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey. In 1909 one woman tried to horsewhip Winston Churchill, who was Home Secretary at the time.
As they got more mischievous the authorities cracked down harder. In 1910 a new law which would have granted the vote was talked out of Parliament, and 300 women marched on Westminster to protest.
Churchill ordered the police to go in hard; there were accusations of mass sexual assault, groping, and breaking of limbs. Two hundred women were arrested and two died.
At the Epsom Derby Emily Davison was there selling Suffragette newspapers she took a 'votes for women' sash from her pocket and stepped out onto the track in front of the King's horse.
Despite all of this- Women got the vote because of the First World War and no other reason - because of women who went into the armament factories and worked until the men came home, and more often didn't come home at all.
I think that makes it all the more sad.