Women in the UK did not get the right to vote until 1918. This milestone was achieved through the work of suffragettes and suffragists, who campaigned tirelessly across the country for this right. Many local women in Merton were involved in this movement. Two of the most influential were Rose Lamartine Yates and Sophia Duleep Singh. Rose Lamartine Yates lived at Dorset Hall in Merton Park with her husband and son. She was the organising secretary of the Wimbledon Women’s Social and Political Union. Although this was an independent branch, it was associated with the national WSPU, founded by Emmeline Pankhurst, which favoured militant forms of protest. Yates herself spent one month in prison for her participation in a march to parliament in 1909. Sophia Duleep Singh was the daughter of the last Maharajah of Punjab, Duleep Singh, who had settled in the UK after being removed from power in 1849. She became a high profile suffragette activist, staging protests, attending suffragette marches and encouraging tax evasion in the name of “Votes for Women.” She was also well known for selling the Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace. She had been given an apartment there by her godmother, Queen Victoria , who was ironically vehemently opposed to women’s suffrage.