Godalming Nub News runs a regular series of profiles of Godhelmians of the past: Godalming's Great and Not-So-Good.

We live in an old town with a rich and fascinating history, a history shaped by the individuals who lived through it and helped make Godalming the town it is today.

This series tells the stories of some of our better-known residents.

Want to add to the list? Is there someone from the town whose achivements you think we should celebrate - or deplore? Let us know by email. or via our Facebook page.

One of Farncombe's greatest heroes was treated as a villain in her day, frequently arrested and spending much time in prison.

But militant suffragette Clara Mary Lambert was fighting for a great cause – she was part of the courageous, unflinching and indefatigable movement that eventually won women the right to vote.

As a militant suffragette she was involved in dozens of acts of civil disobedience, was arrested several times and was force-fed in prison.

Clara was born in 1874, the daughter of George and Elizabeth Lambert. A tiny but fierce woman – she was 5ft 1in according to police reports – she started her working life in a laundry.

Clara's brilliant and brave struggle to change society for the better began when she met suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst. Clara was a founding member of the Women's Social and Political Union, which was formed in 1903. Clara printed their publication The Suffragette and later Britannia, often having to move the printing press from the house of one sympathiser to another.

Among her many acts of defiance she is recorded as trying to confront Prime Minister Herbert Asquith at Waterloo Station as he made his way to a wedding. She missed him but got on the train anyway with other wedding guests and took a taxi to the house where the reception was being held. She failed to encounter him there as well, so instead decided to set fire to a haystack.

Another time she went to the British Museum armed with a hatchet, which she smuggled in under her coat. After using it to smash a display of Chinese porcelain cups and saucers she was arrested. On being brought before Bow Street magistrates the next morning she was so disruptive she was sent back to the cells.

She was protesting on that day about the news that fellow suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst was being force-fed in prison. On being jailed herself, Clara also went on hunger strike, and she too was force-fed.

Suffragettes who went on hunger strike were often force fed in prison, a brutal and terrifying ordeal for the women. Following a public outcry about force-feeding, in 1913 the Government, under Asquith, passed an act known colloquially as the Cat and Mouse Act. Women on hunger strike were freed when they became seriously ill, to allow time for them to recover. Once they were healthy again, they were rearrested and returned to jail. Clara once gave officers the slip when, released from jail, she was taken to the home of a supporter in Holland Park. While police officers kept watch at the front of the house she was spirited away out the back.

[H]Acts of defiance.[.H]

On another occasion she dressed as a man and entered the House of Commons. Women were supposed to stand behind a grille in the dimly-lit women's gallery, to avoid distracting the men. Lambert and her friend Clement Whatley headed instead for the Central Hall, were they were challenged. Clara was arrested and taken to Bow Street Police Station, where officers found she had a whip concealed beneath her coat. An appearance before Bow Street magistrates the next morning saw her returned to prison for another six-week spell of hard labour. Clara's acts of defiance were many – and usually punished. She threw a tomato at the Public Prosecutor, Archibald Bodkin, smashed the windows of the Strand Post Office and other offices nearby, and was in the thick of the action during what came to be known as Black Sunday, 11th November 1910, when there was a confrontation between policemen and suffragettes outside Parliament. The women's suffrage movement acknowledged the sacrifice of women like Clara – she was given a medal with bars marking her force feeding on 1st March 1912 and her imprisonment on 28th January 1913, 17th March 1914 and 9th April 1914. [H]The war years.[.H]

During the war the Women's Suffrage Movement put aside their struggle, for the greater good of the country. Clara joined the new Women's Police Service in 1915 and was posted to Pembury, South Wales, where she provided welfare support to young women munitions workers.

She met Violet Louise Croxford, who became her life partner, during her time with the WPS.

After the war she went to work providing support and advice to the sex workers in the West End of London. In 1926 she and Violet set up a refuge for former sex workers at Hythe in Kent. On their retirement they moved to Farncombe, where Clara worshipped at St John's Church and joined the Women's Club.

Clara and Violet lived in Farncombe for 18 years before Clara's death in 1969 at the age of 94.

Violet wrote Clara's biography from notes Clara had dictated to her, her work ensuring that Clara's passionate, perilous and ultimately productive life has remained in the public consciousness.