In 1913, the Suffragettes were the most vilified women in the country. If window-smashing and attacks on mail boxes weren’t enough, they had also seen fit to burn the Tea Pavilion at Kew Gardens to the ground. This campaign of destruction had led to the departure of some of the organisation’s staunchest supporters, but not Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Flying in the face of public opinion, the princess, dressed in furs and an elaborate hat, could often be seen selling copies of the Suffragettes’ newspaper outside Hampton Court, where she had been granted a grace-and-favour home by her late godmother, Queen Victoria. The fact that Hampton Court itself had recently been closed to the public due to fears that it was also about to be targeted was of little consequence to her.

Sophia’s early days showed little indication of the rebel she would become. She could easily have led a life of uninterrupted pleasure and privilege. She was the daughter of the deposed Maharajah Duleep Singh, who, after being pressured by the British into signing away his kingdom as a child, went on to become a great favourite of Queen Victoria. However, her father’s extravagance, gambling and very public infidelity, combined with a not unwarranted desire to have what was effectively stolen from him returned, had a devastating effect on her childhood. After a thwarted attempt to return to India in 1886, Duleep abandoned his wife and family, leaving them virtually homeless and penniless.

Queen Victoria stepped in to find them a home and made sure the children were cared for after the death of  their mother in 1887, and then Duleep in 1893 left them orphaned. When Sophia came of age, she set about securing her future, along with those of her sisters, Bamba and Catherine. In addition to the residence at Hampton Court, the women were given an allowance of £600 a year from the Indian Office. Victoria made sure that Sophia was on all the important lists and, for a while, her life became an endless round of balls, parties and banquets.

It would take a trip to India to awaken Sophia’s rebel spirit. Following Victoria’s death, the coronation of her successor, Edward VII, was due to be celebrated in India with a magnificent two-week celebration known as the Delhi Durbar, which began in December 1902. Although famine had caused the death of millions in recent years, this was of little consequence to the organisers, who wanted to demonstrate who was in control against a backdrop of rising anti-English sentiment.

Bamba, Catherine and Sophia were all anxious to attend, although the India Office had other ideas. Wary of having the late maharajah’s daughters in the country at such a time, they tried to dissuade them with spurious excuses about the impossibility of finding suitable accommodation. They did not, however, refuse them permission to travel and the women seized this opportunity to book their passages (although they likely did so under pseudonyms, as no records exist).

While they were shunned by British diplomats and officials upon arrival, a gesture expressly designed to humiliate the young women, they were welcomed with open arms by Punjab chiefs and Sikh aristocrats. Sophia enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to discover more about her heritage and India itself, travelling widely on horseback across the former Sikh Empire to get a feel for the land her father had wanted to reclaim. During her travels she witnessed devastating levels of poverty and deprivation and also came to comprehend, for the first time, quite how much her family had lost. When she finally returned home, in August 1903, she was a changed woman.

Sophia found herself burning with a desire to be of use, and began by turning her attention to the lascars, Indian sailors who had been subject to inhumane treatment for centuries. Bringing their plight to her wealthy friends, she raised funds to help build and furnish a new safe haven for the sailors in London’s Victoria Docks, which helped over 5,000 of these unfortunate men in the space of five years.

It was an organisation founded the same year as her return from India that would come to dominate her life. Although demands for women’s suffrage had been growing in recent years, Emmeline Pankhurst had become frustrated with the genteel efforts of Millicent Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Pankhurst believed that more militant action was required, and created the Women’s Society for Social and Political Union (WSPU) in response.

It was Una Dugdale, who would later become the first woman in England to refuse to use the word ‘obey’ in her marriage vows, who initiated Sophia into the WSPU. The pair met at a social event in 1908 and it seems that Sophia was immediately drawn to Una’s passion for the cause. She signed up as a member that same afternoon.

Sophia initially focused her energies on fundraising. She helped organise bazaars, while the suffragettes enthusiastically advertised jams and cakes ‘made by the Princess herself’ (although, as Anand points out, it was unlikely Sophia even knew how to light an oven, let alone bake a cake). But she was keen to do more, and was soon a regular fixture at suffragette ‘At homes’, where women were recruited and encouraged to donate to the cause. The princess’s celebrity was a huge boost to such events.

Sophia’s efforts soon came to the attention of Emmeline, who requested a meeting with the princess, after which she became a part of the union’s inner circle. Her status and connection to the Royal Family made her a highly newsworthy asset, and the Pankhursts no doubt wanted to make good use of their royal rebel. Sophia was very happy to oblige, and soon got the chance to prove just how far she would go for the cause.

In 1910, the suffragettes seemed to be gaining ground. That year, the Conciliation Bill would have given limited voting rights to women but, at the last minute, Asquith’s government attempted to smother it by refusing to give it enough time in Parliament. The suffragettes responded with predictable fury, and a march on the Houses of Parliament was planned. Sophia willingly agreed to walk at its head with Emmeline and other leading members of the group.

When the women set out on 18 November the mood initially seemed buoyant, but when Emmeline, Sophia and the other women leading the march reached St Stephen’s Gate, they were hemmed in by police. They could only watch helplessly as those behind them were subjected to an unprecedented level of violence by the crowds, egged on by the police, who themselves participated in the assaults. It wasn’t until the Honourable Evelina Haverfield created a break in the police line by barging through it on horseback that Sophia was able to slip through. Spotting a woman who was being particularly violently assaulted by a police officer she forced herself between him and the woman, demanding that he release her. The officer seems to have been sufficiently taken aback by a diminutive Indian woman screaming at him that he let her go. Sophia then followed him until she could take down his number and lodge an official complaint.

The event, one of the most brutal confrontations in Suffragette history, would come to be known as Black Friday. It ended with Sophia and scores of other women being arrested. Although police suspected many women were giving false identities, there was little doubt that Princess Duleep Singh of Hampton Court was indeed who she said she was. In the end, all charges were dropped, with Emmeline believing that fear of their testimony lay behind the decision. Unsurprisingly, Sophia’s complaints against officer V700 were ignored.

Sophia showed her courage once again on the day of the King’s Speech the following year, which had been chosen as a day of coordinated protest. While many suffragettes demonstrated outside the homes of prominent cabinet ministers, Sophia went one step further by heading to 10 Downing Street. When Asquith emerged, she pushed her way through police and civil servants, and hurled herself at his car shouting Suffragette slogans. She was detained once again and released without charge, but her actions made headlines around the Empire.

Although not all of Sophia’s actions were so violent, she remained a thorn in the authority’s side throughout the years of suffragette campaigning. In 1911 she enthusiastically participated in the group’s most co-ordinated act of civil disobedience to date, the boycott of the 1911 census. Like scores of women across the country, she spoiled her paper by writing ‘No Vote, No Census’ diagonally across the page.

She was also a dedicated member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and her refusal to pay taxes saw her taken to court and fined on two occasions. When she also refused to pay the resulting fines, bailiffs arrived at Hampton Court and confiscated items of jewellery, which were to be auctioned to settle her debt. However, on both occasions, her items were bought by fellow Suffragettes and returned to her.

Although the First World War brought a temporary end to the protests, Sophia’s desire to be of use continued and she volunteered as a nurse, looking after wounded Indian soldiers in Brighton. When, in the aftermath of the war, women over 30 were finally granted the vote it was a cause for great celebration. But while the campaigning may have stopped for good, Sophia maintained lifelong links with her former comrades in arms. In 1928, the same year the franchise was extended to all women over 21, she became a member of the Suffragette Fellowship, an exclusive club made up of the most hardened militants. Her importance to the movement was emphasised during the unveiling of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst two years later, when Sophia was made responsible for floral tributes. To the tune of ‘Rise of the Women’ she laid a bouquet at the feet of the woman who had transformed Britain and brought purpose to her life.

Although her fortunes declined in the years after the war, Sophia maintained a strong social conscience, taking in evacuees during the Second World War. Her devotion to women’s rights never wavered. Shortly before her death in 1948, she was asked to create an entry for the women’s Who’s Who. Under interests, she wrote simply ‘The Advancement of Women’.