Mary Ellen ‘Nellie’ Taylor (Suffragette) 1863 - 1937

For 10 years the Taylors (Thomas, Nellie and their three children) lived at Westerby House, Smeeton Westerby.

On March 5^th 1910 Nellie Taylor organised a WSPU (The Women's Social and Political Union) meeting in the Kibworth Village Hall when an audience consisting mainly of women listened to speeches by two famous suffragettes, Alice Pemberton-Peake and Dorothy Pethwick. From 1910 to 1912 Dorothy Pethwick was the WSPU organiser in Leicester.

This brief note is about Smeeton Westerby resident Captain Thomas Smithies Taylor (born 5 July 1863), who founded a company that was to dominate lens manufacturing in the inter-war period. Through his camera lenses, the world quite literally saw the twentieth century.