It's February. And here in Britain that means it's LGBT history month.

Apart from the usual type posts, this month I'll be including a few about the lives of some lgbt people. My first person is the composer and women's rights campaigner, Ethel Smyth.

Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
Ethel Smyth was born on 22 or 23 April 1858. She became interested in music when quite young and studied composition in Leipzig, the town where Bach had worked for the latter part of his life. Her most celebrated opera is The Wreckers where, as in Daphne Du Maurier's novel Jamaica Inn, the central theme is wrecking off the Cornwall coast.

But it wasn't music and composition alone that interested Ethel. She was a very individualistic person, and started to wonder why women should be treated as second class. She became a political activist and composed March of the Women to the words of Cicely Hamilton.

A little later Ethel became involved in a direct action campaign to break the windows of politicians who spoke out against women's rights. She received a sentence of two months in Holloway prison, and was said to have used her toothbrush to conduct the March of the Women leaning from her cell window, with women prisoners marching and singing along in the quadrangle.

British women over 30 years old were eventually granted the vote in 1918, but had to wait for a further ten years before they had the right to vote on equal terms with men.

In 1922 Ethel Smyth was honoured with a DBE, to become Dame Ethel Smyth.

More about Dame Ethel Smyth