On this day: 23rd April

Friday, 23 April 2010 09:54:51 BST

23 April 1858 – birth of English composer and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth. Ethel wrote six operas as well as assorted choral and chamber music, having studied at the Conservatory in Leipzig and befriending contemporaries including DvoÅ™ák and Tchaikovsky. She composed ‘The March of the Women’, the anthem of the women’s suffrage movement, and served two months in Holloway prison for breaking windows at the command of Emily Pankhurst.

© National Portrait Gallery, London