Bland was born in Bayston Hill, Shropshire, the oldest of nine children of railway fitter William Henry Bland and his wife Violet.[1] After school she became a kitchen maid at Dudmaston Hall, near Bridgenorth.
Ten years later, she was offering furnished accommodation “with good cooking” in Cirencester, first in a modest house and then in Gloucester House, a large Queen Anne mansion in Dyer Street. She acquired three new houses, renting out two of them.
By 1905 she was running a Ladies College of Domestic Science in Henley Grove, Bristol, a fifteen-bedroom parkland mansion, offering classes in hygienic cooking, food values, and gymnastics. By 1906 she had turned Henley Grove into a boutique hotel.[2]
In August 1910 Bland sold-up and moved to London, where for the next 25 years she ran a guest house at 22 Old Burlington Street. She was arrested during the November 1910 Black Friday Suffragette march on Parliament.[4] At another demonstration in 1912, she was arrested for throwing a rock through the windows of the Commercial Cable Company in Northumberland Avenue and sentenced to four months in prison.[5]
The citation on the presentation case (see photo, right) reads: "Presented to Violet Ann Bland by the Women's Social and Political Union in recognition of a gallant action, whereby through endurance to the last extremity of hunger and hardship, a great principle of political justice was vindicated."
In 1915, though now 52 and unmarried, Bland fostered five of her sister's orphaned children.[8] The eldest, Richard, became the father of economists Eamonn Butler[9] and Stuart Butler.[10]
^Bland, Ken; Bland, Allan (January 2018). "Violet Ann Bland 1863-1940: Bayston Hill's Suffragette". Shropshire Libraries Archive. via: system reference XLS7990
