Later RW became a strong advocate for the suffrage cause through her journalism. To ensure her intellectual independence, she refrained from joining feminist organisations, though she admired feminist activists such as Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison .

Germaine Greer has observed that the fact of Emily Davison 's death after running in front of the king's horse in the Derbyremains unspoken in Pankhurst's speech, which hardly makes sense without it.

The others included Christabel Pankhurst , Jane Esdon Brailsford , and Emily Davison . They made their stone-throwing disturbance on a Saturday. The initial charges against CL were assault, wilful damage, and disorderly behaviour in public. Of the cells she wrote: Who could have believed that in the central police station of a place like Newcastle they could be so dirty? Four women were tried that day and sentenced to imprisonment in the third division, with hard labour. On the Sunday all eleven women signed a letter to the Times from Newcastle Central Police Station setting out their intention to go on hunger strike, thus offering the government four alternatives, viz. to release them, inflict violence on their bodies by force-feeding, let them die, or give women the vote. On the Monday morning (by which time CL 's identity was known), she and Jane Brailsford were again sentenced to prison with the option of being bound over; the rest were sentenced to prison with hard labour. Lytton found the prison regime more humane than at Holloway, and the matron was a covert supporter of the suffrage. On the Wednesday evening, CL and Brailsford were singled out for release on medical grounds. (Brailsford had had a medical check before undertaking this action; she may have received special treatment out of respect for her husband , a journalist and publicly declared suffragist.) They had not been force fed, though they had eaten nothing during the two and a half days. The Times reported: They spoke appreciatively of the kindness with which they had been treated . . . . They were both weak and excited.

The Robertses were succeeding a clergyman who also had liberal views. He had caused some offence by holding the funeral of Emily Davison , the suffragist who was killed on the Derby racecourse. Here William Roberts continued to support feminism and pacifism, and offered his church for use by striking dockers, by exiled Ethiopians (a service for which he received a letter of thanks from Sylvia Pankhurst ). He always had one male and one female churchwarden, one male and one female sidesman (the latter at one time a gaily dressed chorus-girl with henna-tinted hair). From 1917 he served as chaplain to a London hospital for women and girls with venereal diseases—the Lock Hospital famous in the annals of prostitution and women's health—and altogether did much to support the work of Josephine Butler 's successors.Ursula Roberts refused to visit the parishioners (many of whom were wealthy) in the conventional manner, but probably worked as a volunteer at the hospital, and involved herself in advocacy for the poor as well as women. The couple failed to prevent the parish council from ejecting the street people living in the portico of the church (designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor ).