Constance Antonina Boyle (21 December 1865 – 4 March 1943) was a British journalist, campaigner for women's suffrage and women's rights, charity and welfare worker, and novelist. She was one of the pioneers of women police officers in Britain. In April 1918, she was the first woman to submit a nomination to stand for election to the House of Commons, which paved the way for other female candidates in the December 1918 general election. Family Nina Boyle was born in Bexley, Kent. She was a descendant of the Earls of Glasgow through her father, Robert Boyle (1830-1869), who was a captain in the Royal Artillery and the younger son of David Boyle, Lord Boyle. Her mother, Frances Sydney Fremoult Sankey, was the daughter of a medical doctor. Nina Boyle never married and did not have any children. Life Women's Freedom League activism Two of Boyle's brothers served in the Boer War while she lived in South Africa. She did hospital work in Africa and was employed as a journalist. While in South Africa, she also began to pursue her interest in women's rights, founding the Women's Enfranchisement League of Johannesburg. She returned to Britain in 1911 and, drawing upon her experiences in South Africa, became active in the Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women, headed by Princess Christian, a daughter of Queen Victoria. The League was set up to help women who had received a good formal education to make use of their skills where they might otherwise be ignored- in British territories, and once they had returned home. Boyle had radical opinions about how women's position in society could be improved. She was soon associated with the Women's Freedom League (WFL) along with other well-known suffragettes, including Charlotte Despard, Teresa Billington-Greig, Edith How-Martyn and Margaret Nevinson. Boyle was quickly elected to the WFL's executive committee and became one of its leading speakers. By 1912, she was its secretary. The WFL was a breakaway organisation from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), formed in 1907. The WFL split from WSPU due to the Pankhurst family's increasingly personal control of the WSPU and the violent tactics used by the WSPU. The WFL preferred civil disobedience and traditional campaigning. In 1912, Boyle became head of the WFL's political and militant department. She continued her journalism, publishing many articles in the WFL's newspaper, The Vote and employing Edith Watson as a campaigning