Sue Gould 💙

Ex primary head working part time as a Teacher of the Deaf. Volunteer for @cinnamontrust ❤️Gigs, 💙NHS, sunshine & dogs. Views my own.

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

I'm happy 😍 beautiful Cornishware in a sunny Cornwall.

[𝔅͛𝔯͛𝔦͛𝔞͛𝔫͛ ͛𝔚͛𝔥͛𝔢͛𝔩͛𝔱͛𝔬͛𝔫͛ @brianwhelton]

Vote @Number10cat

[Paul Bronks @SlenderSherbet]

"Honestly, I don't know where to fucking start"

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

My advice today, and always:

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

I miss the old door.

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@GuruGryff What a star you are Margo ⭐

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@jennystape Happy birthday Jack. That looks like a lovely box of treats

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@DiaryAlfred ❤️

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@ChukkaBennett Nanna Chuck! Lovely videos and always a character. JC Chuck - fly high and run free over that rainbow 🌈 🐾

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@MarkOldridge67 No coffee machines working in Waitrose?! Shocking state of affairs 😆

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@HaggisAdele What a birthday you’re having Rex! Happy barkday 🥳

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

November 1971. Chiswick, West London.
Erin Pizzey is 32 years old. She is not a lawyer. Not a politician. Not a doctor.
She is a woman who talked Hounslow Council into lending her a cold, rundown building on Belmont Road — a former community hall — for almost nothing. Her original plan was modest. A warm room. A cup of tea. Somewhere for mothers with young children to simply get out of the house.
Then the door opened.
A woman stood in the entrance. She was covered, head to foot, in bruises. She was holding two small children. She was shaking.
She didn't want tea.
She needed somewhere to hide.
Erin let her in. She didn't turn her away. She didn't tell her to call the police.
Because Erin had already called the police. They told her the same thing they told every woman in Britain at the time: they could not enter a private home over a "domestic dispute." That was the law. The home was private. What happened inside it was a family matter.
When Erin contacted a female civil servant to report what she was seeing, the response was astonishing. The woman told her flatly: "There wasn't a problem of battered wives until you made one."
Erin put down the phone. Then she went back to her residents and made sure they were fed.
Within weeks, 40 mothers and children were sleeping in four tiny rooms. No funding. No staff. No legal authority.
She didn't stop.
By 1973, word had spread through quiet whisper networks — one woman telling another, "There is a place. Go to Chiswick. She won't turn you away." That same year, Erin hosted the first National Women's Aid Conference in the UK. Women from across Britain arrived, and they all recognized the same thing at once: what she had built needed to exist everywhere.
In 1974, the council set a maximum of 36 residents. At peak times, 150 women and children were living inside those walls — sleeping on floors, on chairs, in hallways. The building smelled of cooking, fear, and something else entirely: relief.
Erin was taken to court for overcrowding. She appealed all the way to the House of Lords.
She kept the doors open the entire time.
That same year, she wrote a book. Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear. It was the first published account of domestic violence in British history. It used real stories from real women inside the shelter. Overnight, a problem that had no official name was on front pages from London to New York.
The movement spread. Refuges opened across the UK. Then Australia. Then Canada. Then the United States. The pattern she created in four small rooms in West London — no blueprint, no permission, no funding — had been replicated in hundreds of shelters across the Western world.
MP Jack Ashley stood up in Parliament and said: "It was she who first identified the problem, who first recognised the seriousness of the situation and who first did something practical."
She was ranked 14th in a poll of the 100 women who shook the world. She was awarded the Italian Peace Prize. She received a CBE. The charity she founded — Chiswick Women's Aid, which became Refuge — grew into the largest domestic violence charity in the United Kingdom, with over 460 employees and an annual income of more than £33 million.
Erin Pizzey passed away on October 4, 2025, aged 86.
She never stopped.
It all began with one woman, one borrowed building, and an absolute refusal to say no.
Forty women and children showed up with nowhere to go.
She made room.

Share this if you believe one ordinary person, refusing to look away, can build a shelter that holds the whole world.

Follow us Lost in Yesterday

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@TrudiMCameron @ScentworkUK Fabulous! Well done Poppy 🐾👏🏼

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@SealyhamEddie Looking lovely 🥰

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@WalterofWexford Morning Walter and Viv - glad Walter is on the mend now. Paws up and rest Walter 🐾🐶

[Gail Myerscough @GailMyerscough]

Last chance!
I’ll be away next week, so if you need Father’s Day cards, gifts or anything else from my shop, please order TODAY (Thursday 4 June).
https://t.co/y5rij6kaMT

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@Malcolm_theCat That looks cosy Malcolm. I’m sure BD loves to have you snuggling in too!

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@MarkOldridge67 Scorched grass! Glad you’ve got your phone sorted ✔️

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@Headteacherchat Yes I do! My first class of 36 reception, Y1 & Y2 children and no TA or PPA… 9 class infant school with one TA who did all the displays, first aid and mixed up a massive pot of wallpaper paste for ‘cutting and sticking’ 🤣 different times!

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@RetirementTales Started teaching in 1988 and that was my aim in life - learn to drive and buy a 2CV. Never managed it 🤣

[Sue Gould 💙 @beanybonce]

@RetirementTales Had to do this with wood chip wallpaper. Took ages to do, especially cutting the edges to make the perfect corner.