Career
During this time she was active in the campaign for female suffrage, particularly in New South Wales. In September 1901, she became founding president of the Women"s Progressive Association of New South Wales, formed party in response to Rose Scott"s domination of the Forest, Snow and Landscape, along with Annie Golding, Belle Golding, and Kate Dwyer. In April 1903, she was elected president of the Women"s Liberal and Reform Association, and she was also elected to the finance committee of the Australian Free Trade League in October.
Martel was one of the four women who contested the 1903 federal election, the first at which women were eligible to stand.
Martel stood for the Senate regardless as an independent candidate and campaigned strongly in Newcastle, Tamworth, Lambton and Maitland. She opposed the Political Labour League, particularly its caucus structure and support for the minimum wage, and advocated equal pay for women as a method of maintaining a male dominance in the workplace.
Other causes she supported included free trade, private industry, irrigation, foreign language teaching and the White Australia policy. Ultimately she received 18,502 votes (6%).
Charles returned to England in 1904 and Nellie later that year on 27 July.
She remained a frequent subject of Louisa Lawson"s Dawn. In London she became notorious as a woman who had stood for parliament, and joined Emmeline Pankhurst"s Women"s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in May 1905. On 3 October 1906, she was arrested, with Anne Cobden Sanderson, and Minnie Baldock at Parliament, and sentenced to two months in prison.
She and Pankhurst successfully campaigned against an anti-enfranchisement candidate in Devon in January 1908, but Martel left the WSPU later that year.
Martel"s "strenuous advocacy" of a Unionist candidate in Sunderland in 1918 was credited with assisting his re-election. Charles died in 1935, and Nellie at her home in Notting Hill on 11 August 1940.