When Michael O'Brien's grandfather let his factory to penniless suffragettes they paid the rent with paintings instead of cash.

Mr O'Brien is proud of his ancestor's aid to the early 20th Century women's rights pioneers - but he didn't really want workhouse paintings on his walls.

One of the ten images will now hang in the House of Commons after they sold at auction for far more than their expected prices.

Mr O'Brien, 60, admitted: "I had no idea what they were worth."

One Hove dealer offered him £100 apiece. But at Bonhams auction house in London on Tuesday they raised £70,207.

The sketches and watercolours had been stored in a wardrobe in Mr O'Brien's Brighton home for years and were only brought out as talking pieces to amuse guests.

But they were a proud reminder of his rebellious grandfather and his feminist great-aunt Minnie O'Brien.

Ernest O'Brien was introduced to the suffragette movement by his sister Minnie, who was involved with the radical group.

He owned a factory in east London and rented a room to them for their meetings.

Among the women was Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of famous suffragette Emmeline who was arrested 12 times in one year and regularly went on hunger strike.

Like her mother, she spent time in a police cell and was violently force-fed.

Sylvia, who trained at the Royal College of Art, regularly gave Ernest paintings in which she depicted the plight of women exploited in industry and agriculture.

But the images of women in the workhouse, toiling over machinery, were not the sort of art Mr O'Brien wanted on his walls.

He said: "My father tried to give them to the Trade and General Workers' Union but they refused.

"We had an exhibition in London but nobody was interested.

"I tried to sell them to a dealer in Hove and he only offered me £100 each. We never realised they were worth so much."

A spokeswoman for Bonhams said the paintings went for "well over their expected estimates".

The most expensive lot was The Old Fashioned Pottery: Transferring The Pattern Onto The Biscuit, which sold to a private collector for £16,450.

One of the paintings was bought to decorate the House of Commons.