An evocative and poignant metal eating implement issued to Holloway Suffragette  prisoners, circa 1912, stamped ’60 01′. It is sadly ironic as the suffragette prisoners issued with such eating implements went on hunger strike. It is scratched to reverse, possibly with an illegally smuggled in hatpin :  ‘Votes for Women/ Congratulations/ to Mr Hobhouse on/ his successful [….]’ and the name ‘Tess’ upside down on one side and ‘Votes for Women/ Through ?Prison to/ Freedom/…KG March 24th 191[?]’ . This evocative relic of the hardship endured by suffragettes in prison came from the collection of Suffragette Constance Louisa Collier (b.1854), who was sentenced to four months in Holloway in March 1912 for breaking the windows of the John Lewis store in Oxford Street. Her name appears on the ‘Suffragette Handkerchief’ embroidered with the signatures of 66 fellow inmates of Holloway in March 1912. Of the signatories, 61 had been arrested for smashing windows, 24 of them undertook hunger strikes. The initials ‘KG’ scratched into this implement fit those of Katherine Gatty (1870-1952), close friend of Emily Wilding Davison, who was incarcerated in Holloway at the same time as Constance Collier. The somewhat ironic congratulatory reference to ‘Mr Hobhouse’ is likely a reference to Sir Charles Henry Hobhouse (1862-1941). The cabinet member and Liberal MP was a prominent anti-suffragist, whose inflammatory speech at Bristol in February 1912 had riled Emmeline Pankhurst to call for more extreme militant action. There followed a wave of arson and window smashing across the country, and the destruction of his own house in June 1912. The eating implement is 5 inches in length.
[Thank you Sarah Lindberg at Bonham’s for this superb research. Sarah found the scratched inscription sitting under a desk with an ultra violet light].

sold
Item ref : S1

inscription scratched on reverse