Footnotes

'A POLICEMAN STRUCK HER WITH ALL HIS FORCE... OVER AND OVER SHE WAS FLUNG TO THE GROUND': THE HUNGER STRIKE MEDAL OF ADA WRIGHT, MILITANT, INDOMITABLE CAMPAIGNER AND CLOSE FRIEND OF THE PANKHURSTS.

Ada Cecile Granville Wright (c.1862-1939) is best-known as the diminutive figure shown in one of the iconic suffragette photographs of the era, an image that came to represent the brutality of the police and the tenacity of the protestors. It depicts the fifty-year-old suffragette after being knocked to the ground by a policeman during the 'Black Friday' protests of 18 November 1910, a moment that epitomised the more aggressive approach to the protestors sanctioned by the then Home Secretary Winston Churchill. Whilst police attempt to hold back a large crowd, another policeman bends over her prone body grasping her arm and a top-hatted gentleman, who was later bundled away, attempts to assist her. The Votes for Women leaflet no. 75, included in the lot, carries this famous picture on its front page under the heading 'Plain Facts About the Suffragette Deputations': '...I saw Miss Ada Wright close to the entrance. Several police seized her, lifted her from the ground, and flung her back into the crowd... she rose up again, only to be flung down again immediately... over and over again she was flung to the ground... It was a painful and degrading sight...'. Sylvia Pankhurst described the incident in her History of the Women's Suffrage Movement: 'Never, in all the attempts which we have made to carry our deputations to the Prime Minister, have I seen so much bravery on the part of the women and so much violent brutality on the part of the policeman in uniform and some men in plain clothes' (Pankhurst, 1931, p.342). The photograph was first published on the front page of the Daily Mirror of 19 November and on the front of Votes for Women for 25 November but was suppressed on by the government and the negatives ordered to be destroyed.

Ada was fifty years old when that photograph was taken and was a seasoned campaigner. She had been involved in the campaign for women's suffrage and other social causes for several years before joining the National Union of Women's Suffrage in 1905. Inspired by the militant approach of the Pankhursts and Annie Kenney, she joined the WSPU and took part in the deputation from Caxton Hall to the Houses of Parliament in March 1907, which led to her first arrest and imprisonment. She took part in the deputation to the House of Commons on 29 June 1909 (the date engraved on her medal) and was arrested again for breaking the windows at a government office in Whitehall with Sarah Carwin, an act which she said 'required a great deal of moral courage'. Whilst in Holloway prison she broke the windows in her cell and went on hunger strike for six days. She was arrested many times throughout her career for militant activity, not least on the infamous 'Black Friday', and the bars on her medal attest to the hunger strikes she endured whilst imprisoned. In March 1912 she was arrested twice for window smashing and was sentenced to six months at Aylesbury prison. There she went on secret hunger strike and was forcibly fed twice a day for ten days until the WSPU sent direct orders that she should cease, although she resumed it three months later, hence the dates engraved on the enamel bars on our medal: 'Fed by Force 1.3.12' and 'Fed by Force ?6 June 1912'. Her deteriorating health led to a question in the House of Commons from Philip Snowden on the treatment of prisoners and she was subsequently released. However, in February 1914 she was arrested again in a scuffle surrounding the escape of Mrs Pankhurst from 'Mouse Castle', Marie Brackenbury's safe house for suffragettes, and yet again in May during the deputation to the King at Buckingham Palace. Worried for her weak health, her sister paid the fine to release her on this occasion, so she would not be tempted to go through the ordeal of hunger strike again. Close to the Pankhursts, she was with Emily Davison in the days before her death and was a pallbearer at Emmeline Pankhurst's funeral in 1928. Throughout her life, Ada Wright was also generous donor financially to the cause and a tireless campaigner: 'one of those quiet women whose gentle and calm manner hides a courageous and indomitable nature of unexpected depths' (Diane Atkinson, Rise Up, Women!, London, 2018, p.564). In her will she divided her estate between several of the suffragette leaders including Flora Drummond and Evie Hamill, sister of Cicely Hamilton, with the majority left to Christabel Pankhurst, to whom she was particularly close.

Dating from June 1909, this would appear be an early and unusual variant of the hunger strike medal such as that awarded to Edith Downing (sold in these rooms 23 March 2022, lot 266). Unlike Downing's medal and others which bear the words 'Hunger Strike' on the medallion, ours is engraved with the word 'Holloway' but, other than that, the general format and presentation box are the same. One other example of this particular type is held by the Museum of London (ID.69.5) and was awarded to Theresa Garnett also in 1909. Other so-called 'Holloway medals' such as that awarded to Emmeline Pankhurst in 1908 (now in the parliamentary archives), bear the word 'Holloway' on a silver bar on the ribbon and her cell number on the medallion. It is not known how the medal came to be in the possession of the Verden family, but Phyllis Verden and her mother, both militant suffragettes, worked closely with Janie Terrero of the Pinner branch of the WSPU. Phyllis also worked in the household of Emmeline Pankhurst where she would have met with leading militants of the WSPU (see adjacent lot). For more on the Verden family and the suffragette movement in Pinner see Thomas MacIver's article, 'Pinner's Suffragette's', London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Transactions, 69, 2018, pp.269-282. In this article a 'Miss Wright' is mentioned as sharing the responsibility for running the branch with Mrs Verden in 1914 but the connection, if any, to Ada Wright is not known.

Provenance: Phyllis Pearce (née Verden) of the Pinner WSPU, the present owner's grandmother.