A gift from a friend

An evocative and poignant metal eating implement issued to Holloway prisoners, stamped ’60 01′. Sadly ironic as the suffragette prisoners went on hunger strikes. It is indistinctly scratched with ‘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[?]’ on the reverse. This intriguing and evocative relic of the hardship endured by suffragettes in prison came from the collection of Constance Louisa Collier (b.1854), who was sentenced to four months in Holloway at Bow Street Magistrates Court 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 (currently displayed at The Priest’s House, West Hoathly, West Sussex). Of the signatories, 61 had been arrested for window-smashing, with 24 of the women undertaking hunger strike. The initials ‘KG’ scratched into this implement, possibly with an illegally smuggled-in hatpin, fit those of Katherine Gatty (1870-1952), close friend of Emily Wilding Davison, who was incarcerated in Holloway at the same time as 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.
[Thank you Sarah Lindberg for this superb research. Sarah found the scratched inscription while sitting under a desk with an ultra violet light].

NFS