Lady Constance Lytton (1869-1923) was the most unlikely of suffragettes. One of the elite, she was the daughter of a Viceroy of India and a lady in waiting to the Queen. She grew up in the family home of Knebworth and in embassies around the world. For forty years, she did nothing but devote herself to her family, denying herself the love of her life and possible careers as a musician or a reviewer. Then came a chance encounter with a suffragette. Constance was intrigued; witnessing Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst on trial convinced her of the urgent necessity of votes for women and she went to prison for the cause as gleefully as any child going on a school trip. But, once jailed, Constance soon found that her name and her connections singled her out for unwelcome special treatment. By now, 1909, the suffragettes were hunger striking and the government had retaliated with force-feeding. The stories that began to leak out - of bungled operations, of dirty tubes, of screams half-heard through brick walls, of straitjackets and handcuff s - outraged the suffragettes. Constance decided on her most radical step yet: to go to prison in disguise. Taking the name Jane Warton, she cut her hair, put on glasses and ugly clothes and got herself arrested in Liverpool. Once in prison, she was force-fed eight times before her identity was discovered and she was released. Her case became a cause célèbre, with debate raging in The Times and questions being asked in the House of Commons. Lady Constance Lytton became an inspiration and, in the end, a martyr. In this extraordinary new biography, Lyndsey Jenkins reveals for the first time the fascinating story of the woman who abandoned a life of privilege to fight for women's rights.

On 14 January 1910 Lytton disguised herself as a working-class seamstress, assumed the name Jane Warton, and led a suffrage demonstration demanding the vote for women. During the demonstration she hurled a rock wrapped in brown paper at the house of the governor of Walton Gaol. For this act, she was arrested, tried, and sentenced to fourteen days in jail. Like many suffragettes, she refused to eat while in custody and was forcibly fed, which involved forcing the mouth open, running a tube down the throat or through the nose, and pouring liquid into it. The procedure was both painful and dangerous. Lytton's decision to conceal her upper-class identity was a deliberately calculated act. She was devoted to the cause of female suffrage and was appalled at the class-differentiated treatment women (regardless of their offence) received in jail. This is an account of her prison experience and the differences when she was arrested as a middle class women and when she was arrested as Lady Constance Lytton, the daughter of an earl.

Published in 1911, Suffragette Sally is one of the best-known popular novels promoting the cause of women’s suffrage in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century. The novel details the militant campaign of the suffragist Women’s Social and Political Union against the political establishment of the time. Through its three female protagonists, each from a different class, the novel recounts the challenges faced by women who dared to flout social convention by agitating for the vote. The Sally of the title is Sally Simmonds, a maid-of-all-work in a household where she has to deal with her employer’s advances along with her daily tasks. The novel follows Sally’s conversion to the suffrage movement and details the consequences she must face as a working-class woman who risks her job, her relationships, and eventually her life for the cause. The novel weaves together the fictional stories of the three main characters with documentary material drawn from contemporary suffrage and mainstream newspapers, and raises the hope that female alliances might someday transcend class boundaries. This Broadview edition also includes fascinating historical materials on the suffrage movement, including contemporary accounts of imprisonment, hunger strikes, and battles with police.

A history of the early twentieth-century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. In the United Kingdom, the question of women's suffrage represented the most substantial challenge to the constitution since 1832, seeking not only to expand but to redefine definitions of citizenship and power. At the same time, it was inseparable from other urgent contemporary political debates--the Irish question, the decline of the British Empire, the Great War, and the increasing demand for workers' rights. This collection positions women's suffrage as central to, rather than separate from, these broader political discussions, demonstrating how they intersected and were mutually constitutive. In particular, this collection pays close attention to the issues of class and Empire which shaped this era. It demonstrates how campaigns for women's rights were consciously and unconsciously played out, impacting attitudes to motherhood, spurring the radical "birth-strike" movement, and burgeoning communist sympathies in working-class communities around Britain and beyond.

This widely acclaimed book has been described by History Today as a 'landmark in the study of the women's movement'. It is the only comprehensive reference work to bring together in one volume the wealth of information available on the women's movement. Drawing on national and local archival sources, the book contains over 400 biographical entries and more than 800 entries on societies in England, Scotland and Wales. Easily accessible and rigorously cross-referenced, this invaluable resource covers not only the political developments of the campaign but provides insight into its cultural context, listing novels, plays and films.