Auction Catalogue
Create new list‘Whatever her feelings on the subject may be, I cannot help thinking she might have some consideration for her family.’
Field Marshal Lord Kitchener in a letter to his sister, in which he declared he was ‘disgusted’ by the behaviour of his niece, the suffragette Frances Parker; he had paid for her education at Newnham College, Cambridge.
‘I was not fed at midday, but three wardresses came in and made what I suppose was an attempt to feed me by the rectum. I objected and protested against this indignity and struggled as best I could. The manner in which it was done was so unnecessarily painful that I screamed with agony. Later three women tried to give me an enema. Because I would not submit passively to these indignities, after everything was over, one of the women lifted me by the hair and flung me into the far corner of the bed. Another knelt on my chest to prevent me from getting up. She got off again when the first sat down heavily on my knees and said she would not get up until I promised to behave!
Thursday morning, 16th, I was fed again and held down afterwards. I was not fed at midday, but the three wardresses appeared again. One of them said that if I did not resist, she would send the others away and do what she had come to do as gently and decently as possible. I consented. This was another attempt to feed me by the rectum, and was done in a cruel way, causing me great pain.
She returned some time later and said she had “something else” to do. I took it to be another attempt to feed me in the same way, but it proved to be a grosser and more indecent outrage, which could have been done for no other purpose than to torture. It was followed by soreness, which lasted for several days … ’
Frances Parker describes her suffering at Perth gaol in the summer of 1914, as published in Votes for Women.
The highly important Women’s Social and Political Union Medal for Valour awarded to Frances Parker, the New Zealand born niece of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener and an important and courageous leader of the suffragette movement in Scotland - she was imprisoned on five occasions and thrice force fed, latterly by appalling means in Perth gaol after being arrested for attempting to burn down Robert Burns’s cottage in Alloway
Her fellow suffragette and friend Ethel Moorhead said that she was ‘small and looked innocent and disarming with her charming looks, brown eyes, and silky hair … but she had an exquisite madness - daring, joyous, vivid and strategic’
Women’s Social and Political Union Medal for Valour, silver, 22mm, the obverse inscribed ‘Hunger Strike’, the reverse inscribed ‘Frances Parker’, hallmarks for Birmingham 1912, the suspension bar enamelled in the colours of the W.S.P.U. and the reverse engraved, ‘Fed by Force 4/3/12’, together with a similarly enamelled bar with reverse inscription, ‘Fed by Force 8/7/14’, and two plain silver bars dated ‘October 30th 1912’ and November 29th 1913’, the plain silver upper brooch bar inscribed ‘For Valour’, the reverse with maker’s name ‘Toye, 57 Theobalds, Rd. London’, with original silk ribbon, and contained in its original case of issue, the white silk lining of the inside lid inscribed in gilt lettering ‘Presented to Frances Parker by the Women’s Social and Political Union in Recognition of a Gallant Action, whereby through Endurance to the last Extremity of Hunger and Hardship, a Great Principle of Political Justice was Vindicated’, very fine and excessively rare £12000-15000
Provenance: Bequeathed by Frances Parker to her friend and co-suffragette Ethel Moorhead and thence by direct descent to the present owners.
Frances Mary Parker was born in Little Roderick, Kurow, Otago, New Zealand, in December 1874, one of five children of Harry Raine Parker, J.P., of Rotheley Temple, Leicestershire, and his wife, Frances Emily Jane Kitchener; her mother’s brother was the future Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, who paid for young Frances to come to England to study at Downham College, Cambridge in 1896.
Having graduated, Parker found employment as a répétrice at a French school (1899-1902), following which she was a visiting teacher in Auckland, New Zealand. Given her future role in the struggle for women’s suffrage, it is worth noting that New Zealand had already granted its women the right to vote in September 1893.
By 1908, Parker had become involved in the British women’s suffrage movement; she was sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment in Holloway after taking part in the deputation from the Women's Parliament in Caxton Hall to the House of Commons.
Following her release, she was a speaker on Adela Pankhurst’s platform at the W.P.S.U. demonstration in Hyde Park in June 1908 and, in the following year, teamed up with an old friend from Newnham College, Edith le Lacheur, to run a suffragette dairy and farming school, raising money for the cause and otherwise teaching women to become self-sufficient; she also made a personal donation of £60 to the W.S.P.U.
In September 1909, Parker became a speaker for the Scottish Universities Women’s Suffrage Union and organised the Union’s caravan tour in the following year, in addition to accompanying its delegation to the International Suffrage Convention in Stockholm in 1911.
Having then been appointed chief organiser of the W.P.S.U’s activities in Glasgow and the west of Scotland, she journeyed south of the border to participate in the W.P.S.U’s window-smashing campaign in London in March 1912, when around 270 properties were damaged and some 220 suffragettes arrested. Parker was among the latter, being sentenced to four months in Holloway, where she went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed, a fellow suffragette inmate, Mary Thompson, describing her at this time as ‘a very determined personage and amusing too’. It was during this term of imprisonment that Parker first met Ethel Moorhead, who would become a lifelong friend and pay tribute to Parker in her memoirs Incendiaries.
Once more returning to her militant activities in Scotland on her release from Holloway, Parker was arrested in Dundee in late October 1912 after breaking a window; she was released from prison after a three day hunger strike.
In the following month, she was among several suffragettes who smuggled themselves into the Music Hall at Aberdeen to disrupt a speech by Lloyd George; this time she was released from prison after a five day hunger strike.
In April 1913 she faced a hostile crowd at Perth - where the suffragettes were suspected as being the culprits responsible for the recent destruction by fire of the Perth County Cricket Club - and in August of the same year she became the W.P.S.U’s chief organiser in Edinburgh; she also assisted in sheltering Ethel Moorhead, who was on the run.
Having then likely been responsible for torching the White Kirk in East Lothian in February 1914, Parker and Ethel Moorhead attempted to do likewise to Robert Burn’s cottage at Alloway; by this time, however, buildings of national or symbolic importance were often attended by watchmen, and Parker was apprehended, apparently deliberately so in order that Moorhead might escape.
The consequences of her arrest and imprisonment proved dire in the extreme. Using the alias Janet Arthur, Parker submitted the following account of her time in Perth prison to Votes for Women:
‘I was arrested on July 8 at Alloway, and appeared before the Sheriff in Ayr on the same day, and was committed to Ayr prison “pending enquiry.”
On Thursday, 9th, Dr. Dunlop, medical adviser to the Prison Commissioners came from Edinburgh to see me. He asked me if I was going to take food, said it was a very serious charge, and that I should certainly be forcibly fed on conviction. Before his visit the wardresses and a warder had taken my fingerprints, but as Dr. Dunlop was not satisfied with the result, another attempt was made. I was taken from my cell to another room, and when they found they could not make me sit on a chair, he ordered that I should be flung to the ground. He himself held the arm and hand, forcing the fingers open for the printing, and severely bruising my arms. My back and sides were so sore and bruised after this that I could not lie still in bed during the rest of my imprisonment. With this exception I was treated in Ayr prison according to the rules for unconvicted prisoners.
On Sunday, 12th, being weak and ill with the hunger and thirst strike, the doctor was about to release me when I discovered that I was to be taken to a nursing home chosen by the Police Commissioners instead of the one chosen by my friends, and I refused to go.
On Monday they came again to remove me, but would not tell me where I was going. It was the sixth day of the hunger and thirst strike, and I was unable to stand, but, weak as I was, I would not allow them to prepare me for the journey. I was then wrapped in blankets and laid in a taxi and taken to Glasgow, where I was handed over to the Perth assistant doctor.
On arrival at Perth prison (100 miles from Ayr), I was carried to bed. Dr. Watson (the prison doctor) and his assistant examined me, and remarked on the bruised state of my body, the result of Dr. Dunlop’s medical treatment, and later Dr. Watson told me one of my ribs was not exactly broken, but was bent. After this examination I was forcibly fed. Six wardresses held me down, and one of them reached forward and slapped my face with, I suppose, the approval of the doctor, as he said nothing. The assistant doctor held my head in a most painful grip.
Dr. Watson then tried to force my teeth open with the steel gag, and said that if he broke a tooth it would be my own fault. As he was unable to open my mouth he called for the nasal tube. He tried to force it up one side which is defective, but with all his strength could not force a passage. He succeeded in forcing it down the other nostril, and left it hanging there while he went out of the room. As it was extremely painful, I asked the assistant to remove it, but he only laughed.
Dr. Watson returned and fed me. The wardresses continued holding me down so that I couldn't move, and the assistant doctor continued to hold his hands over my mouth, and whenever the food came up tightened his grip to prevent me letting it out.
I was held down like this for an hour. At the end of that time I was allowed to have a pillow at my head, and a wardress took the place of the doctor and held my head. I was kept on my back, and prevented from moving for another hour. One or two wardresses were always in my cell, and watched me day and night … ’
Steel gags aside, far worse was to follow, for Parker was next subjected to the indignities of being force fed by means of a tube inserted in her rectum and subjected to ‘a grosser and more indecent outrage, which could have been done for no other purpose than to torture’. Of the latter charge - as described in her submission to Votes For Women on her release - it should be noted that a medical report indicated that she had injuries consistent with an instrument having been introduced into the vagina and that abrasions had been caused in the genital area.
Rumours of her abysmal treatment and declining health reached her family and her brother - Captain Parker - travelled from London to press the Scottish Office ministers for her release; finding favour in the Captain’s submission that he had ‘no sympathy with his sister’s views’ (National Archives of Scotland HH 16/43 refers), said ministers finally permitted her release to her nursing home, pending trial. Notwithstanding her state of near collapse, Parker managed to escape before her trial date. With the advent of hostilities in August 1914, her solicitor wrote to the Secretary of State for Scotland, pointing out that the niece of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener was now proposing to devote her time to help the country’s war effort. On 14 August the Lord Advocate issued an instruction to the effect that, although she was still at large, the trial for attempted arson would not go ahead.
Clear of the threat of being re-arrested, Parker became honorary organiser of the Women's Freedom League National Service Organization, working in London with Ethel Moorhead ‘to bring women workers in touch with employers and find the right work for the right women’.
Subsequently she became a Deputy Controller in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, in which capacity she served at Boulogne from June 1917; she was appointed O.B.E.
Frances Parker died at Archacon, near Bordeaux in January 1924, where her old friend Ethel Moorhead and her protégé, Ernest Walsh, were living. In her Will, a small bequest to her sister aside, she left all of her property to Moorhead, ‘in grateful remembrance for her care and love’. The first issue of The Quarter, a review of art and literature which was funded by her bequest, contained a poem and reproduction of two paintings by Parker.
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