Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The highly important W.S.P.U. Hunger Strike Medal and Eight Bars awarded to Mary Richardson, the Canadian born militant suffragette who famously slashed the ‘Rokeby’ Venus with an axe at the National Gallery in protest at Mrs Pankhurst’s rearrest, and who witnessed Emily Davidson run down by the King’s horse on Derby Day 1913; better known by her nom de guerre “Polly Dick,” no one was force-fed more often than Mary “Slasher” Richardson

Women’s Social and Political Union Medal for Valour, silver, 22mm, the obverse inscribed ‘Hunger Strike’, the reverse inscribed ‘Mary Richardson’, hallmarks for Birmingham 1912, the suspension bar inscribed ‘March 11th 1913’, with eight further award bars, comprising four silver dated ‘incident’ bars for ‘July 8th 1913’, ‘July 18th 1913’, July 28th 1913’, and ‘Aug. 9th 1913’, and four silver bars enamelled in the colours of the W.S.P.U., the reverses of these inscribed ‘Cat & Mouse Oct. 4th 1913’, ‘Fed by Force 12.3.14 to 6.4.14’, ‘Fed by Force 20.5.14 to 25.5.14’, and ‘Fed by Force 6.6.14 to 28.7.14’, complete with top suspension brooch inscribed ‘For Valour’ and 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 Mary Richardson 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’, the case scuffed and worn, otherwise very fine and excessively rare £10000-15000

This medal is believed to carry the greatest number of award bars given by the W.S.P.U. Furthermore, it will be noticed that all of her ‘Fed by Force’ bars record lengthy periods of time, totalling an amazing 113 days, on most of which she will have been force fed twice. In almost every case, the ‘Fed by Force’ bars which have so far been recorded at auction show just a single date. Sold with two photographs and a copy of Mary Richardson’s autobiography Laugh a Defiance, published in 1953.

Mary Richardson was born in Canada on 24 July 1887, and spent her childhood years at Belleville on the shores of Lake Ontario with her maternal grandfather, a bank manager, who cared for her after the estrangement of her parents and because of her mother's 'delicate' disposition. In her book (Laugh a Defiance, 1953 - named after a line from a Suffragette anthem), Mary recalls that she had a very free childhood in which outdoor sports figured large, especially sledging, iceboating and skating. She was just 15 when her grandfather died and she went to stay with friends in England, where she settled after a little time spent in Paris. With ambitions to be an author, she lived appropriately in Bloomsbury, London with a housekeeper to take charge of domestic matters.

Becoming a Suffragette

Information about Mary Richardson's early experiences with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU, whose members became known as the Suffragettes) is to be found only in her own account of the period. Her introduction to the organisation's activities in about 1909 seems to have been as noteworthy as her later campaigning with the movement. Walking down Kingsway in the Holborn area of London, she was attracted by a youth waving pamphlets bearing the slogan 'Votes for Women' and being harassed by a crowd trying to overturn his barrow. She managed to position herself between him and the mob, allowing him to make a speedy retreat. Mary swiftly followed him to safer terrain and found herself in a bare room face to face with Christobel Pankhurst, one of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst's daughters, who asked if she would help the campaigning. Mary writes that at this stage, although she agreed to assist, it was not through great conviction, just that she knew she was against 'injustice and cruelty'. She began her WSPU activities in Kilburn, minding the office, also distributing handbills and other literature. Public opinion was very hostile to the Suffragettes who were regularly subjected to verbal abuse and worse. Mary often wondered why she had become involved. However, all that changed when she attended a rally in the Albert Hall. Here she was deeply affected by the influential words of Mrs Pankhurst, who she always found a source of great inspiration, and the passion of Annie Kenny, the Lancashire mill girl who was one of the movement's central figures. Moreover, as one of the stewards in the Hall, Mary had to pass round the donation plate. She was astounded and moved by the pile of jewellery, other valuables, and smaller contributions from less well-off women that was so willing given to help the cause. From this point she realised that she had enlisted in a 'holy crusade' and became a convicted campaigner.

Henceforth she began to attend meetings throughout London and trained herself in the art of public speaking. She was present on Black Friday in November 1910, first at the Caxton Hall meeting and later in Parliament Square as Mrs Pankhurst led a deputation to the House of Commons. The women's progress was blocked and they were attacked by opponents. Mounted Police cleared the square. Many women were injured and Mrs Pankhurst's own sister died a few weeks later allegedly from her injuries.

Mary Richardson was sent to help at the WSPU Charing Cross shop and often sold Votes for Women, the WSPU newspaper, at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. Here she endured considerable abuse, including sexual remarks from men and a hail of rotten fruit and vegetables from the girls at the Crosse and Blackwell factory in the Charing Cross Road. She remarks that she found all this very hard to bear and put her mental survival down to the fact that she had the luck and security of a nice flat and housekeeper.

Birth of a Militant

She recalls that her baptism into the world of militancy began with a message that she was to register a protest at arrests earlier in the day by smashing the Home Office windows. On 11 March 1913 (as commemorated on the suspension bar on her medal) she went armed with stones and found the Home Office building guarded by Police. She managed, however, to shatter several windows before being arrested. Next day she appeared at Bow Street Court where, refusing to pay a fine, she was given a prison sentence in Holloway and went on hunger strike. She writes that the women had adopted the hunger strike as a weapon against the authorities to protest against their treatment and to back their demand to be treated as political prisoners. Due to her weakened condition she was released after about 11 days. Significantly she records that she found her militant action very cathartic, as it helped her hit back against the hostility she had had to endure on a regular basis.

Mary went on to further demonstrate her commitment to militant action, but not before she witnessed one of the most famous, yet tragic, moments in the history of the women's suffrage movement - the death of Emily Wilding Davison in June 1913. In Laugh a Defiance, Mary records that she had been requested to go to Epsom for Derby Day to sell WSPU literature. At the racecourse she found it hard to summon up the courage to begin her task and decided to wait until the racing was about to start in the hope of deflecting some of the hostility she knew she would encounter. Once in position, she spotted Emily Davison who she knew and considered a serious-minded person, 'not the sort of woman to spend an afternoon at the races'. With that thought in mind she was shocked to see Emily throw herself in front of the King's horse at Tattenham Corner. The incident produced a surge of public anger and Mary was chased from the racecourse to the station where she was hidden in a lavatory by a sympathetic porter. Inevitably this incident haunted Mary for the rest of her life. She also found the public hatred it generated hard to deal with, even the funeral of Emily Davison was followed by a hostile mob and it had been depressingly difficult to find a clergyman willing to receive Emily's body and conduct the service. Mary states that it was the daily heroism of women that kept her faith alive and enabled her to continue.

Nonetheless her strength of character and commitment continued to shine through as she engaged in many activities in support of the WSPU. She tells of protests in restaurants in Holborn, Oxford Street and Soho and meetings in Islington where it was not unusual for speakers to be pulled from their stands; a visit to the Bishop of London to try to convince him to change a speech he was to give in the House of Lords; and breaking the windows of Liberty's in Regent Street as part of a larger protest. She recalls Sundays in Hyde Park which were particularly ferocious. Here the women were often attacked by 'hooligans', who wore locks of hair torn from Suffragette heads in their button holes. On such an outing Mary mentions she had her hat tugged off, her hair pulled, her ankles kicked, her back thumped and attempts made to throw her to her knees.

Most militant Suffragettes adopted a nom de guerre and, although it is not clear when Mary adopted her alternate name, she was soon also known as Polly Dick. More arrests for window breaking and other incidents followed on 8 July, 18 July, 28 July and 9 August 1913. Votes for Women and The Suffragette newspapers mention window-breaking and obstruction incidents at the Home Office, at the Colonial Office, in Bromley, at the London Pavilion, Piccadilly Circus, at the houses of the Medical Officer and Governor at Holloway prison, and an added charge on her 18 July 1913 arrest of throwing an inkpot through the window of Cannon Row Police Station. All led to imprisonment, hunger strike and finally force-feeding. She recalls that she expected to be force-fed from the outset but at the time of her first imprisonments there was some relaxation of this barbaric practice as the government was fearful of creating a martyr, hence she was allowed to weaken to 'danger point' but was then released and taken to recuperate in a nursing home.

Force-Feeding

It was on the occasion of her prison sentence for obstruction on 28 July 1913 when Mrs Pankhurst was speaking at the London Pavilion that she was put to the ultimate test. Mary knew what to expect when she heard the rumbling of the wheels of the force-feeding trolley approaching her cell door. She describes how she was determined to resist and therefore put her arms under and around the hot-water pipe. Wardresses loosened her arms and tried to lay her on the ground, but she struggled. Eventually pinned down by wardresses sitting across her body, the doctors entered, one gripping her shoulders, two lifting aloft the funnel that was to hold the liquid and a third kneeling by her head in order to force the stiff nozzle of the tube up her left nostril. Normally women who resisted were subjected to a corkscrew gag used to force the jaws apart. The gag often slipped lacerating the gums and inside the cheeks. If the mouth could not be opened then nasal feeding took place, which was an extremely brutal process resulting in heavily inflamed nostrils. 'As the nozzle turned at the top of my nose to enter my gullet it seemed as if my left eye was being wrenched out of its socket'. The mixture of cocoa, bovril and medicines that were poured down the tube included, she records, a drug to keep one from vomiting when the tube was withdrawn. Afterwards she was left alone to gasp for breath and recover. She endured this fearsome ordeal at least twice daily until she was released 'little more than a breathing corpse' and taken to a nursing home. During one of her court appearances Mary described the force-feeding ordeal: ‘The torture of force feeding is a very fine torture. It tortures the face, the ears, the eyes and one cannot think or follow anything'. On another occasion she said: 'I am a mass of sores and bruises, especially about my arms and shoulders ... The skin is right off my shoulder in parts. I suffer in my head, ears and eyes with severe neuralgia caused by the nasal tube ... The insertion of the tube is very painful indeed, as it is too large for my nasal cavity.’

“Cat and Mouse” Act

However the Suffragettes were not safe recuperating in nursing homes, once their health had improved they expected to be rearrested under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, more popularly known as the “Cat and Mouse” Act (the Police were the cats and the women the mice), which had received Royal Assent on 25 April 1913. This provided that women prisoners could be let out on license to recover their health but would be required on a specified a day to present themselves to officialdom to continue their sentences. The Suffragettes regularly ignored this stipulation and adopted all types of subterfuge to evade rearrest hence they could not live at home, attend meetings, or be seen in public. The Act provided an unexpected bonus for the WSPU as the licences were regularly auctioned for funds, often bringing as much as £40.

In order to evade rearrest Mary Richardson hid in a lodging house near Great Russell Street, but found her existence very lonely. Fears that the Police knew of her whereabouts led to a successful escape and she spent the following month in Worcestershire, but ‘carelessly’ returned home and went shopping in Berwick Street Market where she was rearrested and returned to Holloway. Again force-feeding followed her hunger strike and she was released in about two weeks after a heart specialist had been called in to assess her situation. The nursing home she returned to was watched by the Police hence, despite her very weak condition, she was obliged to flee over the roof tops and journey to recuperate for a month in the Wye Valley. Here she was visited by a deputation of Bristol Suffragettes who asked if “Polly Dick” would present a petition to the King when he came to Bristol to open what is variously described as an exhibition or a new wing of Bristol University. They said that as local Suffragettes they were well-known to the Police and had been ordered to stay indoors during the visit. This incident is also recalled in Calling All Women (the newsletter of the Suffragette Fellowship) by Lillian Buckley (formerly Dove-Wilcox), a former Bristol Suffragette. Mary says that, armed with the petition about forcible-feeding, she set off feeling ‘glum and downhearted’. However, despite her anxieties, she took up position on the route at the top of a hill. As the royal carriage approached she saw it was surrounded by an escort of Cavalry and Mounted Police. Making her dash at an appropriate moment Mary was able to gain the step of the open carriage and deposited the petition in the King's lap. An officer reared up on his horse and struck her with the flat of his sword ‘my left shoulder felt as if it had been smashed’ and she fell. The Police eventually rescued her from the hostile crowd which had piled on top of her. For her safety the Police pushed Mary into a tramcar which then suffered a deluge of stones and shattered windows. Although escorted to and detained at the Police Station she soon learned that the King had requested her release.

Arson

Back home in London, Mary received a message that Mrs Pankhurst wanted to see her. She found that Emmeline Pankhurst wanted her to undertake ‘a new type of job’, a protest of the utmost importance. ‘My heart sank; at the same time, in a sublimely contradictory way, my spirits rose’. Militant activity had recently entered a new phase with a wave of arson attacks (on empty buildings), which the WSPU argued was a means of putting pressure on the government through the insurance companies. Now Mary Richardson found herself caught up in this more extreme activity. With a WSPU companion she journeyed to Birmingham. Here, in the night, the pair took ‘a home-made time bomb in a black bag which spluttered and hissed’ and planted it in a newly built railway station. The bomb, made in a marmalade pot by a woman chemist (later arrested and sentenced to five years penal servitude), went off at 2.30am. Mission accomplished Mary returned to London where she was still wanted to serve out the rest of her sentences. Again it was her lack of care - taking tea in Oxford Street - that led to her rearrest. Once more she experienced the horrors of force-feeding, but knew she would not be imprisoned long because she was so rundown both mentally and physically. However she had a chance to leave her mark before she was released. On hearing that she was going to be fingerprinted she resisted and had her fingers pulled and twisted so that they became painfully swollen. ‘Full of resentment’ she seized the three-legged stool in the cell and smashed the lamp, window, table and the stool itself. She was released to the care of ‘some wonderful women doctors’, but was several times visited by psychiatrists at the behest of officialdom. The worry was that she was at the mercy of a government scheme to certify Suffragettes and put them in criminal lunatic asylums. During her incarceration in Holloway in August she had already been threatened that when she became a physical and mental wreck she would be sent to an institution. Mary says she believes that she was rescued from this fate by the intervention of Mrs Pankhurst.

At the beginning of October 1913, with some inflammable liquid, a long fuse and a light as their weapons, Mary Richardson and a companion set fire to “The Elms”, an old mansion house in Hampton-on-Thames owned by Rosalind, Countess Carlisle. Arrested locally she again had the will and strength to go on hunger strike (her fourth that summer). At the time of this arrest she had four offences to her charge and two sentences to complete of which she had served just 21 days. The authorities took a tough line against her as she was such a dedicated militant and they feared to release her. When she appeared at Fulham Police Court to be committed for trial she is reported as saying:

‘Although the Home Office has succeeded in bringing me here this morning by turning a leaf back in the history of its infamy to women, neither it, nor any other office in the kingdom, however high, or however cruel, can compel me to serve my sentence, past, present or future. And I say this in no manner of boasting but to try to point out by this one fact alone that the cause which animates me is unconquerable before the vacillating forces which oppose. No power on earth can blot out the new ideal which has grown up in the minds of thousands of women and until those in authority realise this and are willing to meet the claim of women justly, I shall consider it my duty to oppose law and order in every way it is possible for me to oppose.’

Representations were made to the Home Office to try to secure her release as it was thought that she might have tuberculosis. In Westminster Abbey and other places of worship, women interrupted normal services by publicly praying for her health. She was released on 25 October with symptoms of an appendicitis. Too ill to appear at her trial for arson she was sentenced in November to 18 months hard labour.

A National Outrage

Sent to recover in a safe house (possibly the former residence of Charles Dickens in Doughty Street, where she did stay on one occasion) along with Annie Kenny, both women worried about the possible rearrest of Mrs Pankhurst as they feared she would not survive another hunger strike. They planned to stir up the public sufficiently to prevent this happening. Mary writes that ‘The law stressed values from a financial, not a public point of view ... hence I needed to make my protest from a financial standpoint, additionally I needed to draw a parallel between the public's indifference to Mrs Pankhurst's destruction and the destruction of a financially valuable object’. Hence she targeted the Velazquez Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery. She records that she sent the outline of her plan to Christobel Pankhurst who approved the venture. Any hesitancy and anxiety on Mary Richardson's part was swept away with the announcement that Mrs Pankhurst had been arrested in St Andrew's Hall, Glasgow. Hence in March 1914 Mary bought an axe and made her way to the Gallery. She waited her moment and struck the painting which shattered the protective glass and then managed a further four blows before being stopped. Two German tourists threw their Baedecker guide books at her which struck the back of her neck; a security man sprang at her and dragged the axe from her grip; and a furious crowd joined in creating a confusing commotion which ended in ‘an uncomfortable brawling heap on the broad staircase’. As she was led away she said: “You can get another picture, but you cannot get another life, and they are killing Mrs Pankhurst.” Mary's action created a national outrage and many museums and galleries were closed and in some cases women were only allowed entry if accompanied by men.

Inevitably she was tried and, after pleading guilty to a premeditated act, was returned to Holloway to serve a six month sentence. In court she said:

“I firmly believe that when a nation shuts its eyes to justice and prefers to have women who are fighting for justice ill-treated, maltreated and tortured that such an action as mine should be understandable. I don't say excusable, but it should be understood.”

Mary had to endure more terms of force feeding as she was released and rearrested under the Cat and Mouse Act in the months from March to July 1914. During the procedure she often drifted in and out of consciousness. On release she again had to cope with physical frailty and deep depression, as well as again showing signs of an appendicitis for which she underwent an operation in July. While in the care of Dr Flora Murray and Nurse Pine, the former came to the conclusion that Mary had been given bromide to reduce her resistance to force-feeding. This was consistently denied by the Prison Department.

Later Life

Soon war was declared and, in general, the women of the WSPU were required to devote their energies to the war effort. After a lengthy convalescence in Madeira, in 1915 Mary returned to London and worked for a time with Sylvia Pankhurst in the East End of London and joined the United Suffragists.

Looking back on her Suffragette days, she gives her summation of the movement thus:

“Our campaign was more than votes, we were women in revolt, led and financed by women and demonstrating that we were capable of fighting our own battles. We were breaking down barriers, exploding men's theories and ideas about us. We organised magnificently and were able to work together.”

During her time as a Suffragette she recalls that she filed reports with Canadian newspapers, and continued her writing career during and after the war. She published a novel, Matilda and Marcus (1915), produced several volumes of poetry and edited the YWCA Magazine 1914-18. Three times she stood for Parliament as a Labour candidate, but without success. In later years she lived in what she describes as a former bakery in a village on the Cambridgeshire/Essex/Suffolk borders. Mary Richardson died in 1961.