The suffragette handkerchief - Sussex Archaeological Society

The following is a list of the women who signed the handkerchief, with the
limited information we have on them:
Mary A. Aldham.
She had been imprisoned after the November 1911 window-smashing
demonstrations & was sentenced to six months after the March protest. She took part
in the hunger strike & was released at the end of June without being forcibly fed. She
was one of the two grandmothers whose names appear on the handkerchief.
Janie Allan.
She was imprisoned in November & sentenced to four months in March. Her
trial was notable for her speech comparing the apparent tolerance of child abuse, the
white slave traffic (kidnapping of young girls who were forced into prostitution) & the
exploitation of women at work, with the outcry over breaking shop windows. She was
a member of a wealthy Socialist shipping family from Glasgow, where 10,500 people
signed a petition protesting at her imprisonment. In May she barricaded herself in her
cell & later joined the hunger strike, which lead to her being forcibly fed. She
continued with her militant actions after her release & in 1914 she became famous for
firing a blank shot at a policeman trying to arrest Mrs. Pankhurst.
Doreen Allen.
Sentenced to four months she was forcibly fed after joining the hunger strike. To
pass the time a scene from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” was performed
by the prisoners & she took the part of Narissa.
Kathleen Bardsley.
No information available. She may have used a false name when arrested. This
was often done to protect a husband or family.
Janet Boyd.
The second grandmother on the handkerchief, she was imprisoned in November
& sentenced to six months in March. She went on hunger strike but released at the end
of June without being forcibly fed.
Hilda Burkitt.
She was a WSPU organiser in Birmingham & had been arrested many times
before being sentenced to four months in March. At her trial she said that she had
done nothing malicious & refused to be bound over, saying that she would consider it
a disgrace to womanhood. She went on hunger strike & was released before the end of
her sentence. She played the part of Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice”. In 1914
she was imprisoned again for setting fire to a house & some haystacks in Suffolk.
Eileen Casey.
Sentenced to four months, she was forcibly fed after going on hunger strike. She
was arrested on at least two other occasions; once in Bradford, when she was
sentenced to nine months but escaped dressed in men’s clothing & again in
Nottingham when she was sentenced to 15 months after being found in possession of
explosives.
Isabella Casey.
She was arrested in March but no further information is available.
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