[Women’s Suffrage] Gladys Mary Hazel (1880-1959)

[Women’s Suffrage] to include a Hunger Strike Medal awarded to Gladys Mary Hazel (1880-1959) by the WSPU, in silver and enamel, the top bar fitted with pin and the engraved ‘For Valour’, the suspension bar in silver and enamel, the reverse engraved ‘Fed by Force 1/3/12’, in original presentation box, lined with green velvet, padded silk inner lid with dedication to Gladys Mary Hazel printed in gilt, the medal 8cm long, stamped ‘Toye 57 Theobalds Road London’

A Silver 'Portcullis' or 'Holloway' brooch, depicting the portcullis of the House of Commons, with arrow in purple, green and white enamel, with safety chain and pin, stamped ‘Silver’ and ‘Toye & Co/London' verso, 2.5cm wide

An enamel WSPU badge with 'Votes for Women' to the white, 2.5cm

A memoir in typescript by Gladys Mary Hazel on watermarked paper, 92 numbered pages (27cm x 21.5cm) and two pages in manuscript in Hazel’s hand

further with a photocopy of Hazel’s spoiled 1911 Census, a copy photograph of Hazel and another with her nephew in uniform, a copper plate of the Hazel family crest, a copy of Whittaker (Jeni) The Courage Game [novelised biography of Gladys Mary Hazel by her niece] and other related documents and articles.

Gladys Mary Hazel (1880-1959) and thence by family descent

Gladys Mary Hazel (1880-1959), born in Sheerness, taught at King Edward VI Aston School, Birmingham from 1905-1910.

1905 had seen the arrest of Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney in Manchester and in 1908 Hazel joined the women’s suffrage movement after attending a speech by Emmeline Pankhurst.

She was amongst the women who took part in the notorious and meticulously planned ‘Black Friday’ protests on November 18, 1910 during which 126 women were committed for trial. Headlines variously titled the protests “Women Terrorists of London” and “Amazonian Hammerwomen”.

The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) had protested at the Houses of Parliament against the government's refusal to grant women the right to vote. Suffragettes were met with extreme police violence, public brutality, and sexual assault, leading to injuries and arrests and the event being named "Black Friday"

Hazel had previously been arrested in Birmingham in 1909 as part of Suffragette protests.

In 1912, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) launched a ‘Great Militant Protest’ in London, featuring a widespread window-smashing campaign where over 270 suffragettes targeted shops and government buildings to highlight their cause for women's suffrage.

Well-dressed ladies, seemingly window-shopping in the West End, brought out toffee-hammers and rocks at an agreed time on the day and began smashing windows at 15-minute intervals.

The Votes for Women newspaper records Hazel being sentenced to six months in Holloway after an arrest at Bow Street on March 5, 1912, following a further protest, a scene recounted in her memoirs.

‘I smashed Asprey's windows in New Bond Street and I never enjoyed anything so much in my life. As I remember it now, I started to run from a little way off and I smashed the windows as I ran. The Commissionaire was standing with his back to me. He was a very big man and as he had to run in the same direction as me we went skidding along the pavement and I managed to break to more windows while he actually had hold of me. I heard the pride in my voice as I told the tea-party how the judge in court had looked from the large man to me and said "You say she broke two more windows after you had hold of her?’

She was sentenced to four months imprisonment at Newington Sessions on March 27 and served her sentence at Holloway jail. She was released on June 27.

During her sentence in Holloway she took part in a hunger strike and endured the horrors of ­force-feeding

‘A tube [was] jammed in my nose, and the doctor, thinking probably that I was stopping it, went on pushing till in the end he had to pull it out with a wrench’

‘We were in a new wing of iron and concrete, where every sound carried and rang, and they took about three hours over the women before me, as I was last of all. That was nerve-wracking, and I had not been prepared for the sense of outrage and violation I felt.’

'I would not condemn the women who screamed under forcible feeding, but I was determined that nothing should draw a sound from me. And one day I screamed.’