Suffering without Silence

A rare medal awarded to a valiant suffragette who endured hunger strike and force-feeding in Holloway Prison will be offered for sale at Chorley’s Auctioneers on 28 October.

The silver and enamel ‘Hunger Strike Medal’ was presented to Gladys Mary Hazel (1880–1959) by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1912.

Inscribed “For Valour” on one side and “Fed by Force 1/3/12” on the reverse, it marks Hazel’s ordeal in March 1912 after she was arrested during window-smashing protests in London’s West End. Newspapers at the time variously headlined the protests “Women Terrorists of London” and “Amazonian Hammerwomen”.

She was sentenced to four months in Holloway prison, where she joined other suffragettes in refusing food and then enduring the brutality of force-feeding.

Hazel’s extraordinary 92-page memoir – a rare and deeply personal account of her activism, arrests and imprisonment - is also offered at auction. It describes her exhilaration in joining direct action…

“I smashed Asprey's windows in New Bond Street and I never enjoyed anything so much in my life. The Commissionaire … was a very big man and… I managed to break 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?””

…as well as the harrowing and violent reality of imprisonment and force feeding while on hunger strike…

“‘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.

…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.”

Hazel, a Sheerness-born Birmingham schoolteacher, became politically active after hearing Emmeline Pankhurst speak in 1908 and was soon at the forefront of the suffragettes’ direct-action campaigns. She stood firm during ‘Black Friday’ in 1910, when more than a hundred women were arrested outside Parliament, and marched undaunted in the WSPU’s mass protests of 1912.

The archive offered by Chorley’s, which has descended through Hazel’s family, also includes:

• A Holloway brooch, in purple, white and green enamel
• A “Votes for Women” badge
• Family photographs and related documents

“This is more than a medal – it is a symbol of courage and endurance,” said Chorley’s director Werner Freundel.

“Gladys Hazel’s words and possessions remind us how fiercely the suffragettes fought for rights we take for granted today.

Her story is emblematic of the courage behind the campaign for the vote, and the defiance and sacrifice

which epitomised the fight for women’s votes.”

The auction will take place at Chorley’s Auctioneers on Tuesday 28 October 2025.