Title

Mary Leigh, 1909. Artist: Unknown

Caption

Mary Leigh, organiser, 1909. She is wearing her purple, white and green uniform as Drum Major of the Women's Band. A year earlier, she and a fellow schoolteacher friend, Edith New, became the first suffragette window-smashers. Mary served three prison sentences and was force-fed on many occasions. On 17 September 1909 she and eight other suffragettes caused pandemonium when they disrupted Prime Minister Asquith's visit to Birmingham to attend a Liberal meeting in the Bingley Hall. She and Charlotte Marsh (who often led WSPU processions on horseback, dressed as Joan of Arc) climbed onto the roof of a taller building next to the hall and hurled missiles and slates onto its roof. The two women were pelted with bricks and stones and soaked when fire hoses were turned on them. Eventually a policeman climbed on the roof and brought them down. Mary was sentenced to four months with hard labour in Winson Green Gaol, where she staged a hunger strike. After being force-fed by stomach tube, she barricaded herself into her cell to prevent the barbaric procedure from being carried out again.
Museum of London

Date

1909

Credit line

Photo12/Heritage Images/Museum of London

Reference

HRM19A84_356

Model release

No

License type

Rights managed

Available size

53,9Mb (1,5Mb) / 11,3in x 18,5in / 3401 x 5537 (300dpi)

Keywords

female women woman people music arts politics clothes uniform dress century band salute staff prisoner feminism lady concept B&W MONOCHROME rights black & white black and white B W rank Drum Major activism 1900s 20th century activist women's rights Museum of London campaigner gaiter gaiters suffrage suffragette Women's Band Women's Social and Political Union WSPU Mary Leigh photograph portrait Unknown Mary Herbert Edith Charlotte Leigh Herbert Asquith Asquith Herbert Henry Asquith Lord Asquith Earl of Oxford and Asquith HH Asquith H H Asquith Edith New New Charlotte Marsh Marsh Edith New Herbert Asquith Charlotte Marsh photograph portrait