Rebel Britannia

25th February 1909:

Jane Warton was one of the most important figures in the suffragette struggle - notwithstanding the fact that there was no such person.

Lady Constance Lytton certainly existed; she had substance. Her father was at one time Viceroy of India, and her mother a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria. The family home was one of England's grandest houses, Knebworth, now famous as a rock venue. Her sister's brother-in-law was sometime Conservative prime minister Arthur Balfour. (One of Constance's grandfathers was Edward Bulwer-Lytton, amongst the 19th century's most successful novelists, who is remembered today chiefly for writing the line "It was a dark and stormy night.")

On the 25th February 1909, Lady Constance appeared at Bow Street Magistrate's Court and was sentenced to one month in prison for attempting to present a petition to the Prime Minister.

For the first forty years, the life of Lady Constance Lytton (1869-1923) was restrained and conventional. She was a dutiful, unmarried daughter and sibling, who meandered through her somewhat dull days without causing any embarrassment to the family's fine name. That's not to say she didn't have her oddities: Constance's most beloved hobby was housework, an unsuitable activity for a blue blood; according to her biographer, "her birthday treat was to clean the lavatory." She was eccentric enough, albeit in mostly harmless ways, for the family to claim that she had an alter ego which they named Deborah.

In 1908 she first encountered the suffragettes, the militant wing of the campaign for votes for women. Within a short time, Lady Con (as her comrades called her) had become the most militant of militants, a "whole hogger" in her own phrase, her soul cleansed of any taint of moderation or half-heartedness: a martyr in waiting.

To the leadership, Lady Con's main value lay in her name. In terms of social status, she was the biggest catch they ever made. The suffragettes (unlike their rivals, the suffragists) believed that it was upper-class support that counted, not that of the working-class women who made up the bulk of the movement. Indeed, they were often accused of seeking "Votes for Ladies" rather than "Votes for Women." Lady Con's involvement in a protest guaranteed newspaper coverage, while also lending respectability to the cause.

But she wanted to "go the whole hog" - she was determined that she should suffer for that cause to the same extent that other, humbler volunteers did. Frustratingly, it was obvious from the first two occasions on which she was jailed that her connections guaranteed her special treatment in prison.

When jailed suffragettes began hunger strikes in support of their demand to be treated as political prisoners, the Liberal Party responded with force-feeding. This hideous, dangerous, damaging form of torture was intended to be as brutal as possible, so as to act as a deterrent and a punishment, while preventing the creation of martyrs. Many of the women (and a few of their male supporters) who underwent force-feeding had their health permanently ruined.

Lady Con, however, having deliberately got herself arrested and prepared mentally to face the horrors awaiting her, was given a medical examination - and released from prison the next day on the grounds of ill health. The government had made a serious tactical error.

This blatant class discrimination - ordinary women were force-fed, high-born women weren't - was obvious, and odious, to the whole country. The prime minister told the Commons that decisions on force-feeding were taken purely on medical grounds, and that the status of the prisoner made no difference. Nobody believed him, of course - and Lady Con decided to prove him a liar.

She had her hair cut off, dressed in unfashionable clothes, bought a pair of spectacles, and signed up to a different geographical branch of the movement under the invented name of Jane Warton, humble seamstress. I like to imagine this as involving lots of "Cor blimey" Dick van Dyke dialogue, but that may be wishful thinking.

Her costume was not only to disguise her identity and class; it was also intended to make her dowdy and downtrodden, just the sort of woman who the courts, the prison officers and doctors would despise, and waste no sympathy on. (It worked almost too well; she looked so ridiculous that she was openly laughed at by strangers.)

Jane joined a demonstration outside a prison in Liverpool, and was careful to be seen throwing stones in the direction of the governor's house. Sentenced to a fortnight, she began her hunger strike. (She also refused to obey various other prison regulations, and as a result was placed on a punitive bread and water diet. She didn't eat that either, of course, but I guess rules is rules.)

The doctor examined Jane, and decided she should be force fed. The same body which had been too ill to torture when its name was Constance was no longer an obstacle and the appalling assaults on Jane began without delay. Eventually her true identity was realised - at which point she was once again released on medical grounds. Point proved.

Lytton, not in the best of health to begin with, never really recovered from her ordeals, though she continued to support progressive campaigns for the rest of her life - and even went to prison again. She lived long enough to see partial victory in 1918, when some women were enfranchised (it took the First World War and - perhaps more so - the Russian Revolution to win this compromise) but was dead well before 1928, when all citizens over 21 were finally given the vote.

The Jane Warton affair did immense damage to the reputation and credibility of the government in its increasingly bitter struggle against the suffragettes, and it led to some reforms in the prison regimes, though whether it ultimately did much to further the cause of votes for women is debatable. Many historians argue that the militants became trapped in a cul de sac of their own making, preoccupied as they were with committing minor acts of terrorism, and the imprisonment and mistreatment that followed; that they became obsessed with the war itself and lost sight of their war aims. But nothing, in my opinion, should ever stop us honouring the crazy bravery of Lady Con.

*

Sources:

Lady Constance Lytton: aristocrat, suffragette, martyr by Lyndsey Jenkins (Biteback 2015)

www.historiamag.com/lady-constance-lytton-suffragette/

https://map.mappingwomenssuffrage.org.uk/items/show/340

Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette, socialist and scourge of empire by Katherine Connelly (Pluto, 2013)

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/lytton/prisons/prisons.html#IV

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n14/bee-wilson/throw-it-out-the-window