Suffragette ‘Hunger Strike’ Medal sells for £18k in Salisbury
Suffragettes refused to eat while imprisoned for protesting their right to vote
A medal for ‘Hunger Strike’ that was awarded to suffragettes more than a century ago has been sold at action for thousands of pounds.
The medal, which was awarded to Jessie Landale Cumberland in 1914, sold at auction for £18,270 at Woolley and Wallis in Salisbury.
It recognised the tactic of hunger striking by imprisoned women who had protested their right to vote.
Cumberland was imprisoned at the age of 53, making her among the older participants in the hunger strike.
“Hunger strikes were practised by women around the country as a way of protesting their unfair treatment compared to other political prisoners,” explained Ned Cowell, a medal speciliast at Woolley and Wallis.
“Many women were forcibly fed as a result, in some cases leading to health problems from which they never fully recovered. At 53, Cumberland was not considered a young woman at the time, and she showed great bravery in refusing food and water.”
A Deputation ribbon that Cumberland would have worn at the demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on 18th November 1910 – which would come to be known as Black Friday, after the violence shown by the crowd of 300 women.
Cumberland lived to see the passing of the Representation of the People Act in July 1928, which provided electoral equality to women. She died in Wimbledon in 1935, aged 74.