The arrest of the Suffragette Frances Parker

This image depicting the arrest of the Suffragette Frances Parker, probably refers to the notorious incident when Frances was apprehended whilst attempting to set fire to Robert Burns cottage in Alloway in July 1914. Using the alias Janet Arthur, Parker was arrested by watchmen employed to protect buildings of national importance from Suffragette attack. Her accomplice Ethel Moorhead managed to escape. Handed over to the police she was sent initially to Ayr Prison and then to Perth Prison where she went on hunger-strike. Here she endured the most brutal attempts of force-feeding through the rectum and even the vagina causing painful abrasions and soreness that lasted several days.

Born in Otago, New Zealand in 1874, Frances was the niece of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, who paid for her to come to the UK and study at the University of Cambridge. By 1908 Frances had joined the Women's Social & Political Union and served her first time of imprisonment following the demonstration at the Women's Parliament in Caxton Hall. In 1909 Frances and her fellow student from Cambridge Edith Le Lacheur set up a Suffragette dairy and farming school raising money for the cause and teaching women to become self-sufficient. By 1911 Frances had moved to Scotland on her appointment as Chief organiser of the WSPU's activities in Glasgow and the west of Scotland but she journeyed to London in March1912 to take part in the window smashing campaign. Arrested and sentenced to four months in Holloway she became close friends with her fellow prisoner Ethel Moorhead, a friendship that endured beyond the years of the campaign. On her release from Holloway Frances returned to Scotland where she was arrested several more times for militancy and appointed WSPU chief organiser in Edinburgh before the attempted arson of Burn's cottage.

Lord Kitchener declared himself 'disgusted' by his niece's militancy and noted in a letter to his sister 'Whatever her feelings on the subject may be, I cannot help thinking she might have some consideration for her family'.