Photograph, surveillance image

The Home Office commissioned the undercover photography of militant suffragettes from 1913. The photos were used to identify militant suffragettes attempting to enter public buildings such as museums or art galleries where they could cause damage.
Mary Richardson was born in Canada. She arrived in Europe aged 16 and, on moving to London joined the Women's Social & Political Union in c.1909. She quickly became a committed Suffragette militant and persistent offender and regarded by the authorities as one of the most 'dangerous' Suffragettes that required surveillance. Mary was first imprisoned in the autumn of 1911 for window smashing. In 1913 she was arrested 5 times. The first instance was for police assault, which resulted in her being sentenced to 2 months in Holloway on the 8th July. She was forcibly fed after hunger striking and released under the Cat and Mouse Act before being re-arrested for committing a militant act. This pattern was repeated several times until the 24th October, when she was released from Holloway with symptoms of appendicitis. On 4th March 1914 Mary Richardson entered the National Gallery and inflicted seven 'wounds' across Velázquez's painting 'The toilet of Venus.' The painting had only been acquired for the nation in 1906, for the considerable sum of £45,000. The fame, value and recent acquisition of the painting all helped make this a particularly sensitive attack on a national art treasure. Richardson's slashes were deliberately aimed at the torso of the nude Venus. In her defence she declared: ‘I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst who is the most beautiful character in modern history… Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas… until the public ceases to countenance human destruction, the stones cast against me for the destruction of this picture are each an evidence against them of artistic as well as moral and political humbug and hypocrisy.’ She was sentenced to 6 months in Holloway but, after forcible feeding, was released on the 6th April suffering again from appendicitis. Richardson was arrested and imprisoned in Holloway twice more, each time being forcibly fed for the duration- between the 20th - 25th May, and the 6th June - 28th July 1914. Her appendicitis was so severe after the last imprisonment that she needed to be operated on 2 days after her release. This surveillance image of Mary was taken while she was in Holloway prison in either 1913 or 1914.