Photograph, surveillance image

The Home Office commissioned the undercover photography of militant suffragettes from 1913. This surveillance photo was taken as Grace exercised in the yard of Holloway prison. Such photos were used to identify militant suffragettes attempting to enter public buildings such as museums or art galleries.
Grace Marcon was the daughter of Canon Marcon of Norwich. In August 1913 she was arrested and charged with obstruction during a scuffle in Whitehall between the police and a group of Suffragettes led by Sylvia Pankhurst following a demonstration organised by the Free Speech Defence Committee. Although found guilty she did not receive a custodial sentence and was 'bound over'. Rearrested in October, on a charge of obstruction and assault, Grace did, on this occasion receive a sentence of 2 months in Holloway. In May 1914 Grace, using the alias Frieda Graham, was arrested for damaging five paintings at the National Gallery, including Giovanni Bellini's The Agony in The Garden and Gentile Bellini's Portrait of a Mathematician. Found guilty at trial she was sentenced to six-months imprisonment. Released on 5 June, delirious with hunger strike she cut off the long hair seen in the photograph.
During World War I Grace worked for the Red Cross masseuse where she met her future husband the press photographer Victor Scholey who took the original photographs of the Siege of Sidney Street. They married in Quebec, Canada in 1923 and had a son. Within a few years Grace and her son had returned to England where she remained, bringing up her son as a single Mother.