Photograph, surveillance image

This surveillance photograph of the Suffragette prisoner Florence Jane Short, known by the names Jane Short or Rachel Peace was one in a series of covert images of 'dangerous Suffragettes' taken by an undercover photographer commissioned by the Home Office. It is likely this image was, one of many, taken by a photographer concealed in a van in the yard of Holloway prison and taken when Short was on remand in Holloway awaiting trial for arson in 1913. During this time she undertook hunger-strike and was brutally force-fed. The image refers to Jane's alias Rachel Peace used when arrested for Suffragette militancy.
In October 1913 Short was arrested, along with Mary Richardson, for setting fire to an unoccupied home in Hampton, Surrey. At her trial at the Old Bailey in November, Short referred to her ordeal of the hunger-strike and force feeding she was currently experiencing whilst on remand. On hearing her emotional speech that revealed her fragile mental condition four Suffragettes in the public gallery threw tomatoes and smashed glass in the Court resulting in their own arrest and subsequent imprisonment. Jane and Mary, who was absent from the Court trial due to ill health, were both sentenced to 18 months hard labour for the arson. One month later Suffragettes concerned about the mental state of Short attempted to set off a bomb at Holloway prison in protest against her imprisonment.
Florence Jane Short was born in Lewisham, London in 1881 to a working class family. The population census of 1901 shows Florence, known as ‘Jane’ listed at her parents address as a shirt machinist. By the 1911 census, she was employed as a masseuse and embroideress in Letchworth Hertfordshire.
Jane's first arrest for Suffragette militancy was in November 1911 during a protest outside Downing Street. In July 1912 she was arrested for window smashing at Baldock and Hitchin post offices and in 1913 for breaking windows at an estate agents in Pall Mall in February 1913.
The hunger strike and force-feeding Jane endured during her last spell in Holloway for arson in 1913 caused her to ‘lose her reason’. She spent the rest of her life in and out of various mental health institutions at the expense of Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton.