Photograph, surveillance image

From 1913 the Home Office commissioned an undercover photographer to take surveillance images of Suffragette prisoners as they took exercise in the yard of Holloway prison. The images were widely distributed for the purpose of identifying suffragettes most likely to undertake militant action, including damage to artworks in museums and galleries.
Born in 1858 Mary was one of the oldest Suffragette prisoners and was arrested at least 7 times for militancy between 1908 and 1914. Married to a Commercial Clerk with the P&O Shipping Company she had two adult daughters, in their early twenties by the time she joined the Women's Social & Political Union in 1908. In November 1913, aged 55, Mary was one of four Suffragettes who threw tomatoes and smashed glass with a hammer during the Old Bailey trial of Rachel Peace, a fellow Suffragette. For her part in this protest Mary received one months imprisonment. The following year Mary, using the alias of her maiden name Mary Wood, as noted on the reverse of this image, used a butcher's cleaver to attack a portrait of Henry James by John Singer Sergeant on display at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Her reason for the attack was 'I have tried to destroy a valuable picture because I wish to show the public that they have no security for their property nor for their art treasures until women are given the political freedom.' When the value of the portrait given as £700, was estimated to have depreciated between £100 and £300 following the attack, Mary responded, 'I quite understand; if a woman had painted it, it would not have been worth so much.'. Newspaper cuttings describing the event noted 'About half-past one, when the attendance was thinning for lunch, the crash of glass was heard, and an elderly white-haired woman was seen to be hacking at the Sargent portrait with a butcher’s cleaver with a cry of 'Votes for Women!' Her attack with greeted with cries of both female and male visitors to 'Lynch her!' and 'Turn her out!'. The Daily Sketch reported that a visitor 'pressed through the crowd, and aimed a blow at her. A man who put his arm in front of her to protect her was mobbed, and his glasses were knocked off and smashed. According to The Daily Telegraph, this man, seen as a suffragette apologist, ‘was seized, amid cheers and groans, and his silk hat was sent flying.'. This image was circulated by the Criminal Record Office in May 1914, together with an image of Ethel Cox and a warning that the two women ‘have committed damage to public art treasures or public offices, and…may at any time again endeavour to perpetrate similar outrages’.