Kitty Marion

The suffragette Kitty Marion. Kitty Marion combined her career as a music hall artiste with her career as a suffragette militant. She was imprisoned 4 times between 1909 and the end of 1912 for window breaking, arson and other militant activity. In 1913 Marion was suspected of committing five acts of arson, yet was arrested only for the fifth - the burning of the Grand Stand at Hurst Park Racecourse. For this she was sentenced, on the 3 July 1913, to three years and 21 days of hard labour in Holloway. Weakened through hunger-strike, she was twice released under the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act (referred to by the suffragettes as the 'Cat and Mouse Act') into a Women's Social and Political Union nursing home. Leaving the home, she would evade the authorities and commit further acts of arson or window-breaking before being captured and re-imprisoned. During Marion's last spell in Holloway, she was forcibly fed 232 times over a period of 14 weeks and two days. On 16 April 1914 she was released again under the Act, having lost 2 stone 8lbs (16kg) in weight.