Surveillance Photograph of Kitty Marion

This surveillance photograph of the suffragette prisoner Kitty Marion was taken by an undercover photographer working for the Home Office. Kitty, weakened by hunger-strike, is being helped out of Holloway prison into the prison yard.
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.