13 Facts About Elsie Howey

Elsie Howey was a militant activist with the Women's Social and Political Union and was jailed at least six times between 1908 and 1912.

In 1902 Howey began studying English, French and German at the University of St Andrews.

Elsie Howey left the university in 1904 so that she could travel to Germany, where she first came into contact with the women's rights movement.

Elsie Howey joined the Women's Social and Political Union, a militant suffrage organisation, in 1907.

In February 1908, she and her sister, Mary Gertrude Elsie Howey, were arrested alongside other WSPU members after hiding in a pantechnicon van that was driven into the House of Commons.

Elsie Howey went further on 5 September 1910, when Howey and two other suffragettes, Vera Wentworth and Jessie Kenney, assaulted Prime Minister Asquith and Herbert Gladstone while the men were playing golf, and pursued Asquith to his holiday home, left protest cards, saying 'Release Patricia Woodlock' and other suffragette materials in his private garden.

Elsie Howey was imprisoned for seven days, during which time she undertook a hunger strike and fasted for 144 hours.

Elsie Howey was jailed at least six times in her career as a suffragette.

Elsie Howey often took hunger strikes in prison and endured forcible feeding; on one such occasion it took her four months to recover from the resultant throat injuries.

Elsie Howey was sentenced to four months' imprisonment but was released early after a prolonged hunger strike that resulted in the breakage of almost all of her teeth from forcible feeding.

Elsie Howey was awarded a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by the WSPU.

Elsie Howey retired from public life when the militant suffrage movement ended in 1914.

Elsie Howey lived in Malvern for the rest of her life and died there in 1963 from chronic pyloric stenosis.