29 Facts About Ethel Moorhead

Ethel Agnes Mary Moorhead was a British suffragette and painter and was the first suffragette in Scotland to be forcibly-fed.

Ethel Moorhead was a patron of This Quarter, a journal published by Ernest Walsh.

Ethel Moorhead was one of six children of Brigadier Surgeon George Alexander Moorhead, an army surgeon of Irish Catholic birth, and his wife, Margaret Humphreys, an Irish woman of French-Huguenot ancestry, whom he had married in India, at Madras Roman Catholic Cathedral on 9 September 1864.

Ethel Moorhead's older sister Alice Moorhead was a pioneer of female medicine, trained as a surgeon and physician, and four of her brothers were doctors, as were several male members of her father's family.

Ethel Moorhead's father was posted with the Berkshire Regiment to Afghanistan as army surgeon in 1870, and she would have seen little of him in her early years, from his time in India in the post-mutiny years to being promoted to Surgeon-Major when Moorhead was just four years old.

The family then moved temporarily to Pitalpin House, Lochee and in 1907 moved into the newly built 'The Wiesha' at Hazel Drive, Dundee, where Ethel Moorhead was able to have a studio.

Ethel Moorhead's first exhibition was a landscape and six other pictures, in the Centennial Exhibition in 1901, with the local press, including the Dundee Advertiser praising her work as among the 'gems of the collection from an artistic point of view.

Ethel Moorhead exhibited works at even higher prices in Glasgow in 1912, with four paintings at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts.

Ethel Moorhead joined her friend Oliphant on the Lochee Day Nursery management committee and volunteered at the Grey Lodge Settlement at Hilltown which provided a variety of social support services, especially for young mothers.

Ethel Moorhead made her maiden speech at a Dundee Women's Social and Political Union meeting in March 1910; in December she accused Winston Churchill of 'brutal treatment' of suffragette hunger strikers and threw an egg at him during a meeting in Dundee, and she hit the organisers trying to remove her with an umbrella.

Sheriff officers came to take goods in lieu of taxes to be auctioned, with Ethel Moorhead's supporters waving placards saying "No Vote, No Tax" and making fun of the bidding process.

Ethel Moorhead used a string of aliases, and carried out various acts of militancy both north and south of the border.

Later that year, Ethel Moorhead was caught attacking a showcase containing a historical sword at the Wallace Monument near Stirling, with a stone wrapped in a note saying 'YOUR LIBERTIES WERE WON BY THE SWORD.

In October 1912 after being ejected from a meeting in Synod Hall, Edinburgh, where Sir Rufus Isaacs was speaking, Ethel Moorhead returned to attack the male lecturer from Broughton School at his work, with a dog whip to attack him in return for having ejected her.

Again Ethel Moorhead conducted her own defence including requesting that Lloyd George be called as a witness.

Ethel Moorhead wrote to the press complaining about prison conditions on remand and in the Aberdeen gaol which led to questions to the Secretary of State in Parliament, as the complaint was about pre-trial behaviour by the police.

Ethel Moorhead had a reputation for wrecking police cells, and carrying out several arson attacks.

Ethel Moorhead had thrown cayenne pepper at a police constable at an event where Prime Minister Asquith was due to speak, and was taken to Methil and then Dundee prison, where she caused an amount of damage by breaking windows.

Ethel Moorhead went on hunger strike and refused to assist a medical examination, after four days, and so she was discharged.

On 23 July 1913, with Dorothea Chalmers Smith, Ethel Moorhead attempted to set fire to a house at 6 Park Gardens in Glasgow, but they were caught at the scene and the firefighters found flammable materials and a postcard bearing the words: 'A protest against Mrs Pankhurst's re-arrest'.

Ethel Moorhead held no formal position in the WSPU, but had achieved great personal notoriety.

Ethel Moorhead herself was imprisoned several times and released under the "Cat and Mouse Act" of 1913.

Ethel Moorhead had become known as the first Scottish suffragette to be forcibly fed, while imprisoned in Calton Jail Edinburgh under the care of Dr Hugh Ferguson Watson, although the initial feeding was performed by Dr James Dunlop, medical adviser to HM Prison Commissioners for Scotland, who was based at Morningside Asylum.

Ethel Moorhead's solicitor intervened and she was handed a bunch of sweet peas from fellow suffragette Arabella Scott as she was at last released into the care of Dr Grace Cadell, a fellow activist in the suffrage movement.

Ethel Moorhead 'escaped' re-arrest by leaving Cadell's home in disguise, with Leith Police issuing a warrant.

Ethel Moorhead escaped by bicycle as Fanny was said to have allowed herself to be arrested to save her friend.

Ethel Moorhead had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU, with dated silver bars for 29 August 2012,29 November 1912,29 January 2013,15 October 2015.

Ethel Moorhead edited a quarterly arts journal, This Quarter which published work by, among others, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway, Constantin Brancusi, Francis Picabia and Man Ray.

In 2014 a public street in Perth, Ethel Moorhead Place, was named after her.