1. Jessica "Jessie" Kenney was an English suffragette who was jailed for assaulting the Prime Minister and Home Secretary in a protest to gain suffrage for women in the UK.
18 Facts About Jessie Kenney
1. 2.
Details of a bombing campaign to support their cause were discovered by the authorities in her flat when Kenney was sent abroad to convalesce.
3.
Jessie Kenney later trained as a wireless operator but worked as a stewardess.
4.
Jessie Kenney was the seventh daughter of twelve children to Horatio Nelson Kenney and Anne Wood ; the family was poor and working class.
5.
Annie and Jessie Kenney took leading roles in the Women's Social and Political Union.
6.
Annie, eight years older than Jessie Kenney, promoted the study of literature among her colleagues, inspired by Robert Blatchford's publication, The Clarion.
7.
Jessie Kenney worked in a cotton mill from the age of thirteen, along with her sisters Annie, Alice and Jennie becoming involved in the trades union there.
8.
Jessie Kenney's mother died in 1905 at the age of fifty three and in the same year Kenney became actively involved in the Women's Social and Political Union after she and her sister, Annie, heard Teresa Billington-Greig and Christabel Pankhurst speak at the Oldham Clarion Vocal Club.
9.
Jessie Kenney did not have Annie's gift for public speaking but she was more organised.
10.
On 23 February 1909, Jessie Kenney took advantage of this to send two delegates, Daisy Solomon and Elspeth McClelland, from Strand Post Office to the Prime Minister and alerted a news reporter.
11.
On 16 April 1909, Jessie Kenney was in an early morning delegation who met Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence on her release from Holloway prison and took her to a breakfast, with 500 WSPU members, at the Criterion restaurant in Piccadilly Circus.
12.
On 10 December 1909 Jessie Kenney disguised herself as a telegraph boy to obtain access to the Prime Minister at a public meeting in Manchester.
13.
Jessie Kenney was unsuccessful but again a picture of the incident was used as publicity for the cause.
14.
Jessie Kenney's illness prevented her from destroying papers in her flat and as a result incriminating evidence was found.
15.
In June 1917 Jessie Kenney accompanied Emmeline Pankhurst on a trip to Russia aiming to encourage Russian women to the war effort, on behalf of the British Government, her writings of this journey and their experiences were never published.
16.
Jessie Kenney never found work as a wireless operator and had to work as a stewardess.
17.
Jessie Kenney had followed her sister from Theosophy to the Rosicrucian faith.
18.
Jessie Kenney returned to various temporary homes in London, working as a school secretary and welfare assistant at Battersea County School.