Mrs Jane Esdon Brailsford

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Family information: Married radical journalist and suffrage campaigner Henry Brailsford in 1897.

Additional Information: Jane was a member of the NUWSS but joined the WSPU in 1909, having become frustrated with the lack of progress. In October 1909, she attacked a barricade with an axe at a meeting held by Lloyd George in Newcastle. She was arrested and sentenced to one month's imprisonment. She went on hunger strike but was released without being forcibly fed, probably because of her connections through her husband with the newspaper press. She became a speaker for the WSPU in 1910 and was arrested again in 1911 for 'obstruction' during the deputation to Parliament after the Conciliation Bill had been 'torpedoed'. That year she also became a 'resister' in the illegal suffrage boycott of the goverment census survey, refusing to give any of the required information. Distraught by the split between the Pankhursts and the Pethick-Lawrences within the WSPU, she resigned from it in 1912 and displayed symptoms of a breakdown, which lasted into 1914. She and her husband agreed to separate in 1913 and, at some point during this time, she developed an addiction to alcohol, which would eventually result in her death.

Other Suffrage Activities: Jane was a founder member of the Glasgow University Fabian Society. She was also a vegetarian.