Miss Eileen Casey

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

Family information: Family moved to England in 1890.

Additional Information: Eileen joined the WSPU in 1911 and was arrested in 1912 for smashing the windows of a shop in London's Oxford Street. She joined in a hunger strike and was forcibly fed. Her family home in Surrey was kept under watch by the police, resulting in the arrest of two of her suffragette friends who were staying there (see Kitty Marion and Clara 'Betty' Giveen), who were charged with arson for burning down a grandstand at Hurst Park racecourse. Edwardian society was shocked that the Casey family had allowed these women to stay under their roof without knowing anything about them other than that they were 'suffragettes'. Eileen was arrested again in 1913 as 'Eleanor Cleary' for vandalising pillar boxes, but was released before serving a two-month sentence when her fine was paid. She was arrested again later that year as 'Irene Casey' in Bradford on a similar charge. She was sentenced to three months in prison in Leeds and went on hunger strike. She was released under the 'Cat and Mouse Act' and escaped, dressed in men's clothes while her mother pretended to be her. She stayed on the run for eight months but was finally rearrested for possessing explosive charges in June 1914 in Nottingham (where a royal visit was due). She was eventually sentenced to 15 months in prison but went on hunger strike while on remand in Holloway Prison, where she was forcibly fed against medical advice. The Home Office was determined not to release her this time under the 'Cat and Mouse Act', and she was transferred to Winson Green in Birmingham, where she continued a hunger and thirst strike. She was released soon after under the Home Office amnesty for suffragette prisoners, when the war broke out in 1914.