Mrs Mary Jane Clarke
Gender: Female
Marital Status: Married
Born: 1862
Died: 1910
Place of birth: Chorlton, Lancashire, England
Education: Art school, Paris
Occupation: Decorative artist
Main Suffrage Society: WSPU
Society Role: Organiser
Arrest Record: Yes
Recorded Entries: 3
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: Younger sister of Emmeline Pankhurst. Married John Clarke, a 'clothier', in 1895.
Additional Information: Mary was fully committed to the WSPU by 1906, founded by her elder sister Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903. She was appointed an organiser in 1907 and led a small deputation to Downing Street in 1909, which resulted in her arrest and imprisonment for one month. Later that year, she rallied for the WSPU in Yorkshire and was organiser on the south coast in Brighton by the summer. In 1910, she was arrested for taking part in the demonstration on 'Black Friday' and for breaking windows in the protest about women's treatment that day. She was imprisoned for one month but sadly died on Christmas Day, just a few days after her release. Although her death was not widely publicised, she was described as a suffrage 'martyr', believed to have died as a direct result of her imprisonment for the cause.