Miss Helen Craggs

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/cuarm/royal-visit-and-suffragette/
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Family information: Father was Sir John Craggs, a chartered accountant. Her mother was a suffragist and central member of the CUWFA.

Additional Information: Helen likely joined the WSPU in 1908, selling suffragette postcards and chalking announcements of meetings on pavements. By 1910 she had left her teaching job to become a paid organiser for the WSPU in London, and was paid 25 shillings a week. She took part in the March window-smashing campaign of 1912 and was arrested and imprisoned, went on hunger strike and was released. She was arrested again later that year in Oxford, while attempting to burn down the house of Liberal politician and Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lewis Harcourt. Harcourt gave generously to the National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage. Helen was sentenced to nine months in prison in Holloway, but was released after 11 days, following a cycle of hunger striking and force-feeding. She also seems to have been arrested in Wales.

Other Suffrage Activities: Helen's father had forbidden her from entering medical school but, in 1914, she trained in midwifery in Dublin. She later married a GP from Aberdeen, who worked in the East End of London. Helen qualified as a pharmacist to complement her husband's medical practice. Sadly, he died while their two children were still young, so she supported them by running a business selling jigsaw puzzles. She emigrated to the USA after the Second World War.