Mrs Alice Jane Stewart Ker

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: Father a Free Church minister. Married in 1888. Had two daughters, including Margaret Ker. Her husband died in 1907.

Additional Information: Alice joined the WSPU in 1909, with her daughter Margaret. She had, prior to that, been chairman of a law-abiding society, the Birkenhead and Wirral Women's Suffrage Society. She took an active role in promoting the WSPU in Liverpool but travelled to London to take part in various events. In June 1911, she took part in the suffrage Coronation Procession in London and witnessed much of the militancy that took place that year around the 'torpedoing' of the Conciliation Bill by government. Alice returned deliberately in 1912 to London, just to break the windows of Harrods department store as part of a wider WSPU-orchestrated window-smashing campaign. She was arrested and sentenced to three months in Holloway Prison. She was let out early and, as a doctor, protested vehemently about the use of forcible feeding, which she believed was being used as a punishment rather than as a medical treatment for suffragettes, as it was claimed. There is no evidence that Alice herself was forcibly fed. On release from prison, she faced the consequences of her action and was asked to resign from the Birkenhead Rescue Home where she was honorary physician ? but she refused to resign. She continued working for the WSPU in the Liverpool area.

Other Suffrage Activities: Alice was only the 13th woman to be placed on the British Medical Register. She was medical officer at the Mill Street Dispensary in Leeds and settled in Liverpool after marrying in 1888. She became a GP and honorary physician to the Wirral Hospital for Sick Children. She was also a supporter of the temperance movement (discouraging alcohol) and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.