Lady Constance Georgiana Lytton

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/suffragettes-on-file/lady-constance-lytton/
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3203/what-were-the-suffrage-campaigners-fighting-for
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3214/how-effective-was-the-votes-for-women-campaign-in-bristol

Family information: Father first Earl of Lytton. Mother was lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria.

Additional Information: Lady Constance joined the WSPU in 1909, having met Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Annie and Jessie Kenney during her charity work. She joined the very next deputation to the House of Commons and was arrested and sentenced to one month in prison. She spent most of her sentence in a comfortable hospital ward, knowing that it was because of her privileged family background and a 'discovered' heart condition. She insisted on being treated like other suffragette prisoners and was eventually put in a cell. That same year, together with Emily Wilding Davison, she threw a stone at a car, believing that it was carrying Liberal politician Lloyd George. During her trial, the authorities tried their hardest not to convict her because of her high social status. However, given the evidence, she had to be sentenced to one month in prison. She took part in a prison hunger strike and was immediately released. She was ashamed of the preferential treatment given to her and vowed next time to disguise herself to the authorities. When arrested again in 1910, for leading a group to the governor's house at Walton Gaol in Liverpool, demanding the release of suffragette prisoners, she was disguised as ordinary-looking 'Jane Warton'. In contrast to 'Lady Lytton', she was arrested and sentenced to two weeks in prison, and placed in the third class 'criminal' division of the prison. She went on hunger strike as she had before, but this time no test was carried out for a heart condition and she was forcibly fed on several occasions. She recounted the brutality of this practice in her book Prisons and Prisoners. She was eventually released when suspicions arose about 'Jane Warton''s true identity. Later that year, Lady Constance became a paid organiser for the WSPU, and in 1911 was a member of the Church League for Women's Suffrage (CLWS). She also illegally boycotted the government census survey in 1911 by refusing to give information at her home at 15 Somerset Terrace, London, in protest at not having the vote, and she also resumed her more physical militancy. She had believed in and worked hard for the Conciliation Bill (her brother, a Conservative, the Earl of Lytton, was chairman of the Conciliation Committee) and so when the government 'torpedoed' it, she joined the resulting window-smashing campaign. She was only briefly imprisoned, then released after her fine was paid. She had already suffered a slight stroke by then and suffered another, more devastating, soon afterwards. Her book proved a great inspiration to many suffragettes.