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She became one of the most ­famous faces of the suffragette movement and a statue of Alice Hawkins was ­unveiled today in recognition of her incredible life.

A shoe machinist, Alice was jailed five times and was one of many who went on hunger strike as she attempted to change the world for millions of women.

And she did. Tuesday marks 100 years from women getting the vote and her statue in Leicester’s Market Square is testament to all the campaigners who changed lives for generations to come.

Kate Barratt, her great-great-granddaughter, says: “Alice gives me a lot to live up to. I have my freedom and my vote, while Alice had to fight for that.”

(Image: www.alamy.com)

But the path to victory was gruesome and fatal for some, with force-feeding in jails and physical and sexual assaults.

“Few women regained full health after what would become known as ‘state sanctioned torture’,” Dr Maureen Wright, history and politics lecturer at Chichester University, says of force-feeding.

Remarkably 21-year-old Lilian Lenton survived an ordeal that involved a 45cm tube being stuffed in her throat as nine male prison staff towered over her.

Two days into her hunger strike in 1913, the tube missed her stomach and gruel was poured into her airway. She fell ill with pleurisy and ­pneumonia, and was released from Holloway Prison.

Due to her youth, she recovered – but many did not. The case of Emily Wilding Davison remains cemented in history after she was killed by King George V’s horse Anmer at the 1913 Epsom Derby.

But the treatment of women held in jail caused lesser-known horror. Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton’s privileged background meant authorities refused to force-feed her. In solidarity with her fellow suffragettes, she chose an alias, cut her hair and wore working clothes.

After being arrested in Liverpool in 1910 and refusing food and drink, she was forcibly fed eight times. She said: “I felt as though I were being killed; ­absolute suffocation is the feeling.

“You can’t breathe yet you choke. Every second seems an hour and you think they will never finish pushing it down. Then the food is poured, and again you choke, and your whole body resists.”

Her treatment caused a heart attack and stroke soon after and she died in 1923. While in jail she carved a V – the Votes for Women symbol – on her breast with a hairpin.

Even if they escaped long-term health issues, the women experienced bruising, damage to teeth, nausea, vomiting, cramps and diarrhoea.

Women’s and gender historian Prof June Purvis describes the practice as “brutal, life-threatening and degrading”.

(Image: Hulton Archive) (Image: SWNS- Cambridge)

In prison in Edinburgh, Ethel Moorhead developed double pneumonia when a “foreign substance” entered her lung after her eighth feeding. Actress Kitty Marion was force-fed 232 times, begging a doctor to give her poison to end her pain.

She wrote: “One doctor asked me to drink milk. I refused and was overpowered by several wardresses, forced into an armchair, the doctor holding my head back.

“I struggled and screamed. Suddenly I felt something ­penetrate my nostril which seemed to cause my head to burst and my eyes to bulge. Choking and retching the tube was forced down and the food poured in, most of which was vomited.

“There are no words to describe the horrible revolting sensations. I called the doctors ‘dirty, cringing doormats to the government’ to lend themselves to such outrageous treatment.”

Force-feeding wasn’t the only violent method used in prison. Evelyn Manesta was put in a headlock but police later doctored a picture, replacing an officer’s grip with a scarf.

(Image: PA)

The authorities also denied force-feeding Lilian, with Home Secretary Reginald McKenna saying her pneumonia was caused by hunger striking.

Many also suffered sexual abuse. Fanny Parker was imprisoned in Perth in July 1914. She said ­officers force-fed her through her rectum, writing it “was done in a cruel way, causing great pain”.

An examination suggested the tube had also been forced into her vagina.

Findmypast has recovered documents showing how Edith Lanchester, who was incarcerated in an asylum for planning to marry an Irish labourer, endured four days of abuse.

Prof Purvis says: “Although the word ‘rape’ was not used, the instrumental invasion of the body, accompanied by overpowering physical force, suffering and humiliation, was akin to it.

“That rubber tubes were not always new and might be dirty inside added to the feelings of violation.” When members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, known as the ­suffragettes, were first arrested in 1904, they were mostly classed as ­political ­prisoners but this changed and they went on hunger strike.

The first was Marion Dunlop in 1909, who was released after 91 hours. This led leaders Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst to believe refusing food was a non-violent way of protest.

(Image: Popperfoto)

In 1912, the Cat and Mouse Act came into motion in a bid to solve the government’s predicament. Prof Purvis says: “It allowed a prisoner weakened through hunger striking to be released in order to be nursed back to good health so that she would be fit enough to continue her sentence.”

November 10, 1910 became known as Black Friday when 300 suffragettes tried to reach Parliament. They were treated with “exceptional brutality by police”, Prof Purvis says. “Many assaults were sexual in nature as skirts were lifted, knees thrust between legs and breasts pinched.”

Many historians believe Emmeline Pankhurst’s sister Mary Clarke died of injuries inflicted during Black Friday, and her force-feeding in prison, calling her “the first woman martyr who has gone to death for this cause”.

The movement finally succeeded as the First World War ended. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed, thanks to suffragettes and the suffragists, who believed in law-abiding campaigning led by Millicent Fawcett.

But only around two in five women were allowed to vote, as they had to be aged over 30 and occupy a house – or be married to someone who did. It would take another 10 years for women to be allowed to vote in the same way as men.

“All women, whether suffragist or suffragette, were radical,” Dr Wright says. “All were pioneers. All were dedicated to making a fairer, just society. Every woman should ask if she, faced with the choice, would do the same.”