Marion Wallace Dunlop, 1909 Posing in front of a reconstruction of the message she stencilled on the wall of the House of Commons on June 22 1909. Refusing to pay a fine for the offence, Marion was sent to prison for one month.

Some of the people who campaigned for women's right to vote used militant tactics like attacking property, which often led to prison sentences. Hunger striking was a dangerous form of non-violent protest that could be carried out from inside prison.

This ultimate form of prison protest did not, however, originate from Suffragette headquarters at the Women's Social and Political Union. Initially it was the lone action of a single Suffragette, Marion Wallace Dunlop. In 1909 Marion was sent to Holloway on a charge of wilfully and maliciously damaging the stonework of the House of Commons.

Classified as a "second division", criminal prisoner, she went on hunger strike in protest against not being placed in the "first division" as a political prisoner. Leading Suffragette Christabel Pankhurst said that Marion had begun the strike "taking counsel with no one and acting entirely on her own initiative".