1-192-449 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Mary Leigh, organiser, 1909. She is wearing her purple, white and green uniform as Drum Major of the Women's Band. A year earlier, she and a fellow schoolteacher friend, Edith New, became the first suffragette window-smashers. Mary served three prison sentences and was force-fed on many occasions. On 17 September 1909 she and eight other suffragettes caused pandemonium when they disrupted Prime Minister Asquith's visit to Birmingham to attend a Liberal meeting in the Bingley Hall. She and Charlotte Marsh (who often led WSPU processions on horseback, dressed as Joan of Arc) climbed onto the roof of a taller building next to the hall and hurled missiles and slates onto its roof. The two women were pelted with bricks and stones and soaked when fire hoses were turned on them. Eventually a policeman climbed on the roof and brought them down. Mary was sentenced to four months with hard labour in Winson Green Gaol, where she staged a hunger strike. After being force-fed by stomach tube, she barricaded herself into her cell to prevent the barbaric procedure from being carried out again.