“A class act: Constance Lytton and the political, literary and dramatic dynamics of suffrage prison writings”

Abstract

political, literary and dramatic dynamics of suffrage prison writings"'In years to come this story of compassion and chivalry will be told in the schools to children yet unborn,' declared Katherine Roberts in 1910, predicting that Lady Constance Lytton would become an inspirational figure for future generations. 1 A militant suffragette, Constance Lytton had disguised herself as a working-class seamstress, Jane Warton, in order to expose the brutal treatment of less privileged suffragist prisoners. When she had previously been arrested in 1909 for stonethrowing, a congenital heart condition saw her confined to the hospital wing and exempted from all labour, alongside Mrs Brailsford, the wife of an M.P., while working-class suffragettes, Mary Leigh and Selina Martin, who had been arrested with them, were placed in the Third Division and subjected to force-feeding.Outraged by such unequal treatment, Lytton disguised herself as Jane Warton, a London seamstress, under which identity prison doctors failed to diagnose her heart condition and subjected her to force-feeding eight times before her rapidly declining health and suspicions of her true identity prompted her release. The publication in 1914 of Prisons and Prisoners: Some personal experiences. By Constance Lytton and Jane Warton, Spinster led a reviewer in the Christian Commonwealth to exclaim ecstatically that 'Constance Lytton is an incarnation of the Christ-spirit, if ever there was one. The story of her deeds -the motive that inspired them, the spirit in which she did them -is worthy of being enshrined in the Sacred Books of the race.' 2 Christabel Pankhurst drew both on the language of religious sacrifice and on that of male stoicism and courage: 'No act more chivalrous can be imagined than Lady Constance Lytton's surrender of every advantage of her own for the sake of more defenceless women. The sacrifice of the brave Captain Oates, who went into the snow to die that his comrades might have the greater chance to live, brought tears to our eyes. But cannot the world -the world even of men -understand that Lady Constance Lytton's act was of the same, perhaps of yet finer quality!' 3