SUFFRAGETTE HUNGER STRIKE MEDAL awarded to Clara Giveen, 1912

SUFFRAGETTE HUNGER STRIKE MEDAL Hunger strike medal awarded by the WSPU to Clara Giveen, in silver and enamel construction, the top bar fitted with pin, the obverse engraved 'For Valour', the suspension bar of purple, white and green enamel stripes (the reverse engraved 'Fed by Force 1/3/12'), two additional silver bars in scroll form engraved 'July 3rd 1913' and 'Nov. 24th 1913', the disc 22mm. diameter, engraved 'Hunger Strike' on the obverse and 'Clara Giveen' on the reverse, maker's name engraved on reverse of top bar ('Toye 57 Theobalds/ Rd London'), overall 87 x 40mm.; in original purple roan presentation box, lined with green velvet, padded silk inner lid with dedication to Giveen printed in gilt, box 60 x 102mm., [1913] Footnotes: THE HUNGER STRIKE MEDAL OF THE HURST PARK ARSONIST. Like many others, Irish-born Clara Elizabeth 'Betty' Giveen (1887-1967) became a radical suffragette after witnessing the brutal treatment of women by police at the infamous 'Black Friday' demonstration of 1910. She joined the WSPU and took part in actions such as window smashing and obstruction for which she was arrested several times. Described by fellow suffragette and actress Kitty Marion as a 'beautiful blonde' of 'good family and independent means' (The Scotsman, 4 July 1913), she is thought to have been part of a secret group of unmarried militants, the so-called 'Young Hot Bloods' who took part in a nationwide campaign of property destruction sanctioned by Emmeline Pankhurst after the abandonment of the Franchise Bill in January 1913. Other members of the group included Flora Drummond, Annie Kenney and Lilian Lenton. On 8 June 1913, the night Emily Wilding Davison died after throwing herself under the King's horse at the Epsom Derby four days earlier, her friends Clara Giveen and Kitty Marion, knowing she was critically injured, mounted an arson attack in her honour on the grandstand at Hurst Park Racecourse, near Hampton Court in Surrey. They travelled by train and tram, walked across fields carrying a wicker suitcase containing a gallon of oil and some firelighters, and negotiated a high fence of spikes and barbed wire in their long skirts with the aid of a piece of carpet: '...How we got over and back beggars description. We both regretted there was no movie camera to immortalise the comedy of it...' wrote Kitty Marion in her autobiography (Diane Atkinson, Rise up Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes, 2018, p.421). They inflicted thousands of pounds worth of damage, not to mention calling on the services of six local fire brigades, but were arrested the following morning. Clara Giveen was sentenced to imprisonment for three years with hard labour. Our medal recognises the forcible feeding she endured during a previous four-month sentence in March 1912 for breaking 12 windows at Jay's department store in Regent Street and two periods of hunger strike – one dated 3 July 1913 after the Hurst Park attack (she was released from Holloway on 10 July 1913 under the terms of the 'Cat and Mouse' Act), and another dated 24 November the same year. The military-style medals were awarded by the leaders of the WSPU to suffragettes who had gone on hunger-strike in protest at not being recognised as political prisoners. They hang on a length of ribbon in the WSPU colours from a silver pin bar engraved 'For Valour' in the style of the Victoria Cross. On one side of the medal is engraved 'Hunger Strike', with the other engraved with the name of the recipient. Some medals had silver bars added in recognition of periods of hunger strike, or striped enamelled bars to denote forcible feeding, as here. The medals were made by Toye & Co. at a cost of £1.00 each, and were first presented in St James' Hall in early August 1909. Giveen's medal comes in its original purple box with green velvet lining, and the wording on the inside lid, printed in gold on white silk: 'Presented to Clara Giveen by the Women's Social and and Political Union in recognition of a gallant action, whereby through endurance to the last extremity of hunger and hardship a great principle of political justice was vindicated'. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * * VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing