A military-style medal awarded to the first suffragette to go on hunger strike in Scotland is up for sale at a London auction house, and Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) has launched an urgent fundraising appeal to bid for the “humbling and important” artefact of the struggle for voting equality.
The medal, which hangs on a length of ribbon in the colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), was awarded to Maud Joachim, who was arrested in Dundee in October 1909 along with Adela Pankhurst, a daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, and four others for interrupting a meeting led by Winston Churchill. When interviewed later, he called them “a band of silly, neurotic, hysterical women”.
