#womens histiry

The Scottish Suffragette and campaigner Arabella Scott was born on May 7th 1886 in Dunoon.

Arabella’s mother was a teacher and her father served as a captain in the army for more than 25 years, she attended The University of Edinburgh and gained a Master of Arts degree and went on to become a schoolteacher.

Both Arabella and her sister Muriel were advocates for women’s suffrage and were active speakers in Scotland for the cause and in 1909,  were both arrested on the charge of obstruction in London after they tried to hand a petition to the British Prime Minister  Asquith. They served 21 days at H M Prison Holloway.

Arabella was arrested and released several times over the following years, under the Cat and Mouse Act, and Act put into place so that suffragettes could not kill themselves in prison due to hunger strikes, instead when they became too weak they were released and then re-arrested at a later time.

In May 1913 Arabella was arrested with three other women and one man after an unsuccessful attempt to burn down Kelso Racecourse. She was sentenced to nine months imprisonment – as was the man whose crime was to drive them there. Janie Allen a suffragette journalist, bitterly compared his sentence with those who assaulted children and often got less than that.

She went on hunger strike and was released under the Cat and Mouse Act. Unlike others who went to ground once they were released Arabella stayed public. She had promised her employers, Leith School Board, that she would not take part in any more militant activity so she was kept on their list. She was arrested, went on hunger strike released and disappeared for 2 months. She was ‘found’ on a WSPU protest and returned to jail. She went on hunger strike again and was released again..

It took many months to ‘find’ her again, this time working as a WSPU organiser in Brighton. She was arrested and forcibly brought back to Edinburgh and jail. Again the same scenario ensued and she took the train to London before she was due back. She was ‘found’ accidentally while the house she was staying in was being searched for someone else. So, once again she was forcibly brought back but this time sent to Perth prison to be force fed and was “the longest force-fed prisoner in Scotland”  for 5 weeks, a visible legacy of this remained in her chipped teeth. These were her battle scars, sustained when she tried to resist being force fed, her mouth held open and a mixture of eggs flour and milk were poured down her throat through a tube attached to a funnel, this happened twice a day every day during her incarceration

Outside the prison gates, 3,000 people kept a vigil, although they were not even told what exactly was going in inside.

She emerged feeling more militant than ever.

All her life Arabella Scott upheld a passionate commitment to women’s rights, under her married name Colville-Reeves emigrated to Australia.

She died on 27 August 1980, and her memorial is in the Palmdale Lawn Cemetery on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

Isn’t it atrocious what society inflicted on these women, to me it amounts to torture.