Alice Wheeldon

Alice Ann Wheeldon (27 January 1866 – 21 February 1919) was a British supporter of universal and women's suffrage and anti-war campaigner.

She was convicted in 1917, along with her daughter, Winnie, and son-in-law, Alfred Mason, of conspiracy to murder the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.

[1] Alice Ann Marshall was born in Derby, England, the daughter of an engine driver who had worked as a house servant when young.

With her family, including her daughters Hettie and Winnie and son Willie, Wheeldon expressed her opposition to the War, joining the No-Conscription Fellowship.

The trial began on 6 March 1917; Smith refused to call Gordon as a witness or divulge his name or whereabouts, thus preventing his being cross-examined.

At her funeral, Willie (possibly William Land, her nephew also a CO) placed a red flag over his mother's coffin and her friend John Smith Clarke, still evading police as a conscientious objector on the run, was the only speaker.

[8][9] In January 2012 the BBC reported on a campaign to clear Wheeldon's name, quoting Dr Nicholas Hiley of the University of Kent, who said the case against her was "shaky".

Hiley described Alex Gordon (in reality William Rickard) as an "unbalanced fantasist" who was "spectacularly unreliable": a convicted blackmailer, he had twice been declared criminally insane and was released from the high-security psychiatric Broadmoor Hospital only two years before being employed by MI5.

[10][11] On 15 June 2022, the BBC reported that an application for review to clear the name of the three people convicted of conspiring to kill the prime minister had failed.

In custody at Derby Police Station, January 1917: a police matron, Hettie Wheeldon, Winnie Mason, and Alice Wheeldon
Blue Plaque on the building where Alice Wheeldon lived
Blue Plaque on the building where Alice Wheeldon lived