[2] Her older sister Alice Moorhead (1868–1910) was a pioneer of female medicine, trained as a surgeon and physician,[4] and four of her brothers were doctors, as were several male members of her father's family.

[2] The family lived in Shoeburyness in Kent and then he was posted to Port Louis, Mauritius and retired as Brigadier-Surgeon in 1880, and they moved to Galway, where the children were schooled.

[2] After training as an artist, when she was 29, in Paris under Mucha[citation needed] and in Whistler's studio, the Atelier Carmen, between October 1898 and April 1901, with fellow Dundee painter, Janet Oliphant, Moorhead returned to Dundee and set up a portrait studio with Oliphant where she worked for fifteen years, in The Arcade, 4 King Street.

One of her portraits,The Conspirator, was chosen to be exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy along with two others, and three were shown at the Aberdeen Artists' Society and she had works in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

[2] Moorhead joined her friend Oliphant on the Lochee Day Nursery management committee and volunteered at the Grey Lodge Settlement at Hilltown which provided a variety of social support services, especially for young mothers.

They included smashing two windows in London, with Enid Rennie from Broughty Ferry (eventually sentenced to two months) and Florence McFarlane, a nurse who lived in the Nethergate, Dundee (sentenced to four months), and Moorhead's target was a Thomas Cook Fleet Street shop (but in the subsequent trial, despite arresting her, their witnesses got confused).

'[2] [7] The women found guilty were taken straight to Holloway Prison where Moorhead noted in her memoirs Incendiaries, that the bed was a 'board for sleeping on had a blanket decorated with arrowheads, the badge of the condemned.'

[2] Moorhead wrote to the press (The Scotsman) complaining about prison conditions on remand and in the Aberdeen gaol which led to questions to the Secretary of State in Parliament, as the complaint was about pre-trial behaviour by the police.

Moorhead had thrown cayenne pepper at a police constable at an event where Prime Minister Asquith was due to speak, and was taken to Methil and then Dundee prison, where she caused an amount of damage by breaking windows.

Early in 1913, she tried to write to Arabella Scott who lived at 88 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh about an incident of an amorous approach by an inebriated prison doctor, which she feared would be used as propaganda.

[2] In another hearing in Edinburgh, Moorhead said to the judge 'I want to say this is another Court of Injustice' and (addressing Lord Chief Justice) 'you are an unjust old man'[2] She engaged in repeated complaint correspondence with prison and law authorities[10] about her treatment on remand for protesting for women's suffrage, about the prison conditions,[11] lack of respect from the staff and about the cruelty of the force-feeding.

[2] On 23 July 1913, with Dorothea Chalmers Smith, Moorhead (in the alias 'Margaret Morrison') attempted to set fire to a house at 6 Park Gardens in Glasgow, but they were caught at the scene and the firefighters found flammable materials[12] and a postcard bearing the words: 'A protest against Mrs Pankhurst's re-arrest'.

[9] In this trial, Moorhead tried to object that the judge had misdirected the jury and she was removed for contempt of court, but brought back to hear the sentence of eight months imprisonment.

[14] Arriving at Cadell's home, 145 Leith Walk, 150 police had been awaiting a demonstration, but none arose, although a call had gone out earlier in the Dundee Courier letters page from Emily Pankhurst and Lila Clunas and in The Scotsman an advert inviting 'thousands' to march from Charlotte Square to Calton Prison, along Princes Street in protest at Moorhead's treatment (but she had already been released by the set time).

Despite the many well wishers, she was so weak that she only allowed visits from Dr Mabel Jones or her Broughty Ferry friend, Enid Rennie, who had written to Dr. Devon who had been the lead prison doctor who latterly conducted the force feeding, that it was 'a permanent blot on the record of so many fights for liberty in which Scotland has hitherto born a noble part'.

[11] These prison experiences did not stop her militant activity, however, and along with her friend Fanny Parker she was arrested in July 1914, for trying to blow up the Burns Cottage in Alloway.

Moorhead had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU, with dated silver bars for 29 August 2012, 29 November 1912, 29 January 2013, 15 October 2015.

[17] And the silk lined box has imprinted in gold lettering:'Presented to Ethel Agnes Moorhead 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.

[2] Their contribution was praised by founder Charlotte Despard at a rally in Kingsway Hall, September 1915 as “The competent women who direct the work inspire an immense confidence by their keen intelligence, lively sympathy and brisk business capacity”.