[7] Mead, in later years a famously tempestuous artist, was also from Bury St Edmunds where she frequented the Dog and Partridge pub in Crown Street ("doing her research", as she called it).

Helen and her father were lifelong friends with the Pre-Raphaelite artist and collector Charles Fairfax Murray and his wife who often visited them at Bury St Edmunds and in London, sometimes spending Christmas with them.

[4] Their extensive correspondence, kept at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, is of particular interest as a source of information about Charles Fairfax Murray, The Pre-Raphaelites and the Victorian Art World.

On 9 March 1912 she was sentenced at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court to two month’s imprisonment with hard labour for damage to government property (breaking a window)[1] valued at 3 shillings during protests by suffragettes in London.

(Her suffragette friend Norah Yorke was sentenced on the same day to only 6 weeks hard labour; the magistrate's reason was that the hammer she used was a small one).

[13] A Member of Parliament, Mr Chancellor, asked the Home Secretary in the House of Commons "whether he can see his way to accord the privileges of a political prisoner to Miss Helen M. Spanton", noting that the sentence was severe for a first offence.

[15] Imprisoned a few days before Helen Spanton was her suffragette friend and relative Katie Edith Gliddon, who had also been a student at The Slade (from 1902), and was arrested for breaking a Post Office window.

Helen Spanton and Katie Gliddon were both related to members of the Hardy family that included numerous artists, amateur and professional.