During their imprisonment, they went on hunger strike while serving their sentences in the prisons of the United Kingdom for acts of militancy in their campaign for women's suffrage.

[5] The sculptor Edith Downing's medal bar is engraved with 'Fed by Force 1/3/12' - the date that she was imprisoned which subsequently lead to her hunger strike and forcible feeding.

[5] The Museum of London holds the medal awarded to the suffragette leader Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst who went on hunger strike during a two-month prison sentence in 1912 for throwing a stone at a window of 10 Downing Street.

[7] A medal found in a drawer awarded to suffragette Elsie Wolff Van Sandau who was arrested for smashing a window in Covent Garden on 4 March 1912 and who went on hunger strike in prison was sold at auction in 2019 for £12,500.

[8][9] A medal belonging to suffragette Selina Martin, auctioned in Nottingham in 2019, expected to fetch £15,000-£20,000[10] was bought by the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia for £27,000.

[16] In September 2023, Glasgow Women's Library decided to buy Maud Joachim's medal as it was awarded for the first WSPU hunger strike in Scotland.

[18] The BBC television series Call the Midwife featured an episode with an elderly suffragette played by Annette Crosbie who gifted her Hunger Strike Medal to one of the nurses who cared for her.