Janet Boyd

[5] In November 1911, after the failure of the Conciliation Bill, anger spilled over into direct action and 223 suffragettes were arrested during a campaign of window smashing.

At her first hearing on 2 March 1912 she was committed for trial together with her cousin Florence Haig for breaking two windows each at D H Evans on Oxford Street[8] valued at £66.

[4] At her subsequent trial at the London Sessions, on 19 March 1912, Boyd was sentenced[7] to six months in Holloway Prison where she went on hunger strike but was not force-fed; she was released at the end of June 1912.

[9] On another occasion some of the women performed a scene from The Merchant of Venice with Evaline Hilda Burkitt as Shylock and the role of Narissa played by Doreen Allen.

[10] Boyd was one of 68 women, among them Emily Davison, who added their signatures or initials to The Suffragette Handkerchief embroidered by prisoners in Holloway in March 1912, and kept until 1950 by Mary Ann Hilliard, and still available to view at the Priest House West Hoathly.

The protest takes the form of the refusal to pay Government taxes demanded and the consequent execution of a distress warrant upon Mrs Boyd's goods'.

On this occasion 'One article, an Italian necklace, was put up for auction, and this was knocked down to Mrs Atkinson for the sum of £26, an amount sufficient to meet the demand and expenses'.