[1] In October 1905, Baines read about the arrest of suffragists Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst for assault and this motivated her to join the Women's Social and Political Union.

Refusing to be bound over, she was convicted to six weeks imprisonment in Armley Goal, Leeds because "she did ‘not recognise the laws of this Court administered by men".

[4] In July 1909 with twelve others, including Mary Leigh, Lucy Burns, Alice Paul, Emily Davison and Mabel Capper[7] and another in her wheelchair [May Billinghurst perhaps][3] she was jailed for obstruction for trying to stop Lloyd George's public budget meeting in Limehouse.

[3] The protest was witnessed by Annie Barnes who was inspired to join the East London Federation and influenced by Sylvia Pankhurst.

[3] In Liverpool, in 1910, Baines was making speeches with Ada Flatman and Patricia Woodlock, when she was interrupted by Constance Lytton disguised as 'Jane Wharton' a seamstress asking 'the men and women of Liverpool to be the first to wipe out the stain [of force-feeding]' and a crowd followed them to the prison Governor John Dillon's house, chased by police.

[3] In July 1912, Baines was part of an attempt, under the name 'Lizzie Baker' along with Gladys Evans and Mary Leigh and Mabel Capper, to burn down the Theatre Royal in Dublin the night before a scheduled visit from then Prime Minister, H.H.

[1] Baines suffered from chorea ("St Vitus' Dance") causing spasms brought on by emotional stress,[2] making it almost impossible to force-feed her.

[1][4] Baines was again jailed in March 1919 for flying the prohibited red flag on the Yarra Bank[4] and became the first prisoner in Australia to undergo hunger strike.

[2] Although her post Second World War activities were curtailed by her failing sight,[4] Sarah Jane Baines continued her "fiery eloquence on the hustings" until her death from cancer, only giving up public speaking a few months before she died on 20 February 1951 in Port Melbourne.

[1] Survived by her husband and her three children,[1] Baines's legacy could perhaps be summed up in her own words: 'To fight for that which is better and nobler in this world is to live in the highest sense, but to submit and tolerate the evils which exist is to merely vegetate in the sewers of iniquity'.