Mathilde Wolff Van Sandau

[7] Wolff Van Sandau joined two hundred women, organised on 1st and 4 March 1912, to carry out what was a second wave of window smashing protests in Covent Garden, London.

[8] In the same month, she was arrested with Katie Mills for smashing the windows of the Howick Place Post Office, as postal services were seen by suffragettes as a 'symbol of oppressive male government'.

[12] In recognition of her suffering in prison, the WSPU awarded her a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' designed by Christabel Pankhurst, with the ribbon in the colours of the women's suffrage movement – green, white and purple, representing 'hope, purity and dignity' – and a bar dated 4 March 1912.

The National Archive record lists suffragette prisoners who were officially pardoned when the WSPU discontinued militancy at the start of World War One.

[1] Wolff Van Sandau's Hunger Strike medal came to light in a drawer[13] in a home in East Sheen, London a hundred years later, and it was auctioned in Derbyshire in June 2019.

[10] It was sold privately for £12,500 and the valuer at Hansons Auctioneers,[2] Helen Smith, said of her actions: Her decision to go on hunger strike shows she was willing to die for her cause.