She was imprisoned in Perth Prison in 1914 for slashing John Lavery’s portrait of King George V hanging in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.

[3] The portrait had been hanging in "the Great Room" in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, mounted on a special screen surmounted with a gilt curtain and crown.

Edwards, described as a "shabbily dressed woman" in a cloak had put watchers off due to the keen interest she took in the exhibits, peering through "her thick spectacles" at the pictures.

[3] She had taken a hatchet to the portrait in full view of everyone; striking it "in the left breast and immediately below where the medals and decorations worn by the king are placed."

She had acted in response to Mrs Pankhurst’s failed attempt to lead a deputation to the King at the gates of Buckingham Palace[4][5] and Edwards stated that it had taken a "lot of nerve to do such work".

[2] The assault by Maude Edwards on Lavery’s portrait of the king, therefore, remains "the most credible example of an attack undertaken to cause symbolic personal harm... the most vehement protests that she could have committed without overstepping the line into actual blood-letting.

The indictment read:MAUDE EDWARDS, 27 Frederick Street, Edinburgh, you are indicted at the instance of the Right Honourable Robert Munro, his Majesty's Advocate, and the charge against you is that on 23rd May 1914, in the Royal Scottish Academy Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh, you did wilfully and maliciously strike and cut with a hatchet and damage a Portrait of His Majesty King George the Fifth, by John Lavery R S A.

On entering the Court loud applause from a large number of suffragettes, who occupied the Court, greeted the accused, while cheers were raised on her name being called.When asked to answer the indictment, which charged her with having, on 23rd May, in the Royal Scottish Academy, wilfully and maliciously struck and cut with a hatchet and damaged a portrait of his Majesty King George V, by John Lavery, RSA, the accused shouted to his Lordship, "I will not be tried.

[8] Grace Cadell, doctor and suffrage campaigner, attended the trial and when the Sheriff, Lord Maconachie, ordered the court to be cleared, she was reported by the press to have resisted so strongly that it had required the efforts of three police officers to remove her.

He paid no heed to her medical certificate that stated she had a weak heart as it was written by a lady doctor who, in his opinion, could not judge the present situation.

Maude EdwardsI herewith beg to make an application to be liberated on licence on the understanding that I give an undertaking to refrain from militancy in the future.