The Suffragette Handkerchief

It displays 67 signatures embroidered in various colours, and all that remains is to offer a warm vote of thanks to Miss Mary Hilliard, R.B.N.A., and to await the time when this historic gift can be suitably framed and placed in the History Section of the British College of Nurses, where its unique value will be appreciated.’[4] Of the 66 women whose full names appear on the handkerchief, 61 are known to have been arrested on the window-smashing campaign of March 1912 and who received prison sentences ranging from two to six months.

It is not known how the Handkerchief came to leave the collection of the British College of Nurses after it closed in 1956 or how it came to be found in the 1960s at a jumble sale at West Hoathly by Dora Arnold, custodian of the Priest House.

[5][6] Its link to the village of West Hoathly is not clear (although an owner of the Priest House in the early 20th-century John Godwin King's daughter Ursula was a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies[7]) and research is ongoing.

From September 2018 to January 2019 the Handkerchief was displayed at the Royal College of Physicians as part of the 'This vexed question: 500 years of women in medicine' exhibition.

Dr Ker had been active in the Birkenhead Women's Suffrage Society, and in 1912 was sentenced to three months in Holloway Prison for smashing a window at Harrods.