Fanny T. Parker

Parker, Frances Mary [Fanny; alias Janet Arthur] (1875–1924), militant suffragette, was born in Little Roderick, Kurow, Otago, New Zealand, on 24 December 1875, one of the five children of Harry Rainy Parker (1837–1912), JP, of Rotheley Temple, Leicestershire, and his wife, Frances Emily Jane Kitchener (d. 1925). Her mother (always known as Millie) was the sister of Horatio Herbert Kitchener, first Earl Kitchener, and he paid for his niece's education at Newnham College, Cambridge. Fanny Parker entered Newnham in 1896 and obtained an ordinary degree in 1899. She was a répétrice at a French school from 1899 to 1902 and thereafter for several years a visiting teacher in Auckland, New Zealand.

Fanny Parker became involved in the women's suffrage movement in 1908. She took part in a demonstration, was arrested for obstruction, and endured six weeks' imprisonment in Holloway. In 1909 she was a speaker for the Scottish Universities Women's Suffrage Union; in 1910 she organized their caravan tour; and in 1911 she was their delegate to the International Suffrage Convention at Stockholm. In January 1912 she became an organizer for the Pankhurst-led militant suffrage organization, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), for Glasgow and the west of Scotland. The WSPU initiated a window-smashing raid in London in March of that year, and Fanny Parker took part. She was sentenced to four months in Holloway, went on hunger strike, and was forcibly fed.

In October 1912 Fanny Parker became WSPU organizer for Dundee, where she was an indefatigable worker; scarcely a week went by without her writing letters to the press and addressing meetings of all kinds. In November she was arrested for breaking a window; she was released from prison after a three-day hunger strike. In December she was one of several suffragettes who smuggled themselves into the Music Hall, Aberdeen, with the intention of causing a disturbance at Lloyd George's meeting; on that occasion she was on hunger strike for five days before release. Lord Kitchener was ‘disgusted’ when he learned of his niece's involvement in the movement. ‘Whatever her feelings on the subject may be,’ he wrote to his sister, ‘I cannot help thinking she might have some consideration for her family’ (Royle, 248). Ethel Moorhead, who became a close friend of hers at this time, said that she was ‘small and looked innocent and disarming with her charming looks, brown eyes, and silky hair. But she had an exquisite madness,—daring, joyous, vivid, strategic’ (Moorhead, 264).

By 1914 militancy had escalated into violence, and suffragettes all over Britain were burning down and blowing up buildings. Buildings of national or symbolic importance were obvious targets, and therefore a watchman was on duty at Robert Burns's cottage in Alloway when Fanny Parker and another suffragette attempted to set fire to it in July of that year. She ‘allowed herself to be taken that her comrade [Ethel Moorhead] might escape’ (This Quarter, no. 1) and was arrested, giving her name as Janet Arthur. She created a fuss when charged at Ayr sheriff court, denying that the court had any jurisdiction over her, yet while there she also showed her sympathy for a woman who had been sentenced to pay a fine of £1 or undergo ten days' imprisonment for receiving stolen goods, eventually paying her fine.

Janet Arthur immediately put the prison commissioners and Scottish Office in a quandary by going on hunger and thirst strike. She was a prisoner on remand, but if she were to be released the chances of recapturing her were slight. The authorities wanted to send her to a nursing home, but she refused to go. After six days of hunger and thirst strike she was transferred to Perth prison where forcible feeding of suffragettes was taking place. Her family heard rumours about her condition, and her brother Captain Parker went up from London and favourably impressed the Scottish Office ministers, particularly as the captain had ‘no sympathy with his sister's views’ (NA Scot., HH16/43). Nevertheless, Fanny Parker was forcibly fed and, when she was unable to retain food, an attempt was made to feed her by the rectum, resulting in bruising of the genital area as well. She was released to a nursing home in a state of collapse but still managed to escape before her trial. However, war broke out on 4 August, militancy was suspended, and there was an amnesty for suffragettes.

After the outbreak of war Fanny Parker was recruited by the other militant suffrage society, the Women's Freedom League, to head their new organization which found suitable jobs for women and made sure those women were not exploited. Subsequently she followed the family's military tradition, being appointed deputy controller in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (subsequently Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps) in June 1917. She was twice mentioned in dispatches and was appointed a military OBE. Fanny Parker died on 19 January 1924 in Arcachon, near Bordeaux, France, where Ethel Moorhead and her protégé, Ernest Walsh, were living. By her will, of which Janie Allan was executor, apart from a small bequest to her sister, Fanny Parker left all her property to Ethel Moorhead ‘in grateful remembrance for her care and love’. The first issue of This Quarter, funded by the bequest, contains a poem and the reproduction of two paintings by Fanny Parker.

Fanny Parker epitomized the articulate, well-educated, wholly committed suffragette, who at the beginning of the campaign in Edwardian Britain believed that reasoned argument would win women the vote, but subsequently became convinced that only violent methods would prevail. As a consequence she suffered the horrors of forcible feeding of a particularly brutal nature, but she also formed a close friendship which was apparently the most important thing to her at the end of her life.

Leah Leneman

Sources

L. Leneman, A guid cause: the women’s suffrage movement in Scotland (1995) · L. Leneman, Martyrs in our midst: Dundee, Perth and the forcible feeding of suffragettes, Abertay Historical Society Publication, 33 (1993) · [A. B. White], ed., Newnham College register, 1: 1871–1923 (1964) · records of students, Old Hall, 1888–1909, Newnham Archives, M2 · T. Royle, The Kitchener enigma (1985), 248 · Army List (1917–18) · prison records, Scottish home and health department, NA Scot., HH2/22, HH16/41, HH16/42, HH16/43 · A. J. R., ed., The suffrage annual and women's who's who (1913) · Votes for Women (27 Jan 1911) · Votes for Women (15 Dec 1911) · Votes for Women (8 March 1912) · Votes for Women (6 Dec 1912) · Votes for Women (13 Dec 1912) · Votes for Women (7 Aug 1914) · The Vote (18 June 1915) · Common Cause (23 Sept 1909) · Common Cause (5 Oct 1911) · Dundee Advertiser (11 Dec 1912) · Dundee Advertiser (18 Dec 1912) · Dundee Advertiser (24 Jan 1913) · Burke, Gen. GB (1939) · CCI (1924) · E. Moorhead, ‘Incendiaries (work in progress)’, This Quarter, 2 (1925) · This Quarter, 1 (1920?29?) [biographical note] · E. Crawford, The women's suffrage movement: a reference guide, 1866–1928 (1999)

Likenesses

photograph, NA Scot.; repro. in Leneman, A guid cause

Wealth at death

£3177 15s. 3d.: confirmation, 15 Oct 1924, CCI

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Leah Leneman, ‘Parker, Frances Mary (1875–1924)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/63882, accessed 6 Aug 2013]

Frances Mary Parker (1875–1924): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63882