Marion Wallace Dunlop was a British artist and author. She was the first and one of the most well known British suffragettes to go on hunger strike, on 5 July 1909, after being arrested in July 1909 for militancy. She said she would not take any food unless she was treated as a political prisoner. She was at the centre of the Women's Social and Political Union and she campaigned by Emmeline Pankhurst to be remembered. She was one of her pallbearers and she looked after Emmeline's adopted daughter.
Wallace Dunlop became an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union and was first arrested in 1908 for "obstruction" at the House of Commons including Ada Flatman and others and again in 1908 for leading a group of women in a march. In 1909 she was arrested a third time, in this case for stenciling a passage from the Bill of Rights on a wall of the House of Commons which read, "It is the right of the subject to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal." She helped design many of the WSPU processions to call for women's right to vote, including 17 June 1911.
Hunger strikes
There was never any suggestion that anyone advised or recommended that Wallace Dunlop go on a hunger strike and all indications are that it was her idea. However, shortly after word got out, hunger-striking became standard suffragette practice. Christabel Pankhurst later reported: "Miss Wallace Dunlop, taking counsel with no one and acting entirely on her own initiative, sent to the Home Secretary, Mr. Gladstone, as soon as she entered Holloway Prison, an application to be placed in the first division as befitted one charged with a political offence. She announced that she would eat no food until this right was conceded." Mrs. Pethick-Lawrence noted that Wallace Dunlop had found a "new way of insisting upon the proper status of political prisoners, and had the resourcefulness and energy in the face of difficulties that marked the true suffragette".
91 hours
Wallace Dunlop endured 91 hours of fasting before she was released on the grounds of ill health. Hunger striking was her idea and after her success it became official WSPU policy. As a result, in September 1909, the British Government introduced force feeding in prisons. Wallace Dunlop was given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.
Death
Wallace Dunlop was a pallbearer when Emmeline Pankhurst died in 1928 and she then took on the task of caring for Mary who was Pankhurst's adopted daughter. Wallace Dunlop died on 12 September 1942 at Mount AlverniaNursing Home, Guildford.
