Why Morecambe suffragette who was force-fed in jail 292 times is your reason to vote in General Election

It’s a well known fact that suffragettes who went to prison for demanding the vote often refused to eat in protest at their treatment. This was known as hunger strike and those who did it were force fed, using tubes pushed down into their stomach.

As well as being a very painful process, it was also extremely dangerous.

Morecambe’s Hilda Burkitt is still to this day thought to be the most force-fed woman while imprisoned.

"She could have been killed during any of the 292 times that food was shoved down her throat and through her nose,” says a post on Lancaster City Council’s Facebook page.

“They fed me five weeks by the nose,” Hilda noted.

She was the first to be force-fed while in Holloway Prison in 1908 and was awarded the Hunger Strike medal, which is on display at Lancaster City Museum.

Born in the Midlands, Hilda retired to Morecambe where she was an organiser for the North West branch of the movement. She died in Morecambe in March 1955.

The council’s post concludes: "Vote on July 4, and use the voice women like Hilda fought for.”

You can find out more about Hilda and other local suffragettes at Lancaster City Museum.

Who were the suffragettes?

A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom.

The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience.

In the early 20th century until the outbreak of World War I, around 1,000 suffragettes were imprisoned in Britain. Most early incarcerations were for public order offences and failure to pay outstanding fines.

Many of them staged hunger strikes while they were imprisoned. Prisons later began the practice of force-feeding the hunger strikers through a tube, most commonly via a nostril or stomach tube or a stomach pump.