Catherine Tolson

Catherine Tolson, known as Kitty, was an English nurse and suffragette from Ilkley in West Yorkshire, born on 21 August 1890 and died on 3 March 1924. She was the daughter of the merchant Charles Guthrie Tolson and Anna Tolson, and her older sister Helen and their mother were also suffragettes. After joining the Women's Social and Political Union she became a militant campaigner for votes for women. In September 1909 she and Helen were among the suffragettes arrested for breaking glass at White City in Manchester, and she accepted imprisonment in Strangeways Prison rather than pay a fine. Two days later she was released after going on hunger strike, for which the union gave her a Hunger Strike Medal. She was arrested again in October 1909, and the circumstances of her release that month led Keir Hardie to ask a question about her in the House of Commons. She was arrested and imprisoned again in 1911, went on hunger strike and was force-fed. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 34 and never married. Her Hunger Strike Medal for Valour was sold at auction in 2004.