Letter from Constance Lytton to Annie Kenney, 1910

Letter from Constance Lytton to Annie Kenney, 1910

Direct action

Political activists

[Transcript of letter is available below] Dated 12 April 1910, this letter from Lady Constance Lytton is a reply to an invitation to speak at a Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) fundraiser from Annie Kenney. Lady Constance refuses on account of her ill health following her hunger strike during a prison stay. She was booked to open the Grand Suffrage Bazaar and Exhibition held in St Andrews Halls, Glasgow, 28 – 30 April 1910 and could not undertake any more public appearances due to their strain on her mental and physical recovery.

Constance Lytton was a prominent suffragette, women's rights activist, and campaigner for prison reform. She was imprisoned on a number of occasions, but felt she was not given the same treatment as other suffragette inmates due to her aristocratic background. To test her theory, she gave a fake name - Jane Warton - after being taken to Walton Gaol, Liverpool. As Jane Warton, she adopted the hunger strike and was force-fed - an experience which disturbed her health for the rest of her life. She documented the experience in her 1914 memoir Prisons and Prisoners. [Transcript of letter is available below]

Lytton, Lady Constance

Kenney Papers, University of East (UEA) Anglia Archives

Unknown

12 April 1910

Copyright: Owned by Knebworth Estates – www.knebworthhouse.com. All rights are reserved.

Source: UEA Archives. Transcript: Zoe Kelly

Creative Commons: This image is also available within Creative Commons BY-NC and all copyright and the source must be attributed. The image must not be used for commercial purposes.

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English (United Kingdom)

KP/AK/2/Lytton/10

Letter

[Transcript by Zoe Kelly]
KP/AK/2/Lytton/10

 

RAIL.KNEBWORTH.G.N.R TELEGRAMS. KNEBWORTH

 

                                                                                                           HOMEWOOD,

                                                                                                                                       KNEBWORTH,

                                                                                                                                                      HERTS.

 

April 12. 1910

 

Dearest Annie

 

It is dreadful to have to refuse you especially as I believe to be alongside of you would do me an immense amount of good just now. But my body is still on strike, gets exhausted (& the brain too) with the smallest exertion. I am

 

[Page 2]

 

concentrating my power on the Glasgow Exhibition- I am booked to open it on the 2? Day/. April 28^th.  The [Dr][&] my people think that a [m]ad idea & I expect I shall have to do it in the face of their contrary advice. If that [answers] –if I do

 

[Page 3]

 

the job creditably & do not break from it, then I shall go on & make other engagements but I daren’t book myself for such a long journey immediately after Glasgow. I have been struggling for a week with an article for Votes. My

 

[Page 4]

 

brain simply won’t work & the vain effort makes me fearfully deprest  [depressed] I daren’t undertake [r]eal meeting speeches while like this.

 

        Of course I don’t really feel deprest [depressed]: it is only a passing thing.

 

Good luck [for] all [your] special weeks.

 

Your always loving

 

Sister Conny

 

Don’t [trouble ] to answer this.