page_title: Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton
section_title: (1909) Imprisonment and self-mutilation in Holloway
hierarchical_section_title: Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton / Women's suffrage / (1909) Imprisonment and self-mutilation in Holloway
caption_attribution_description: English: Draft manuscript of PRISONS &amp; PRISONERS, SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES published worldwide in 1914
context_page_description: Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton, usually known as Constance Lytton, was an influential British suffragette activist, writer, speaker and campaigner for prison reform, votes for women, and birth control. She sometimes used the name Jane Warton.
  Although born and raised in the privileged ruling class of British society, Lytton rejected this background to join the Women's Social and Political Union, the most militant group of suffragette activists campaigning for "Votes for Women".
  She was subsequently imprisoned four times, including once in Walton gaol in Liverpool under the nom de guerre of Jane Warton, where she was force fed while on hunger strike. She chose the alias and disguise of Jane Warton, an 'ugly London seamstress', to avoid receiving special treatment and privileges because of her family connections: she was the daughter of a viceroy and the sister of a member of the House of Lords. She wrote pamphlets on women's rights, articles in The Times newspaper, and a book on her experiences, Prisons and Prisoners, which was published in 1914.
context_section_description: Lytton was imprisoned in Holloway prison twice during 1909, after demonstrating at the House of Commons, but her ill health (a weak heart) meant that she spent most of her sentence in the infirmary. When the authorities discovered her identity, the daughter of Lord Lytton, they ordered her release. The British government were also aware that her health problems and hunger striking could lead to martyrdom. Infuriated by such inequality of justice she wrote to the Liverpool Daily Post in October 1909 to complain about the favourable treatment she had received.
  On 24 February 1909, Lytton wrote to her mother about prison and reform in Prisons and Prisoners (Chapter III-"A Deputation to the Prime Minister"):
  My Angel Mother, ... "If you ever see this letter it will mean that after joining the deputation I have been arrested and shall not see you again until I have been to Holloway...
  ... Prisons, as you know, have been my hobby. What maternity there lurks in me has for years past been gradually awakening over the fate of prisoners, the deliberate, cruel harm that is done to them, their souls and bodies, the ignorant, exasperating waste of good opportunities in connection with them, till now the thought of them, the yearning after them, turns in me and tugs at me as vitally and irrepressibly as ever a physical child can call upon its mother.
  While she was imprisoned in Holloway Prison during March 1909 she started to mutilate her body. Her plan was to carve 'Votes for Women' from her breast to her cheek, so that it would always be visible. But after completing the "V" on her breast and ribs she requested sterile dressings to avoid blood poisoning, and her plan was aborted by the authorities. Lytton wrote of the self-mutilation action in Prisons and Prisoners (Chapter VIII-"A Track to the Water's Edge"):
  I had decided to write the words "Votes for Women" on my body, scratching it in my skin with a needle, beginning over the heart and ending it on my face. I proposed to show the first half of the inscription to the doctors, telling them that as I knew how much appearances were respected by officials, I thought it well to warn them that the last letter and a full stop would come upon my cheek, and be still quite fresh and visible on the day of my release.
  ...(the blood)... The next morning before breakfast I set to work in real earnest and, using each of these [needle and broken hatpin] in turn, I succeeded in producing a very fine V just over my heart. This was the work of fully twenty minutes, and in my zeal I made a deeper impression than I had intended. The scratch bled to a certain extent. I had no wish for a blood-poisoning sequel, and, fearing the contact with the coarse prison clothes, when the wardress came to fetch me for breakfast I asked her for a small piece of lint and plaster. 
  
  I was taken down to the Senior Medical Officer....and the ward superintendent, who ushered me into his presence and exposed the scratched "V" for his inspection, were evidently much put out. I felt all a craftsman's satisfaction in my job. The V was very clearly and evenly printed in spite of the varying material of its background, a rib bone forming an awkward bump. As I pointed out to the doctor, it had been placed exactly over the heart, and visibly recorded the pulsation of that organ as clearly as a watch hand, so that he no longer need be put to the trouble of the stethoscope.
caption: Manuscript of Prisons and Prisoners, annotated by Constance Lytton: "I am aiming at a book of about 300 pages, to cost 2/6d. Sylvia's description of prison gates opening to a prisoner on outer cover. Portrait of me as Con. Another as Jane Warton on frontispiece."
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