page_title: Elsie and Mathilde Wolff Van Sandau
section_title: Hunger strike
hierarchical_section_title: Elsie and Mathilde Wolff Van Sandau / Hunger strike
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster by 'A Patriot', showing a suffragette prisoner being force-fed, 1910
context_page_description: Elsie and Mathilde Wolff Van Sandau, British suffragette sisters: Elsie was arrested for smashing shop windows, went on hunger strike and was awarded the Women's Social and Political Union Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour'. Mathilde was a musician and suffragette, and was imprisoned twice, also for smashing windows, and was a founder of London's women's chess club and active vegetarian.
context_section_description: Elsie Van Sandau was sent to prison and immediately went on hunger strike. Suffragettes on hunger strike were frequently force-fed and objected to this 'treatment' as well as being treated as criminals not as 'political' prisoners.  A roll-call of those being released, excluding Patricia Woodlock, who got a longer sentence was created (probably for the WSPU welcome event). In recognition of Elsie Van Sandau's suffering in prison, the WSPU awarded her a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' designed by Christabel Pankhurst, with the ribbon in the colours of the women's suffrage movement - green, white and purple, representing 'hope, purity and dignity' and a bar dated 4 March 1912.
  
  The presentation box was inscribed
  ELSIE WOLFF VAN SANDAU - BY THE WOMEN'S SOCIAL & POLITICAL UNION IN RECOGNITION OF A GALLANT ACTION, WHEREBY THROUGH ENDURANCE TO THE LAST EXTREMITY OF HUNGER AND HARDSHIP, A GREAT PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL JUSTICE WAS VINDICATED.
  National Archive record lists suffragette prisoners, including Elsie and Mathilde Wolff Van Sandau, who were officially pardoned when the WSPU discontinued militancy at the start of World War One.
caption: poster showing a suffragette being force-fed
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