​​Hilda Eliza was born in Quebec, Canada, in 1832 the youngest of seven children of Archibald, an advocate, and Agnes Campbell. In 1854 in Quebec Hilda married Charles Booth Brackenbury of the Royal Horse Artillery. In August 1857 they had a daughter, Hilda, the first of nine children: three daughters and six sons. During the early years of their marriage Charles served during the Crimean War and was then posted to Malta; returning to England, he rose to the rank of Colonel and later acting Major-General. Charles was a respected writer on military topics. Georgina Agnes, often known as Ina, was born in 1865 and Marie Venetia Caroline in 1866. The family was beset by tragedy. In 1870 their eldest daughter died, and in 1884 and 1885 their two eldest sons, William and Charles passed away. Only five years later Charles died suddenly from heart failure. A year later Hilda’s second eldest surviving son, Lionel, serving in the army, died in India. 

​Hilda left London, and along with Georgina, Maria and Hereward, her youngest son, she moved in with her sister and brother in law, Andrew, an expert in armaments, and Margy Noble, who lived in a grand style in Jesmond Dene House, Newcastle upon Tyne. Hilda’s eldest surviving son, Richard, had emigrated to America in 1885 and her other son, Cyril, was abroad working as a mining engineer. Georgina and Marie were both artists who studied at the Slade School of Art. Passenger lists record the two sisters travelling to America in 1894 where they spent a year. Ina and Marie quickly made the acquaintance of William Keith, an artist in San Francisco, whose friends and pupils they became returning to England in 1895. The following year, 1896, the two sisters accompanied by their mother, Hilda, returned remaining until the next spring. William’s brother, Cornelius in his biography Keith, Old Master of California, describes an exhibition held in 1898 by Ina, Marie and their brother, Richard. The latter had bought twenty-four pictures of William’s to London. Although not all of the paintings sold, the press cuttings Richard sent to William, which he in turn sent to the newspapers in San Francisco, led to articles which made him appear an artist of international fame enhancing his artistic reputation.

By 1899 Hilda and her two daughters returned to London moving into 2 Campden Hill Square London. In the same year, William sailed for Europe with John Zeile, an art patron. Marie excitedly wrote to him offering the use of a studio at their home. For whatever reason Ina and Marie saw little of William while he was in Europe, but their correspondence with him continued until he died in 1911. His second wife, Mary McHenry Keith, was a keen advocate for women’s suffrage. The first female graduate from Hastings College of Law Mary was a leading member of the Berkeley Political Equality Group whose activities played a crucial role in securing women’s suffrage in California in 1911. Mary clearly influenced Ina and Marie. In a letter dated 26 November 1908 William wrote ‘Now I will leave a space for Mrs Keith to gossip about woman suffrage.’ In another missive, Marie wrote to William ‘Won’t Mary crow if she gets Woman Suffrage before we do!’ 

​Initially, the three were members of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, but in 1908 they joined the Women’s Social and Political Union. Of Hilda, Marie said ‘Night after night we wrestled over the new ideas and her soul was troubled. But she had always been a brave seeker after the truth, and one by one she gave up the old ways of thinking and became fired with the just and true ideals of women.’ The studio, which had been offered to William for his use while in England, became the venue for suffragette meetings. In January 1908 the sisters hosted a suffragette meeting chaired by Evelyn Sharp, a founder of the WSPU, attended by two hundred women. The following month Ina and Maria took part in a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament which has become known as the Pantechnicon incident. The WSPU hired two Pantechnicons in which to convey forty-two suffragettes into the environs of the House of Commons. Once inside, a petition would be presented. Marie described ‘A great clattering of horses and a sense of jolting and rumbling which lasted for what seemed to use like an age. Suddenly the van stopped, and our hearts beat fast, and the doors swung open, and we saw the House of Commons before us and out we all flew.’  The suffragettes intermingled with the Members of Parliament entering the House of Commons but the police grabbed the women pushing them away. Only for the women to try again and again. The suffragette action was part of a three-day Women’s Parliament being held at Caxton Hall. When news reached the delegates of the ruckus at the House of Commons many more set off to support the women already there. Ina and Marie were among forty-seven women arrested.
 
Charged with obstruction they were both imprisoned in Holloway Prison for six weeks. Hilda commented that “I feel that my daughters are doing a service to their country in exactly the same way as my sons would do on the field.” Both daughters spoke at WSPU meetings and rallies. Both chaired platforms at a rally held in Hyde Park in the summer of 1908. Of the two Ina was, perhaps, the more active. She lobbied during the by-election in Peckham, south London, and campaigned successfully to prevent Winston Churchill from winning a seat at the Manchester by-election. Alongside campaigning, she was a regular speaker at meetings standing alongside luminaries such as Jessie Kenney; Emmeline Pethick Lawrence or Mary Gawthorpe. Marie was, though, equally highly regarded. She gave an interview to the Northampton Mercury, 22 October 1909. in the introduction, the interviewer describes her as “one of the very best exponents of her cause -a lady of culture and refinement, deeply in earnest.” When in 1910 the WSPU felt it needed more women confident in addressing meetings the Brackenbury family lent the studio for weekly classes in public speaking. This was so successful two additional classes were quickly added. Towards the end of 1910 Ina was along with Rona Robinson, the organiser for Manchester and District.
 

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​On 12 October Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst together with Flora Drummond were charged with ‘conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace’ after they spoke at a rally in Trafalgar Square urging people to join them ‘to rush the House of Commons’ two days later. Christabel, who had a Law Degree from the University of Manchester but was barred by her gender from practising, mounted a robust defence even securing Lloyd George and Herbert Gladstone as defence witnesses. The case opened at 10.30 am and continued until 7.30 pm. At that point, the Magistrate asked Christabel how many more witnesses she intended to call. When she announced there were fifty more, the Magistrate adjourned to the following day. However, when the court reconvened, he limited the number to three. After their testimony, the prisoners could address the court. One witness called on the first day was Marie who testified that Horace Smith, the Magistrate who had passed her sentence, had informed her that in sentencing her he was doing what he was told.
 
Maria often used to advertise meetings by using her artistic talents, chalking the details on paving stones or walls. Both sisters regularly addressed meetings across the country. 

​Hilda took part in Black Friday when she was arrested but released without charge.  In March 1912 Hilda, Ina and Marie were arrested for their role in the window-smashing campaign. Hilda, nearly eighty years old, was charged with wilful damage for smashing two windows at the United Service Institution in Whitehall. Ina and Marie were charged with obstruction. The trial of the three took quite some time as all seized the opportunity to address the court at length. All three were sentenced to payment of a fine or two weeks in prison.
The authorities took to attending suffragette meetings to take notes on the speeches. In one report, the detective boasts he is more than competent at shorthand, his note, therefore, being an almost verbatim transcript. The caveat to his boast is the intended destination of any report and who paid his wages. Even if read bearing this in mind a transcript of Ina’s speech, given in February 1912, provides an insight. The meeting was chaired by Christabel, who introduced Ina as ‘one of our best workers.’  Ina opened powerfully: ‘I want you to think for a moment of this Union as a great Regiment; it is a WAR!’ She dismissed thoughts that breaking windows was an act of hooliganism: ‘you are not a hooligan as you are acting in a great and noble cause…’ Ina made a call for one thousand women to damage one thousand windows. This would overwhelm the authorities ‘1000 women to be tried, 1000 gaping mouths that will want feeding.’ Like a general rallying, his men Ina urged ‘We must show no weakness, to falter would be to prevent, what we know would be a certain victory.’ When the report was filed in a bundle of evidence for potential prosecution, someone helpfully underscored in blue crayon the words which were considered to be the most significant.
Amongst the files is one which collated all the evidence the authorities had gathered about the WSPU and which was put before two leading barristers of the time, Archibald Bodkin, later Director of Public Prosecutions, and George Branson, later grandfather of Sir Richard Branson.  In respect of the Brackenbury women, the documents state that the family home, 2 Campden Hill Square, was let to the WSPU at £4 per week who used it as a nursing home at which suffragettes, released under the Cat and Mouse Act, could recover their health following force-feeding. In an article in the Sunday Post, 30 October 1921, Annie Kenney describes being taken by ambulance from Maidstone Prison to the Brackenbury property which was nickname Mouse Castle. Before this Campden Hill Square had temporarily been used as the headquarters of the WSPU when their occupation of Clement’s Inn became untenable following a police raid and the replacement offices at Tothill Street were, in turn, raided. This third move did not, though, deter the police from another raid at Campden Hill Square where it is noted they not only recovered WSPU documentation but also discovered Freida Graham, an alias for Grace Marcon. Grace had been sentenced to six months for damaging five paintings at the National Gallery in May 1914. She was released on 5 June ill from the effects of a hunger strike and subsequent force-feeding.
In a joint opinion, Bodkin and Branson favoured a civil action rather than a criminal one which they felt was ‘not …likely to succeed.’ In their view: ‘there can be no doubt that the methods adopted and recognised by the WSPU …are unlawful methods, and we think that persons joining or continuing to be members …with knowledge of its unlawful methods, … could be made civilly responsible in damages for injuries maliciously inflicted by other members…’. Both Hilda and Ina were named as persons who could, ‘subject to proof of the facts mentioned’, be joined as defendants. Grace, it was suggested, should be sued in the civil courts by the trustees of the National Gallery for damages incurred. The advent of the First World War put pay to the suggested approach.


The family also had a home, Brackenside in Peaslake, Surrey which was often used to house women who had been released under the Cat and Mouse Act whilst they recovered. In an advertisement for a tenant Ina or Marie described it as a ‘sunny HOUSE, in garden, on hillside above village; beautiful view: four bedrooms, three reception, bathroom, large Swiss balcony.’ Edwin Waterhouse, the founder of the accountancy firm Price Waterhouse and a prominent resident of Peaslake, commented in his memoirs ‘Peaslake is rather a nest of suffragettes.’
 
In June 1914 Hilda wrote an impassioned letter to The Times ‘The women have died, but that did not stop militancy’, continuing she named women who had died for the cause or those who were ‘partially dead in body though not in spirit.’  Thousands remained prepared to damage ‘pictures, churches, houses …’ but ‘policemen cannot be everywhere.’ Hilda observed that ‘fine young men’ were willing to give up their leisure pursuits to protect property but ‘Let the women die by all means, but to save our young men from such a terrible sacrifice let justice be done, and give women the vote!’
 
Hilda died in 1918, Maria in 1945 and Georgina in 1949.  The National Portrait Gallery owns two of Georgina’s portraits; one of the 17th Viscount Dillon and one of Emmeline Pankhurst.



 

Janet Augusta Boyd was born in 1855 to George and Anne Haig. Part of a large extended family Janet's niece Margaret Thomas Haig, and her cousins Louisa and Florence Haig also became suffragettes. In 1874 Janet married George Boyd, a solicitor. His father was Edward Fenwick Boyd, an industrialist based in the northeast of England who built a substantial family home called Moor House in the small village of Leamside on the outskirts of Durham. On his father's death, George inherited the house, and he, Janet and their four daughters moved in. George died in 1909, and this appears to have influenced Janet to contribute to the fight for women's suffrage.

Janet was first arrested on Black Friday, 18 November 1910, and released, like all the other participants, without charge. Janet made a statement to the enquiry into the events of Black Friday - she had witnessed the police pinching or twisting women's breasts. Due to rheumatism Janet was, she asserted, incapable of throwing a stone, as alleged, 'without danger to those beside me.'Janet appears to have like many; campaigners avoided the 1911 census. In June of the same year, the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, 12 June 1911, reported that Janet had refused to pay her rates amounting to £21. In consequence, an auction was to be held to raise funds. Janet offered a Spanish mantilla for sale, which was bought by her gardener. The auctioneer announced his support for the campaign permitting a member of the WSPU to address the crowd.

Janet was arrested on 19 November 1911 for breaking a window in the Strand. In court, she stated: 'I don't consider I was guilty, because I was doing it for a good purpose.' She was fined 10 shillings and three shillings for the damage or, in the alternative, 7 days imprisonment. It is unclear which she elected.Her second arrest was in March 1912. At the initial hearing, she was committed for trial alongside her cousin Florence Haig for each breaking four windows at D H Evans department store valued at £66. To the charge, Janet responded 'I have nothing to say.'  By the time the matter came to court the value of the windows broken was stated to be £250 and rather than four the pair had broken thirteen windows. Janet was sentenced to six months imprisonment. Florence, who said that if she were bound over to keep the peace, she would feel like a soldier deserting in the middle of battle, was sentenced to four months.Following a hunger strike when Janet was not force-fed, as she was deemed unfit to tolerate the procedure, she was released in June of that year, two months early. This was following a report that Janet and Florence, both refusing food, were 'holding their own well.' Her release report described Janet as 'Senile, eccentric and weak-minded.' She had resisted attempts to be fed by a cup and spoon and was showing signs of malnutrition 'in condition of her tongue and increase frequency of pulse.'She was one of the women who "signed" a handkerchief owned now by the Priest House at Hoathly.

​Janet died in December 1928 and is included in the Suffragette Roll of Honour.

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The next entry reads Dinah or Nina Boyle who was arrested on several occasions during 1912, 1913 and 1914. Born Constance Antonia in 1865 to Robert, an army captain and Frances, her father died when she was four years old. Her widowed mother was left with six children, the youngest of whom David was only a few months old. At some point, Nina went to live in South Africa where she was a journalist writing for the Transvaal Leader alongside nursing during the Boer War. Nina wrote to the Times newspaper of the unequal treatment metered out to Boer and loyalist refugees. Interested in women's rights she founded the Women's Enfranchisement League of Johannesburg.

Nina returned to England in 1911. She was initially active in the Victoria League and Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women. The former Nina resigned from feeling they were pursuing an anti-suffrage stance. She spoke at a meeting of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in Redhill in April 1911 about the suffrage campaign in South Africa. Present was Katherine Harley, sister of Charlotte Despard with whom Nina was soon to become closely involved. A month later she addressed a joint conference of suffrage groups in Edinburgh highlighting the unpaid work women undertook without which the country would suffer.

Shortly, thereafter she joined the Women's Freedom League whose President was Charlotte Despard. Nina regularly addressed meetings and was elected to the executive. She was also a member of the Tax Resistance League. Nina was arrested alongside Charlotte Despard and Julia Wood; all three were charged with obstruction as current regulations banned protests in Trafalgar Square. In breach of these, Charlotte mounted a plinth addressing a growing crowd, standing alongside her were Julia and Nina who rang a handbell. All three refused to climb down and were consequently arrested. Nina was fined 60 shillings or 10 days in prison. The other two were treated similarly. All elected to go to gaol. However, not long afterwards, their fines were paid, and they were released.

A similar ban on public speaking had been imposed in Hyde Park.  In May 1913 Nina and Annie Munroe were arrested for attempting to break the embargo. In court, Nina and Annie were fined 20 shillings or fourteen days imprisonment. They elected to go to prison. Both complained about the conditions of the prison vans use to convey them from Marylebone Police Court to Holloway Prison to the Prison Visiting Committee. The van picked up five women from the court proceeding from there to Marlborough Street Police Court where six men and two women were collected. After an hour's journey, the men were dropped off at Pentonville Prison and then the women at Holloway, only a short distance away. The van was designed to accommodate fourteen prisoners, and according to the guard, Nina and Anna elected to sit in an area known as the Association Cell which they had to themselves. The guard reported that he had been present in the passage of the van the entire journey and nothing untoward had taken place. Nina, however, asserted that she and Annie had witnessed 'most disgusting familiarities between a French street walker…and some of the men in the passage.'The Prison Visiting Committee, after consideration, raised their concern regarding the transportation of men and women together. The authorities stated that women were transported in 'closed compartments' while men were placed 'in the corridor of the van.' A decision was taken to hold an enquiry headed by a Police Commissioner and an Assistant Commissioner of Police; despite the fact, there was some confusion as to whether Nina's complaint was of her own experience or that experienced by another prisoner, Jane Short.Sworn statements were made by several women including Charlotte Despard, attesting that men had been present in the prison vans. Nina reported that although she and Annie were in a separate compartment the men had been able to make 'obscene gestures' at them and, another had 'reached his hand' into their section; 'it was a most disgusting, revolting and provoking performance.' Jane Short, it was reported, had travelled in the same compartment as a woman charged with soliciting. The Governor of Brixton Prison stated that he had often received complaints about the transportation; in particular that it was airless. He strongly felt that the adoption of motor vans would be a solution with different vehicles for male and female prisoners. One proponent of the Governor's proposal commented that 'in his personal experience a dozen or so [have been]taken to hospital on arrival' due to the high temperatures in the van.  

​Both Nina and Annie attended the enquiry. Giving evidence, Nina was clear she had no complaints with the officers in charge of the vans while Annie pointed out that while technically men and women were separated the necessity to keep the shutters up to let some air in meant that the men were able to see and communicate inappropriately with women prisoners. Both women urged the use of separate vans for the sexes and the employment of a matron for the female van. The enquiry was wide-reaching, including research on transportation to prison used in other cities. The concluding recommendations were motor vans and separate transport for women. Both changes were introduced over the next few years.

George Lansbury, a Labour politician, was a passionate advocate for women's suffrage. Originally elected as the Member for Parliament for Bow and Bromley in 1910 he resigned his seat in protest at the lack of support the Labour Party were giving to the campaign for women's votes. At the resulting by-election, George stood purely on the issue of suffrage losing to the Conservative candidate who coined the phrase 'Petticoat Government'. During April 1913 George addressed a WSPU rally at the Albert Hall. The authorities believed that his speech was an incitement to violence. Charged, after a trial and appeal George was sentenced to three months imprisonment unless he agreed to be bound over and provide sureties. His adamant refusal led to the prison sentence rather than any guilt in respect of the charges. Questions were asked in the House of Commons as to how a man could be imprisoned when he had not been found guilty and whether George was being accorded the privileges of a political prisoner; rights which were routinely denied to women prisoners. Despite this, the authorities note in the files that George was not receiving privileges because he was on hunger strike. An overt example of discrimination as the argument generally for denying the women prisoners was their cause was not political.

As head of the Political and Militant Department of the Women's Freedom League Nina wrote numerous letters in February 1914 as to the treatment of Marguerite Sidley and Lilian Ball. Both were sent to Holloway Prison on 11 February 1911 for four days, like George Lansbury, for failing to provide sureties and according to Nina's letter 'were violently and illegally subjected' to having their fingerprints taken. Neither, Nina pointed out, were 'under reasonable suspicion of concealing their identity.' As members of the Women's Freedom League, they were 'not concerned in the actions of a sister society which adopts sterner measures.' The charge against Lilian was obstruction. Marguerite's father joined in the protest describing in a letter to the Chairman of the Prison Commissioners what had taken place. A visiting Magistrate at Holloway Prison had asked Marguerite if she had any complaints to which she replied in the negative. As soon as he departed, Marguerite was removed from her cell to an area where 'five wardresses who by violence after a long struggle succeeded in taking my daughter's fingerprints.' ​

Not only did Nina and the two women prisoners seem unaware of the new regulations but so did the Prisoner Commissioners who wrote to the Home Secretary that the regulations, as they currently stood, were that an application needed to be made by the police to the Prisoner Governor for permission to take the fingerprints of an untried prisoner and force was only to be used with the consent of either the Home Secretary or a Justice of the Peace. The Commissioners suggested the rules should be modified to allow the taking of fingerprints of any prisoner if they agreed but if they objected only by force if the police informed the Prison Governor that a Justice of the Peace had agreed and the fingerprints were 'necessary for the purpose of justice' or if food had been refused and release was anticipated under the Cat and Mouse Act. The prison governor stated that Marguerite's resistance 'was not very serious' and 'she talked a good deal.' He concludes 'The fingerprints were very good.'The rules were modified in April 1914. While the modification did not go as far as the Prison Commissioners had suggested it was decreed that no attempt should be made to take fingerprints from prisoners convicted of minor offences such as obstruction unless 'fingerprints are necessary for the purpose of justice, or when the prisoner is known to be refusing food' or it was felt they would refuse to eat or had done in the past.  This would, therefore, apply, in future, to prisoners such as Lilian and Marguerite. ​

The most chilling photograph is of a woman believed to be Robina Macleod whose head is being forcibly held up. According to the correspondence on the file, the arms belong to the Prison Matron. The photographer helpfully pointed out that he could if necessary, remove the arms from further prints.  

After her release, campaigning swiftly resumed, Nina travelled the country addressing meetings. In July 1914 she was arrested and charged with obstruction. Five women, Nina gave her name as Ann Smith, chained themselves to the door in the waiting room of the Marlborough Street Police Court temporarily housed in Francis Street. The police cut them free, putting them outside of the building from whence they refused to move. They were each bailed for a £2 surety. At the trial, Nina, when entering the witness box exclaimed "Here we are again! It's quite like coming to see old friends." She was fined forty shillings or a week imprisonment. Nina attempted to raise several complaints during her trial, which were denied, but she was permitted to present her protests at the conclusion of the case. Again Nina complained about the prison vans stating 'the distressing effect of being brought' in such transport which left the occupants feeling ill on arrival which 'was a serious handicap to a prisoner in putting forward her own case before the Court' and 'the disregard of arrangements for decency at Police Stations.' In the Police Station, Nina had been taken to an area where men walked along the passage outside the women's cells 'without any warning to the occupants …the latter are subjected to observation not consistent with decency.' The Chief Magistrate passed Nina's complaint on. ​

Immediately after the outbreak of World War 1, Nina lobbied for the founding of a female body of Special Constables who could protect women and children in the absence of the men. She also was an active member of the Women Suffrage National Aid Corps formed to provide support services to women whose husbands were away fighting. Without any government approval for her proposal regarding women police Nina, together with Margaret Dawson, continued on their own and, by January 1915 the Corps of Women Police Volunteers had been formed. Courses were undertaken in first aid, court rules and self-defence. Everyone wore a uniform, Nina being one of the first. However, she split from the Corps when they sought to curtail the freedom of women by imposing a curfew on prostitutes. However, a women's force continued to operate in London and Brighton under the auspices of the Women's Freedom League.

In October 1915 Nina was charged with failing to register under the Alien Restriction Order 1915. The case was dismissed when it was held the summons had not been issued correctly. In due course, she was awarded damages for her illegal arrest. Nina used this experience to raise awareness of the lack of appropriate treatment for women held in police cells where there was no accommodation for women nor any women gaolers.

Towards the end of 1916, Nina travelled to the Salonika Front to act as a nursing orderly. It was widely reported in the press before this that her fiancée had been killed and perhaps that is what prompted her to take this step. There Nina renewed her acquaintance with Katherine Harley who was eager to learn of her sister Charlotte. Nina remained for eight months. On her return, she continued with campaigning and supporting the wives left behind.

In 1918 Nina announced that she would stand in a by-election as a prospective member of Parliament for Keighley. It was ruled that as a woman, she could stand, but as her nomination papers were incorrectly completed, she could not. This acceptance of a woman's right to stand allowed others to stand in the general election in 1918.

Nina remained politically active for the rest of her life mainly supporting the National Union of Women Teachers and the Save the Children Fund. She also wrote novels. She died in March 1943. ​