Mary Clarke was the first suffragette to die for women’s rights to vote. She was a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) Executive and from 1909 until 1910 served as WSPU organiser based in Brighton. A talented decorative artist, she had escaped an abusive marriage and was physically frail. However, she was no less brave and committed to the suffrage cause than her famous sister, Emmeline Pankhurst, and the nieces she had cared for in childhood. Mary spoke at the Dome and in Hove Town Hall and lived at Minnie Turner’s guest house in Victoria Road. She was an effective organiser and was imprisoned three times. On 18th November 1910 she attended the ‘Black Friday’ events where, over a period of six hours, 300 women outside Parliament were brutally beaten and sexually assaulted. Mary was injured and thereafter was bedridden for 3 days. She then attended a protest about the police’s treatment of the women. She broke a police station window and was imprisoned for a month. She went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. After release from prison she travelled to Brighton to a welcome meeting, then returned to London to spend Christmas with her family.
On Christmas Day 1910, two days after her release from prison, she collapsed and died from a brain haemorrhage, almost certainly as a result of police violence and forcible feeding in prison. Mary’s death never received the publicity of Emily Wilding Davison’s death in 1913. Nonetheless, Mary Clarke’s obituary rightly called her “the first woman martyr who has gone to death for this cause.” At present there is no memorial to Mary anywhere in the country. Jean Calder, then Chair of Brighton and Hove Women’s History Group (BHWHG) identified Mary as a great subject to be the first women’s statue (other than that of Queen Victoria) to be placed in Brighton, a town where she was so influential.
The Mary Clarke Statue Appeal was launched in 2018 to get a statue erected somewhere highly visible in the city and more details about this campaign can be found here: https://maryclarkestatue.com/