ABSTRACT
While some close to the centre of the WSPU became increasingly disillusioned with militancy from 1910, for other suffragists it still offered the best hope for their cause. Alice Clark (1874-1934) was beginning her slow recovery from the tuberculosis of the throat and lungs which had threatened her life the previous year. She was still largely bed-ridden at her family home in Street, Somerset, and remained speechless, under medical advice, until the latter months of 1910. It was a tedious and frustrating time, observing from a distance events in which she wished urgently to play a part. She wrote to her great-aunts, Anna Maria and Mary Priestman: ‘I rather long to go and break some windows. I am not sure whose but I think any liberal offices would answer the purpose.’1
