Frances Parker

Frances Mary "Fanny" Parker (24 December 1875 – 19 January 1924) was a New Zealand-born suffragette who became prominent in the militant wing of the Scottish women's suffrage movement and was repeatedly imprisoned for her actions.

Early life Born in Little Roderick, Kurow, Otago, New Zealand, she was one of five children of Harry Rainy Parker and his wife, Frances Emily Jane Kitchener. Her family lived at the Waihao Downs Homestead from 1870 to 1895, when they moved to Little Roderick. Little Roderick is a division of Station Peak on the north side of the Waitaki River, Waimate District (not in Kurow, as reported elsewhere). Parker came from a well off background and was a niece of Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener. Kitchener came to New Zealand to advise the New Zealand Government on defence in 1910; in February Kitchener went to Rotorua with his sister Mrs Parker (Frances' mother) and Mr Harry Parker.

Her mother died in London in 1925, and believed that her brother was still alive and a prisoner in Germany.

In New Zealand, women were granted the franchise on 19 September 1893 and voted for the first time in the election held on 28 November 1893. Parker left New Zealand in 1896 to study at Newnham College, Cambridge. Her tuition there was paid for by her uncle. and later with Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union, for which she became organiser in the West of Scotland in 1912. with the intention of disrupting an appearance by David Lloyd George. On both occasions, she was released after going on hunger-strike for several days. There was controversy when Parker wrote about her brutal treatment in 1914 in Votes for Women newspaper, under the name 'Janet Parker' .

During the war, Parker served in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and was awarded an OBE. After the war, she lived in Arcachon, near Bordeaux, where she died in 1924. Parker left her Hunger Strike medal to her friend and fellow activist, Ethel Moorhead.

Legacy In 2014, Victoria Bianchi wrote a play, CauseWay, based on Parker and Moorhead's attempt to blow up Burns Cottage 100 years previously. The play was performed at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway.

In 2016, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa purchased Parker's suffragette medal, the Women's Social and Political Union Medal for Valour, from an auction house in Scotland and will display it at the museum in Wellington. It is thought to be the only suffragette medal with a New Zealand connection.

The Suffragette Handkerchief with Parker's embroidered signature and 67 suffragette names or initials can be seen at Priest House, West Hoathly, Sussex.