Gertrude Townend

Gertrude Catherine Townend was a British nurse and suffragette. She provided, with Nurse Catherine Pine, a care home for suffragettes recovering from imprisonment and force-feeding, and participated in suffragette gatherings.

Nursing career Gertrude Townend trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, qualified in 1901 and became a sister at (Great) Ormond Street Hospital. By 1908, she was running a private nursing home with Nurse Catherine Pine in 3 Pembridge Gardens, Notting Hill, London.

Suffragette activism

Townend and Pine's nursing home was watched by police looking for escaped suffragettes, due to return to prison to finish their sentences. At the home, medical assistance was provided by Dr. Flora Murray, a fellow suffragette. She trusted Townend and Pine to care for him while she travelled.

In 1912, after a campaign by The British Journal of Nursing and the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, Townend cared for Ellen Pitfield who had been released from prison after an arson incident, at the nursing home on Pembridge Gardens although she died a few weeks later.

In October 1913, Townend was herself injured when there was a crush as detectives raided the Bow Baths Hall meeting, where Sylvia Pankhurst was speaking, under the above Act. Sylvia escaped to be arrested the next day.