Maude Edwards

Maude Edwards was a Scottish feminist and suffragette. She was imprisoned in Perth Prison in 1914 for slashing John Lavery’s portrait of King George V hanging in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. She was force-fed in prison despite having a heart condition.

Campaigning for women's suffrage Maude Edwards was tried before a jury in Edinburgh Sheriff Court charged with slashing a portrait by John Lavery on 23 May 1914. The picture, A Portrait Study of the King for The Royal Family at Buckingham Palace, 1913, was one which the king himself had approved.

The portrait had been hanging in "the Great Room" in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, mounted on a special screen surmounted with a gilt curtain and crown. Edwards, described as a "shabbily dressed woman" in a cloak had put watchers off due to the keen interest she took in the exhibits, peering through "her thick spectacles" at the pictures. and Edwards stated that it had taken a "lot of nerve to do such work". A brief account of the trial was described in the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch.STORMY COURT SCENES EXTRAORDINARY PROCEEDINGS AT EDINBURGH TRIAL SUFFRAGETTE SENTENCED Extraordinary scenes were witnessed in Edinburgh Sheriff Court to-day...The accused immediately on being put into the dock commenced a running fire of commentary on the Court procedure, which she kept up during the course of the trial, which lasted for twenty minutes. Over a score of police were on duty in various parts of the Court, while a similar number of plain clothes constables were also prepared for eventualities. On entering the Court loud applause from a large number of suffragettes, who occupied the Court, greeted the accused, while cheers were raised on her name being called.When asked to answer the indictment, which charged her with having, on 23rd May, in the Royal Scottish Academy, wilfully and maliciously struck and cut with a hatchet and damaged a portrait of his Majesty King George V, by John Lavery, RSA, the accused shouted to his Lordship, "I will not be tried. I am not going to listen to you or anyone whatever."The Sheriff - I take this as a plea of not guilty. (Applause in Court.) The courtroom was cleared and a number of Edwards' supporters had to be forcibly ejected, raising a "rousing cheer" as they left. Grace Cadell, doctor and suffrage campaigner, attended the trial and when the Sheriff, Lord Maconachie, ordered the court to be cleared, she was reported by the press to have resisted so strongly that it had required the efforts of three police officers to remove her.

Maude Edwards on her own - "a sufficient witness in herself" When the court had finally cleared, the Sheriff then directed a question to the Clerk of the Court to which Edwards responded.

The Sheriff replied "I am not talking to you."

'But I am speaking to you,' replied Miss Edwards, 'and that makes all the difference. One day we shall sit in judgment on you. This is nothing but a Star Chamber. What about Arabella Scott? Why is she being forcibly fed? I am going to talk all day, and it will do you good.' Edwards went on hunger strike fully expecting that her medical certificate would exempt her from force feeding. The play is called Cat and Mouse.