Fanny Parker 1875 - 1924

Fanny was the niece of Lord Kitchener and a militant suffragette. She was a WSPU organiser in Dundee and in Edinburgh. She also had links with the Scottish University Women's Suffrage Union.

She accompanied Ethel Moorhead on many stone throwing sessions. She participated in the window-smashing raid in London, that resulted in a 4 month prison sentence in Holloway. She smashed windows in Thomas Cook's and a display case at the Wallace monument. They tried first smearing windows with treacle, then sticking brown paper to it with ‘Votes for Women’ on it. The idea was to deaden the sound but they were caught anyway. Lord Kitchener was ‘disgusted’ and thought that ‘she might have some consideration for her family’.

She was one of the women inside the Music Hall in Aberdeen (along with May Grant), where Lloyd George was speaking, with the clear intention of causing a disturbance. She was sentenced to 10 days imprisonment. (Ethel Moorhead was outside.)

The stand at Ayr racecourse was burnt down, as was Perth cricket pavilion. Fanny tried to hold an open-air meeting in Perth the next day – and somewhat unsurprisingly was howled down by a hostile audience and needed Police protection.

Fanny and four others stopped the car with Prime Minister Asquith in it (by standing in the road) and squirted cayenne pepper in the occupants’ faces. It was not in Asquith’s interest to prosecute and they gave false names but Ethel recorded it.

Whilst Ethel was in prison, Dr James Devon, medical member of the prison commission told Janie Allen (suffragette journalist) that he “was of the opinion that if a woman’s health could only be preserved by allowing her to set fire to other people’s houses, we must with regret, risk her health.”

One of the repercussions of this attitude was the dramatic burning down of Whitekirk church, one of Scotland’s most beautiful medieval churches, within a few hours of Ethel’s release. From Ethel’s memoir it was Fanny wot done it.

Her next arrest was where she was caught trying to burn down Burns’s Cottage in Alloway.

Fanny and Ethel were members of the Women's Freedom League National Service during the World War campaigning for Women war workers to be properly paid.

Photo fragment: Crown Copyright, the National Archives of Scotland