In June 1914, the WSPU sent a letter, on headed notepaper with ‘Votes for Women’ emblazoned in purple at the top, to William Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, demanding that he take interest in their cause. They enclosed the above photograph. Their letter read:

 Dear Sirs,

Enclosed you will find a photograph of Miss Grace Roe. This Young Irish girl was arrested on May 23rd when the police raided the headquarters of the Women’s Social & Political Union in Kingsway, London. Since that date, she and others with her, have been in Holloway on remand, charged with conspiracy. Although an unconvicted prisoner, she has been submitted without mercy to the torture of forcible feeding. It seems to be the Government’s fixed intention to to make of this fine woman a mental and physical wreck, simply in order to wreak vengeance upon her for the valuable and self-sacrificing organising work undertaken by her during the past year on behalf of the W.S.P.U.

I refer you to the photograph, that you may judge for yourself whether this girl belongs to the type that can be supposed by sensible people to be a menace to society.

Are you content that men, who refuse to women the noblest form of self-expression possible– the right to serve humanity– should also subject these same women to torture, when their demand grows so insistent that there is no other way of silencing it?

Are you willing, as a servant of the Master who was hounded down by the law-givers, and the multitude of His age, to a shameful death, to see re-enacted in the twentieth century the terrible tragedy of right triumphing only through defiance of agony and death. I say “terrible” advisedly. Not by reason of the suffering undergone by those who give themselves, a sacrifice for many, but because their sufferings stamp hypocrisy upon the claims and achievements of modern civilisation.

Are you not prepared to stand definitely on the side of Right as against Expediency? Will you not do something for Miss Grace Roe, and other’s like her, by putting on record your belief in the justice of Government who substitute coercion and torture for the obvious and statesmanlike solution: Votes for Women?

I remain, yours faithfully, MF Ecoll.

This source comes from the +Walsh papers, 1914, File 378/1 Laity, Dublin Diocesan Archive.

 Katie Barclay wonders what the reaction of the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland was when receiving this letter. Was he surprised, bemused or in the context of ongoing worker’s strikes in Dublin, an impending war, and the fight for Irish independence, did he just think it was a sign of the times?