{{Short description|British suffragette group}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Use British English|date=March 2025}} thumb|Militant Suffagettes for surveillance sheet 1. Margaret Scott (Margaret Gertrude Schencke) 2. Olive Leared (née Hockin) 3. Margaret McFarlane Mary Wyan and others The '''Young Hot Bloods''' (YHB) were a secret group of young unmarried suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) who undertook militant campaigning activity and pledged to "danger duty".
== History == thumb|236x236px|Adela Pankhurst The Young Hot Bloods were formed by Jessie Kenney and Adela Pankhurst in 1907.<ref name=":0">Christensen, McKenzi (2019). "[https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol48/iss1/7 "Baby Suffragettes": Girls in the Women's Suffrage Movement across the Atlantic]". ''The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writin''g. '''48''' (1): 20. Retrieved 21 March 2025.</ref> The group's name derived from a comment in the ''Scotsman'' newspaper about Emmeline Pankhurst: "Mrs Pankhurst will of course be followed blindly by a number of the younger and more hot-blooded members of the Union”.<ref>"Suffragist conspiracy charge". ''The Scotsman''. 9 May 1913. p. 8.</ref> Their meetings were held at a tea shop in the Strand.<ref name="google">{{Cite book |last=Crawford |first=Elizabeth |author-link=Elizabeth Crawford (historian) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ygXwlK_mj50C&dq=young+hot+bloods+suffrage&pg=PT2111 |title=The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 |date=2 September 2003 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-43401-4 |pages=287–288, 765 |language=en}}</ref>
Members were under 30 years old, unmarried and pledged to undertake "danger duty".<ref name="google"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Stephanie J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WEY5EQAAQBAJ&dq=young+hot+bloods+suffrage&pg=PT221 |title=Watching Women: Militant Suffragists Write the British Surveillance State, 1905–1924 |date=18 December 2024 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1-4875-5565-8 |language=en}}</ref> They were assigned an older suffragette to accompany them during operations.<ref name="telegraph">{{Cite news |last=Riddell |first=Fern |date=20 April 2018 |title=The story of the Young Hot Bloods: the secret terrorist wing of the suffragettes |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/story-young-hot-bloods-secret-terrorist-wing-suffragettes/ |access-date=21 March 2025 |work=The Telegraph |language=en-GB |issn=0307-1235 |archive-date=19 February 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250219104947/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/story-young-hot-bloods-secret-terrorist-wing-suffragettes/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
The YHB group remained secret until May 1913, when it was uncovered during the conspiracy trial of eight members of the suffragette leadership, including Rachel Barrett, Flora Drummond and Annie Kenney.<ref name="spartacus-educational">{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |title=Young Hot Bloods |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/Young_Hot_Bloods.htm |access-date=21 March 2025 |website=Spartacus Educational |language=en |archive-date=13 May 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250513153501/https://spartacus-educational.com/Young_Hot_Bloods.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>
== Activities == [[File:Olive Leared (née Hockin) 1914.jpg|thumb|319x319px|Photograph of Olive Hockin created by the United Kingdom's Criminal Record Office.]] In 1908, the YHB choir sang outside Holloway Prison to keep up morale for suffragette inmates.<ref name="google"/> In 1909, a public exhibition of photographs of YHB militant campaigners was organised in London. Militant action included bombs on commuter trains and attacks on MPs’ houses, churches, museums, racecourses, sports grounds and post boxes throughout Britain.<ref name="telegraph"/>
YHB member Olive Hockin was arrested in 1913 after arson attacks on the Roehampton Golf Club and on a house at Walton Heath in Surrey belonging to politician David Lloyd George. Her flat was said to contain stones, kerosene and false car number plates. She was convicted and sentenced to four months imprisonment.<ref name="google"/> Hockin claimed she was not guilty of the charges and objected to the male-dominated justice system, saying that: "a court composed entirely of men have no moral right to convict and sentence a woman, and until women have the power of voting I shall continue to defy the law, whether I am in prison or out of it."<ref name="spartacus-educational"/> Fellow prisoner Margaret Scott, claimed that Hockin carved the chair in her cell.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Sibert |first1=Jo |last2=Jarvis |first2=Becky |date=8 February 2015 |title=Strong Willed & Courageous … Margaret Schencke – A Woman of Fortitude |url=https://womenshistorynetwork.org/strong-willed-courageous-margaret-schencke-a-woman-of-fortitude/ |access-date=21 March 2025 |website=Women's History Network |language=en-GB}}</ref> thumb|293x293px|Jessie Stephen On 19 March 1913, Olive Beamish (who used the alias Phyllis Brady) and Elsie Duval (who used the alias Millicent Dean) set fire to Trevethan House,<ref name="chertseymuseum">{{Cite web |title=The Suffragette Movement in the Local Area |url=https://chertseymuseum.org/local_suffragettes |access-date=21 March 2025 |website=Chertsey Museum |language=en |archive-date=3 August 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190803224137/http://chertseymuseum.org/local_suffragettes |url-status=live }}</ref> the unoccupied home of Lady Amy White, widow of Field Marshal George White, in Egham, Surrey. The fire caused £2,000-£3,000 of damage.<ref name="spartacus-educational"/> They were sentenced to 6 weeks imprisonment in Holloway Prison. Both went on hunger strike and were the first prisoners released under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913, known as the Cat and Mouse Act.<ref name="chertseymuseum"/>
On 17 May 1913, YHB member Miriam Pratt set fire to an empty building of the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women in Cambridge, with a paraffin-soaked cloth.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Richmond |first=Marsha L. |date=1997 |title="A Lab of One's Own": The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women at Cambridge University, 1884-1914 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/383769 |journal=Isis |volume=88 |issue=3 |pages=422–455 |doi=10.1086/383769 |pmid=9450359 |issn=0021-1753|url-access=subscription }}</ref> She chose this target as "what good was a university laboratory, and a university education, if women were refused the right to be awarded their degrees?"<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Riddell |first=Fern |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KQWgDwAAQBAJ |title=Death in Ten Minutes: The forgotten life of radical suffragette Kitty Marion |date=19 April 2018 |publisher=Hodder & Stoughton |isbn=978-1-4736-6621-4 |pages=170 |language=en}}</ref>
Jessie Stephen dropped acid bombs into pillar boxes across Glasgow.<ref name=":0" />
Kitty Marion is often cited as being responsible for the arson attack on the former home of the Hastings MP Arthur Du Cros Levetleigh, in East Sussex. However, no contemporary police records, court proceedings, or admissions by Marion document her responsibility for the Levetleigh fire. The assertion was made only in later secondary works since 1999 rather than primary evidence and have no basis in fact.
== Reception == The ''Sheffield Evening Telegraph'' described the group in 1913:<ref name=":0" /> {{Blockquote|text="Some of the younger members of the Women’s Social and Political Union are still more difficult to deal with . . . Curiously enough, these young hot bloods are not the women who would get a vote . . . they own no property, and are not married women . . . none of them are likely to get the vote, and personally, I am convinced that they don’t care about it. What they want is the excitement and morbid satisfaction of doing something wrong."}} A secret bomb disposal unit hidden on Duck Island in St James's Park, London, was established in response to the YHB bombing attacks.<ref name="telegraph"/>
== Notable members == thumb|Photograph of Lilian Lenton created by the United Kingdom's Criminal Record Office
* Olive Beamish<ref name="spartacus-educational" /> * Hilda Burkitt * Eileen Mary Casey * Helen Millar Craggs * Irene Dallas * thumb|247x247px|Vera Wentworth in 1909Elsie Duval * Clara Giveen<ref>{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |title=Clara Giveen |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/Clara_Giveen.htm |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Spartacus Educational |language=en}}</ref> * Olive Hockin<ref name="spartacus-educational" /> * Vera Holme<ref>{{Cite web |title=Vera 'Jack' Holme |url=https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3246/vera-jack-holme |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Women's Suffrage Resources}}</ref> * Elsie Howey<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=Suffrage Societies Database Guide |url=https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3231/suffrage-societies-database-guide |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Women's Suffrage Resources |archive-date=2 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201202094142/https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3231/suffrage-societies-database-guide |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Hollowayettes |url=https://artsandculture.google.com/story/3AXB981UR9ErJg |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Google Arts & Culture |language=en |archive-date=23 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231223012656/https://artsandculture.google.com/story/3AXB981UR9ErJg |url-status=live }}</ref> * Jessie Kenney<ref name=":0" /> * Mary Leigh * Lilian Lenton * Kitty Marion<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite news |last=Mohan |first=Megha |date=2018-05-26 |title=Kitty Marion: The actress who became a 'terrorist' |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44210012 |access-date=2025-03-24 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB |archive-date=27 May 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180527005204/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44210012 |url-status=live }}</ref> * Stella Newsome<ref>{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |title=Stella Newsome |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/Stella_Newsome.htm |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Spartacus Educational |language=en}}</ref> * Adela Pankhurst<ref name=":0" /> * Christabel Pankhurst * Miriam Pratt<ref name=":1" /> * Grace Roe<ref>{{Cite web |title=Miss Eleanor Grace Watney Roe |url=https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/database/2392/miss-eleanor-grace-watney-roe |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Women's Suffrage Resources |archive-date=14 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241214175244/https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/database/2392/miss-eleanor-grace-watney-roe |url-status=live }}</ref> * Jane Short<ref>{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |title=Jane Short |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/Jane_Short.htm |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Spartacus Educational |language=en |archive-date=18 May 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250518041736/https://spartacus-educational.com/Jane_Short.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> * Norah Smyth * Jessie Stephen<ref name=":0" /> * Florence Tunks<ref>{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |title=Florence Tunks |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/Florence_Tunks.htm |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=Spartacus Educational |language=en |archive-date=3 February 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250203001612/https://spartacus-educational.com/Florence_Tunks.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> * Vera Wentworth<ref name=":3" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Vera Wentworth (1890-1957) |url=https://outstoriesbristol.org.uk/people/biographies/vera-wentworth/ |access-date=2025-03-24 |website=OutStories Bristol |archive-date=21 March 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250321102659/https://outstoriesbristol.org.uk/people/biographies/vera-wentworth/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
== See also ==
* Women's Social and Political Union * List of suffragette bombings * Suffragette bombing and arson campaign * Timeline of women's suffrage
== References == {{reflist}} {{Authority control}}
Category:First-wave feminism in the United Kingdom Category:British suffragettes Category:Women's Social and Political Union