Handmade set of playing cards

Pack of patience playing cards made in Holloway prison by the suffragette prisoner Mrs Kitty Marshall (full name Emily Katherine Willoughby Marshall)
In her autobiography Suffragette Escapes & Adventures, Kitty describes how she made this set of cards during her first period of imprisonment in Holloway in 191 from four postcards found in a library book and the sides of a Thermogene box. The ink, she writes 'I got through writing to the Home Secretary and the red colour out of a red book from the prison library....With a little water and an old stick I found in the prison yard, I made the hearts and diamonds. I used as a table, my slate, which I hade in my nightdress case, so that when I heard the key being turned in the prison door, I could draw the flap of the nightdress case over the cards. I usually had my prayer book open so that I could escape detection. I also used toilet paper, with the help of a little milk, to cover the peephole in the door, where the wardresses looked through'.
The artist Kitty Marshall first attended a pro-suffrage meeting in 1906. Within a few years she became involved in the militant suffragette campaign. As a married suffragette, her involvement in the campaign was dependent on the support of her husband Arthur. Arthur, a solicitor, proved very useful to the militant Votes for Women campaign and regularly acted on behalf of arrested suffragettes.
Kitty was first imprisoned in November 1910 for throwing a potato at the fanlight over the front door of Home Secretary Winston Churchill. She was subsequently imprisoned a further three times.
A member of Emmeline Pankhurst's bodyguard Kitty was trained in Jujitsu and, in 1913, in her role as bodyguard she was arrested for assaulting a police officer during the rearrest of Emmeline Pankhurst.