Surveillance image of the suffragette prisoner Grace Marcon, alias 'Frieda Graham'

Surveillance image of the suffragette prisoner Grace Marcon, alias 'Frieda Graham'. The Home Office commissioned the undercover photography of militant suffragettes from 1913. This surveillance photo was taken as Grace exercised in the yard of Holloway prison. Such photos were used to identify militant suffragettes attempting to enter public buildings such as museums or art galleries.
Grace Marcon was the daughter of Canon Marcon of Norwich. In August 1913 she was arrested and charged with obstruction during a scuffle in Whitehall between the police and a group of Suffragettes led by Sylvia Pankhurst following a demonstration organised by the Free Speech Defence Committee. Although found guilty she did not receive a custodial sentence and was 'bound over'. Rearrested in October, on a charge of obstruction and assault, Grace did, on this occasion receive a sentence of 2 months in Holloway. In May 1914 Grace, using the alias Frieda Graham, was arrested for damaging five paintings at the National Gallery, including Giovanni Bellini's The Agony in The Garden and Gentile Bellini's Portrait of a Mathematician. Found guilty at trial she was sentenced to six-months imprisonment. Released on 5 June, delirious with hunger strike she cut off the long hair seen in the photograph.
Grace later went to Canada to marry the photographer Victor Scholey who took the original photographs of the Siege of Sidney Street, later returning to Norfolk in the 1930s as a single parent. She remained single for the rest of her life.