Whip produced as evidence against Maud Arncliffe Sennett

Dog whip found in the possession of the suffragette Maud Arncliffe Sennett when arrested for breaking a window in the office of the Daily Mail, 21st November 1911. Her militant action was a response to the newspaper's failure to report the WSPU rally held a few days earlier in the Albert Hall, that raised over £4000. Initially arrested on a charge of using threatening behaviour, subsequently substituted for that of 'window breaking' Arncliffe Sennett was sentenced to a fine or 7 days imprisonment. Her fine was paid by Lord Northcliffe, the proprietor of the Daily Mail, and her stay in Holloway lasted only three hours.

Born in London, the daughter of an Italian immigrant wholesale confectioner, Maud and her husband Henry ran her family's firm of 'G Sparagnapane & Co, The Oldest Established manufacturers of Christmas Crackers and Wedding Cake Ornaments' in the Italian district of Clerkenwell. Like many women who followed the suffrage movement Maud was a member of several suffrage societies, often holding multiple memberships simultaneously. For some years she divided her allegiance between both the constitutionalists and the militants being a member of the NUWSS, the WSPU, the London Society for Women's Suffrage, the Women's Freedom League, the United Suffragists and the Actresses' Franchise League. As well as serving office in these four latter organisations she also founded, in July 1913 the Northern men's Federation for Women's Suffrage.
Maud was arrested several times for Suffragette militancy.