At the end of January,the National Portrait Gallery announced that, for the first time in twenty years, a portrait of Thomas Carlyle slashed by cleaver-wielding suffragette in 1914 was to be put on display. It will be included in an exhibition entitled ‘ Rebel Women’ to mark the centenary of the introduction of votes for (some but not all) women in 1918.The portrait’s attacker gave a false name to the police. Some have said that she was an American. Alistair Lexden revealed her true identity in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph with a small picture of the portrait on February 2.
SIR--It was on July 17 1914 that the picture of Thomas Carlyle in the National Portrait Gallery was attacked (“Portrait slashed by suffragette ‘Hatchet Fiend’ goes on show”, 30 January).
The 31-year-old assailant, who gave her name as Ann Hunt, was Margaret Gibb from Glasgow. She and her sister Ellison, well-known in their native city as chess-players, had been breaking windows in Dundee and then in London.
In March 1914, Margaret had been sentenced to two months in Holloway for attacking a policeman with a dog whip. Her next target was unfortunate, for Thomas Carlyle was a great hero to Emmeline Pankhurst, who was extremely displeased by the severe damage to his portrait.
The Gibb sisters returned in some disgrace to chess-playing in Glasgow, where their only recorded sources of excitement in later years were long, happy holidays together in Japan.
Lord Lexden
London SW1