Culpable Complicity: the medical profession and the forcible feeding of suffragettes, 1909–1914

The forcible feeding of suffragettes in prisons in Edwardian Britain was an abuse that had serious physical and psychological consequences for those fed, and one in which the medical profession was complicit, by failing as a body to condemn the practice as both medically unnecessary and dangerous. An over‐cosy relationship with the Government through the five‐year period during which compulsory feeding took place resulted in either silence or outright support for the Home Office from the profession’s key spokesmen—the Presidents of the Royal Colleges and the editors of the main medical journals. Sir Victor Horsley, an eminent but controversial figure, led opposition to forcible feeding, but, with relatively few male colleagues backing him, it continued unchecked. Undeterred, Horsley worked tirelessly to make his profession aware of the realities of the practice and recognise that, as the militant campaign had escalated, the Home Office had used the doctors administering it to punish, rather than treat, the hunger strikers.