Mary Leigh, one of the first militant Suffragettes, was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union by 1907. Mary, maiden name Brown, was married to a builder and served her first term of imprisonment in March 1907 for taking part in a deputation to the House of Commons.
On 30 June 1908, enraged by witnessing 'violence and indeceny' inflicted on Suffragettes by the police in Parliament Square, Mary and Edith New went to 10 Downing Street and threw stones at a window, this being the first act of physical militancy carried out by Suffragettes. Imprisoned a third time, the same year, for taking part in the rush on the House of Commons, Mary spent more than six months of 1908 in Holloway.
In 1909 Mary became drum-major of the newly formed WSPU drum and fife band, which often accompanied suffragette processions and demonstration. She continued to undertake militant acts and was repeatedly imprisoned between 1909 and 1912.
In 1909, whilst serving a term of imprisonment in Winson Green for throwing slates from the roof of a hall in Birmingham in which Asquith was speaking, Mary became one of the first Suffragette hunger strikers to be force-fed. She had hoped to be either treated as a political prisoner or released, as Marion Wallace-Dunlop had been when she first tried hunger-striking in Holloway a few weeks earlier. Instead, the prison authorities attempted to force nourishment into the starving Suffragettes, as desribed by Mary Leigh herself:
"On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful - the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down - about a pint of milk... egg and milk is sometimes used."
She was arrested and force-fed again in 1909, the WSPU brought a legal action against the prison governor and the home secretary, opening a defence fund in Mary's name. The jury accepted the government's defence that forcible feeding was necessary to save Mary's life.
In July 1912 Mary pursued Asquith to Dublin and set fire to a box at the Theatre Royal. Sentenced to five years penal servitude for this offence, she was released on a 'ticket of leave' on 21 September, in an emaciated condition, only to take part in the WSPU window-smashing campaign in November.
In 1913, Mary joined the socialist East London Federation of Suffragettes, founded by Sylvia Pankhurst, in protest at the domination of the Women's Social and Political Union by Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst. She continued to work for ELF after the WSPU ceased campaigning during the First World War, and later joined the Labour Party.
Her exact date of death is unknown, although she was alive in 1978.