William Ball (suffragist)

William Ball was born in Coton, Staffordshire in 1862 and married Jennie with whom he had five children.[1] Ball was a member of the National Transport Workers Federation.[2]

He was an athlete and a 'championship sprinter' of the Midlands. According to the WSPU pamphlet 'Torture In An English Prison' neither he nor his family had any history of mental illness.[2]

Ball's arrest and imprisonment in December 1911, was for breaking two panes of the Home Office windows in protest at the jailing of another man, Alan MacDougall who had supported the suffragettes attending political meetings. Ball also was against the Manhood Suffrage Bill which 'would bar the passage of a measure for votes for women'.[2]

Force feeding similar to that used on William Ball

A first offence, but with a sentence of two months at Pentonville prison, Ball was denied the rights to wear his own clothes, like the women suffragettes at the same time. He refused prison clothing and went on hunger strike, was force-fed for the first time on Christmas Day and then twice daily for 37 days.

This 'disgusting' process meant being held down by two warders, ' a tube thrust up his nose and down his throat' .[2]

Ball was forbidden from writing to his wife, Jennie, and denied visits, despite her frequent letters of appeal to the prison governor, Major Owen Davies. With four dependent children and only one wage, Jennie wisely wrote to the Prison Commission, Home Office with a request to insure Ball's life - which would require a doctor's visit to assess his health.[2] This too was denied with a statement from the prison that he was in is 'usual health' and due for discharge on 21 February; but on 12 February she was then informed that he was certified insane and transferred to a pauper's asylum.[2]

Solicitor Arthur Marshall, husband of WSPU's Kitty Marshall took Jennie to the Home Office to find out Ball was at Colney Hatch, Barnet. On visiting, Ball's wife found him 'very seriously ill and in an exceedingly emaciated condition with nose and throat swollen and inflamed from forcible feeding.' [2]

He could not talk, but in whispers said he had been in a locked punishment cell on two occasions. Arthur Marshall represented Ball's wife to the Lunacy Commission and got permission to move Ball to a private nursing home, paid for by his suffragette sympathisers.[2]

The WSPU handbill, written by Henry Nevison, journalist and sympathetic to women's suffrage, described Ball's experiences and blamed the Home Secretary Reginald McKenna. It emphasised his working class origins, and lack of influence in society. It said Ball 'dared to protest against injustice, Mr. McKenna had him inhumanely punished and tortured till his mind, not his principles and courage, gave way under his sufferings".

The WSPU made the point that he was secretly moved to the lunatic asylum. It also included Mary Leigh's description of force feeding:

'the drums of the ears seem to be bursting, and there is a horrible pain in the throat and breast'[3]

The Men's League for Women's Suffrage was told about the case at a March 1912 meeting in the Queen's Hall, Langham Place, London.[2] This was on the same day that the shop windows in Regent Street, Oxford Street and Picadilly area were being broken by small groups of suffragettes, resulting in charges of 'conspiracy' on the women leaders of WSPU. The leaflet theme Brutality on the Increase [4] and outrage at the treatment of Ball, was supported by influential male speakers: George Lansbury, M.P. for Bow and Bromley (Labour), Charles Mansell-Moullin and Victor Duval (brother of Elsie Duval), a founder of the Men's Political Union group.[2]

At her eighth trial, for suffragette activism, at Bow Street Court, for breaking Post Office windows, Ellen (Nellie//Nelliy) Crocker, cousin of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence denounced the hard sentences given to Ball (and MacDougall) as part of the justification for her own actions.[2]

The leaflet can be seen at the Museum of London[5]

Ball gets a specific mention in the National Archive records of the 1000 women's suffrage supporters arrested and imprisoned during 1906-14.[6]