until she managed to evade the police. On 12 May 1914, she smashed Hubert von Herkomer's portrait of the Duke of Wellington in the Royal Academy with an axe, causing £15 worth of damage. When arrested, she was reported to have said, "I have done my duty, and I wish that every other woman would do the same." She was sentenced to six months' imprisonment but this time she was not released and, because she continued her hunger and thirst strike, she was forcibly fed. She was finally released on 10 August, under an amnesty for suffragette prisoners at the outbreak of the First World War. She had been forcibly fed 236 times. Ansell was given a WSPU Hunger Strike Medal, the citation engraved on the bar is 'For Valour' and the inscription says"PRESENTED BY THE WOMEN'S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION IN RECOGNITION OF A GALLANT ACTION, WHEREBY THROUGH ENDURANCE TO THE LAST EXTREMITY OF HUNGER AND HARDSHIP A GREAT PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL JUSTICE WAS VINDICATED."The medal ribbons were in the WSPU colours of green white and purple. One of her brothers was the barrister J. E. Ansell, who later published a history of the family name. It was to his children that Gertrude Ansell left her small estate. She died at the General Hospital in Saffron Walden on 7 March 1932 following an operation for gallstones. References External links Criminal Record office surveillance photos, National Portrait Gallery 1861 births 1932 deaths 19th-century English people 20th-century English people British animal welfare workers British women's rights activists English suffragists Feminism and history Hunger Strike Medal recipients Women's Social and Political Union