Maud Joachim (1 August 1869 – 16 February 1947) was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union, one of the groups of suffragettes that fought for women to get the right to vote in the United Kingdom. She was jailed several times for her protests. Joachim was one of the first suffragettes to go on hunger strike when imprisoned, a protest at not being recognised as political prisoners.[1]
Early life and education
Maud Amelia Fanny Joachim was born to Ellen Margaret (née Smart) and Henry Joachim in Paddington, London, on 1 August 1869.[2] She had three sisters, Gertrude was older than her and Dorothy and Nina were younger. Her father, a wool merchant had been born in Hungary and became a naturalized British subject in 1856, and received a certificate of naturalization in February 1874 following the Naturalization Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 14).[3] Her paternal uncle was the violinist and composer Joseph Joachim. Joachim was educated at Girton College between 1890 and 1893, studying moral science.[4][5]
Suffragette activism
Joachim was militant and a member of the hard line Women's Social and Political Union which was led by Emmeline Pankhurst, becoming involved in 1907.[1] She enjoyed the camaraderie and reflected that she was now with people with the same purpose.
Imprisonments
In February 1908 Joachim when groups of suffragettes were delivered to the front door of the House of Commons transported in pantechnicon vans, this event was called the "Pantechnicon Raid", the group was arrested, and she was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment.[6]
In 1909 she was in Scotland working in Aberdeen. That November she joined a protest that disturbed a talk by Winston Churchill at his constituency in Dundee. She was arrested along with Helen Archdale, Catherine Corbett and Adela Pankhurst and sentenced to ten days in Dundee Prison. During their sentence the five women went on hunger strike.[7][5][8]
Mary's brother William Blathwayt and Joachim at Eagle House in 1910
In an imaginative protest organised with Katherine Douglas Smith, Joachim held up traffic in the West End by the two riding black bay horses up the Strand, at the same time advertising a suffragette meeting at the Royal Albert Hall.
Residency at Eagle House
Joachim was invited to Eagle House in 1910. A plaque was made and her photograph was recorded by Colonel Linley Blathwayt.[9]
Alongside a number of other WSPU members, in 1913 Joachim moved away from the organisation and radical action as violent protest escalated to arson. She moved her energies towards the socialist East London Federation of Suffragettes, which offered practical support to working-class women alongside campaigning for the vote.
In the 1939 Register, Joachim was listed as living on private means in Somerset Terrace in St Pancras London[2] and later moved to Mouse Cottage, Steyning, where she lived until her death on 16 February 1947.[4]
Personal life
Joachim was a vegetarian.[14] She was given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU, the box engraved with "Presented to Maud Joachim 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".[15] An inscription on the back of one of the medal's bars commemorates her being FED BY FORCE 1/3/12 (1st March 1912).[16]
Joachim's WSPU medal was offered for auction at Bonhams on 3 October 2023 and sold for £41,600 inc. premium.[19]Glasgow Women's Library set up a fundraising campaign to buy it, raising £28,000 from c.500 individual donations with the rest of the purchase price supported by the Scottish Government's National Fund for Acquisitions.[1] The medal featured as the star object in the exhibition We Deserve A Medal: Militant Suffrage Activism at the library (1 February-31 May 2024).[20]
