With All Her Might - Gretchen Wilson

As she was growing up, Gertrude Harding lived comfortably and sheltered, first in a farm in New Brunswick, Canada, where she rode her horse and camped in the woods, and later in Honolulu, under the watchful eye of her older sister. But on her first trip to London in 1912, Harding came face to face with one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century—suffragism—and, unhesitatingly, she joined the ranks of women who, through poster parades and acts of civil disobedience, were agitating for the right to vote.

Before long, she graduated from being a neophyte volunteer to a dedicated activist and organiser. She sneaked into Kew Gardens late one night with a fellow suffragette and, to the amazement of the British establishment, destroyed the Orchid House and its rare (and rather expensive) inhabitants. Loyal to the suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst, Harding helped to organise a cadre of club-carrying female bodyguards to protect Pankhurst from rough treatment at the hands of arresting police officers.

She worked in secret to edit The Suffragette while some of her compatriots were in jail or in hiding or weakened from hunger strikes. Harding's humanitarianism was evident as well during her years in central New Jersey, where she worked as a social worker in a munitions factory.

Harding's detailed accounts of the life and times of a militant suffragette are included in this volume, illustrated with her own pen sketches, political cartoons, and photos, and annotated by her great-neice Gretchen Wilson, who provides historical background and a sensitive appreciation for Harding's adventurous personality. For anyone curious about the early years of the women's movement, With All Her Might offers an insider's perspective on the subterfuge, relentless creativity, and bold confrontations with the law that were an integral part of the fight for a woman's right to vote.