Helen MacRae

Helen MacRae (fl. 1909–1914) was a British suffragette who won a Hunger Strike Medal from the Women's Social and Political Union, and was one of those who embroidered the Suffragette's Handkerchief whilst in prison. Life Macrae and her sister Georgiana supported women's suffrage. In 1909, they both adopted a 2-year-old girl from South Wales, Hilda Maud. Their third sister was Betty. The sisters lived together as adults and opened their home to recovering suffragettes. Activism MacRae was a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) but soon joined the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), and in 1911, she joined with Muriel Sackville (Countess de la War) and her daughter, Marie Corbett and daughters Margery and Cicely, Lilla Durham, and others to establish the East Grinstead Suffrage Society (EGSS). In an EGSS parade through the town on their way to join the Women's Grand March in London, they were jeered by local people and had rotten tomatoes, eggs and turf thrown at them. MacRae left NUWSS to join WPSU and got to know Edith Downing and Emily Davison. Her first four-month prison sentence in 1910, was for breaking windows in Whitehall.