With All Her Might

For two years, Gertrude Harding lived an outlaw's life as a Militant Suffragette. Harding grew up in rural New Brunswick and spent a comfortable sojourn in Hawaii without a thought of voting. Then, in 1912, she arrived in London and saw the Militant Suffragettes in action. Harding began her Suffragette career by wrecking an orchid house at Kew Gardens. In 1913, she led Emmeline Pankhurst's bodyguard, a cadre armed with Indian clubs who defended Mrs. Pankhurst against the police. When government violence diminished, Harding turned to journalism, working in secret to publish The Suffragette. She even served as Christabel Pankhurst's private secretary in Christabel's Paris sanctuary. When the Suffragettes disbanded, Harding became a social worker, first in a munitions factory in England and later in Bound Brook, New Jersey.