History's Toughest Heroes: Constance Bulwer-Lytton: Suffragette Rebel

History's Heroes

BBC

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.8 • 704 Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Constance Lytton was raised an aristocrat. But when she wakes up to women's suffrage, she goes undercover in solidarity, joining her working-class comrades in prison and staging a series of dangerous hunger strikes.

In History's Toughest Heroes, Ray Winstone tells ten true stories of adventurers, rebels and survivors who lived life on the edge.

As a lady, and part of the English upper-crust, when Constance Lytton was arrested for her involvement in the women's suffrage movement, she was given special treatment in prison. Desperate to be treated like everyone else, she disguised herself as the working-class ‘Jane Warton’. But when the time came to endure the horror of force feedings, it took everything she had to hold on to the mantra ‘no surrender’. A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Producer: Michael LaPointe Development Producer: Georgina Leslie Executive Producer: Paul Smith Written by Imogen Robertson Commissioning editor for Radio 4: Rhian Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Hello, I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a psychologist, and in my new podcast, Complex, I'll be your guide
0:14.4	through all the information and misinformation that's out there about mental health.
0:19.0	I'm joined by expert guests covering topics
0:21.8	from people pleasing to perfectionism,
0:24.2	burnout to empathy,
0:25.9	to find tangible advice
0:27.3	so we can understand ourselves a little better.
0:30.5	Complex with me, Kimberly Wilson.
0:33.0	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:36.7	From her cell, Prisoner 204 could hear the sounds of struggle and wretching.
0:43.7	Mones of pain.
0:46.1	They were coming for her next.
0:48.2	It's the anticipation of what is going to happen to you.
0:50.5	It's really horrified.
0:51.4	It was the 18th of January, 1910.
0:56.0	In prison suffrage acts were staging a hunger strike in Walton Jail.
1:01.2	It's a way of asserting your independence of saying to the authorities, you know, you can't contain us.
1:12.9	We're going to be in charge here.
1:15.6	But the authorities were forced feeding them.
1:17.8	Wardens pinned down each woman.
1:23.7	Then the doctor forced their jaws open with a wood or metal gag and thrust the feeding tube down their throats.
	...

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