Suffragette's hunger strike medal lost for 100 years sold at auction

The medal was awarded to Elsie Wolff Van Sandau by the Women's Social & Political Union

A medal awarded to a suffragette who went on hunger strike while on trial has sold at auction for £12,500.

Elsie Wolff Van Sandau received the medal from the Women's Social & Political Union to honour her strike, which came after she was arrested for allegedly smashing a window in 1912.

It was discovered in a drawer in a house in south-west London after going missing for more than 100 years.

The medal was expected to fetch between £7,000 and £10,000.

It was auctioned at Hansons Auctioneers in Etwall, Derbyshire.

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Ms Van Sandau, the granddaughter of a private chaplain to the Duchess of Kent, was arrested after being accused of smashing a window on Covent Garden during a demonstration on 4 March 1912.

She had previously been arrested during the Black Friday riots at Westminster in 1910, when about 300 suffragettes met a wall of policemen outside Parliament, and was awarded the medal to recognise "gallant action whereby through endurance to the last extremes of hunger and hardship".

The medal is in its original case which includes writing praising Miss Sandau for vindicating "a great principle of political justice"