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Suffrage Spotlight – Jessie Thompson Bond

Posted on 5th July, 2026 in Suffrage Spotlight, WSPU

Not all of the women who joined the Women’s Social and Political Union became notorious militants. Many worked quietly behind the scenes, and though their stories are less spectacular than the more well-known tales of suffragette derring-do, the WSPU could not have operated without them.

One such woman was Jessie Thompson Bond. She was born in Seacombe, Birkenhead in 1891. Her father was William James Bond, a clerk who worked at Mersey Dock and Harbour Board, and her mother was Hannah, both born in Liverpool. Jessie had a brother, William and and a sister, Frances.

Jessie was active in the Wallasey branch of the WSPU by 1911, but left the area in 1912. The branch organiser noted “Her departure is regretted, as she has always been a most willing worker” (Votes for Women, 10 May 1912). I have not been able to find any evidence that she continued to be active in the WSPU in another district, or in any other suffrage societies.

Jessie does not seem to have engaged in any militant acts, though her great niece told me she thought Jessie had chained herself to some railings. However, I have been unable to confirm that Jessie was involved in any of the various “railing chaining” incidents during the WSPU campaign. She is not listed as a suffragette prisoner in the Suffragette Roll of Honour. I have not found any entry for her in the 1911 Census, so it is possible she was an evader.

A suffragette chained to railings. Elizabeth Crawford has suggested that this is a staged photograph. Only a few women ever did chain themselves to railings. 

Her father, William James Bond, died suddenly in 1915 aged forty nine. In 1916 her brother, William, a private in the 17^th Liverpool Regiment, was killed in France. According to Jessie’s great niece, William’s spirit visited his sister in Liverpool on the night of his death at the Somme.

I have found no information about Jessie Thompson Bond’s activities after leaving Wallasey WSPU. In 1932 she married James Lunnon, a trade union and Labour activist. Lunnon was born in London in 1869. His father was a postman and bootmaker who died when James was three. By the age of six James was earning money as a boot boy. At nine he became an errand boy for a firm of Highgate grocers, and went on to work as a commercial traveller for a wholesale grocery firm. He gave up this work to become a smallholder in Norfolk. He was organising secretary of the National Agricultural Workers’ Union for many years, and served on the Agricultural Wages Board from 1917. He was also active in the Adult School Movement and the Society of Friends (Quakers).

In 1908 he was appointed organiser for the South Western Federation of the Independent Labour Party and worked in Gloucestershire. He ran twice for election as a Labour candidate for Taunton, in 1921 and 1935.

After their marriage Jessie, James and their sons lived in Edlesborough, Buckinghamshire, where James Lunnon had a small holding of sixty acres. He was chair of Edlesborough Parish Council, and was appointed a JP in 1940. He died in 1952 at the age of eighty two, and was remembered as “a pioneer member of the Labour Party and a member of the National Union of Agricultural Workers for the last 40 years” (Bucks Herald, 18 January 1952).

Jessie’s only brush with the law that I have been able to discover was when she was in her seventies. She was involved in a rather sad court case. She had given a £2 cheque to a friend, who then forged her signature and over the next year wrote cheques totalling nearly £1,000. Having asked for 205 other offences to be taken into account, the friend was sentenced to two years in prison.

Jessie Thompson Lunnon died on 22 June 1968.

Picture Credit

The Women’s Library on Flickr, No Known Copyright Restrictions.

See Elizabeth Crawford, ‘Suffrage Stories: Everywhere in Chains, Why and Where?’