Emily Davison

Emily Wilding Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was an English suffragette who fought for votes for women in Britain in the early twentieth century.

She soon became known in the organisation for her militant action; her tactics included breaking windows, throwing stones, setting fire to postboxes, planting bombs and, on three occasions, hiding overnight in the Palace of Westminster—including on the night of the 1911 census.

[16] Formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, the WSPU brought together those who thought that militant, confrontational tactics were needed to achieve their ultimate goal of women's suffrage.

[1] She began taking increasingly confrontational actions, which prompted Sylvia Pankhurst—the daughter of Emmeline and a full-time member of the WSPU—to describe her as "one of the most daring and reckless of the militants".

[23][24] After her release she wrote to Votes for Women, the WSPU's newspaper, saying that "Through my humble work in this noblest of all causes I have come into a fullness of job and an interest in living which I never before experienced".

[25] In July 1909 Davison was arrested with fellow suffragettes Mary Leigh and Alice Paul for interrupting a public meeting from which women were barred, held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George; she was sentenced to two months for obstruction.

[27] She was arrested again in September the same year for throwing stones to break windows at a political meeting; the assembly, which was to protest at the 1909 budget, was only open to men.

[28] She subsequently wrote to The Manchester Guardian to justify her action of throwing stones as one "which was meant as a warning to the general public of the personal risk they run in future if they go to Cabinet Ministers' meetings anywhere".

[29][30] Davison was arrested again in early October 1909, while preparing to throw a stone at the cabinet minister Sir Walter Runciman; she acted in the mistaken belief the car in which he travelled contained Lloyd George.

[23][33] The historian Gay Gullickson describes the tactic as "extremely painful, psychologically harrowing, and raised the possibility of dying in jail from medical error or official misjudgment".

[34] Following the first episode of forced feeding, and to prevent a repeat of the experience, Davison barricaded herself in her cell using her bed and a stool and refused to allow the prison authorities to enter.

[44] A WSPU delegation of around 300 women tried to present him with a petition, but were prevented from doing so by an aggressive police response; the suffragettes, who called the day Black Friday, complained of assault, much of which was sexual in nature.

Sentenced to six months in Holloway Prison, she did not go on hunger strike at first, but the authorities required that she be force-fed between 29 February and 7 March 1912 because they considered her health and appetite to be in decline.

[54] Following the force-feeding, Davison decided on what she described as a "desperate protest ... made to put a stop to the hideous torture, which was now our lot" and jumped from one of the interior balconies of the prison.

[23][56] She wrote to The Pall Mall Gazette to explain why she "attempted to commit suicide": I did it deliberately and with all my power, because I felt that by nothing but the sacrifice of human life would the nation be brought to realise the horrible torture our women face!

[1][59] In November 1912 Davison was arrested for a final time, for attacking a Baptist minister with a horsewhip or dogwhip, while on a stationary train in Aberdeen railway station; she had mistaken the man for Lloyd George.

[61] On 4 June 1913 Davison obtained two flags bearing the suffragette colours of purple, white and green from the WSPU offices; she then travelled by train to Epsom, Surrey, to attend the Derby.

She reached up to the reins of Anmer—King George V's horse, ridden by Herbert Jones—and was hit by the animal, which would have been travelling at around 35 miles (56 km) per hour,[63][64] four seconds after stepping onto the course.

[73] The historian Elizabeth Crawford considers that "subsequent explanations of ... [Davison's] action have created a tangle of fictions, false deductions, hearsay, conjecture, misrepresentation and theory".

[89] Tanner considers that Davison's choice of the King's horse was "pure happenstance", as her position on the corner would have left her with a limited view.

[90] Examination of the newsreels by the forensic team employed by the Channel 4 documentary determined that Davison was closer to the start of the bend than had been previously assumed, and would have had a better view of the oncoming horses.

[96][97] The Suffragette newspaper marked Davison's death by issuing a copy showing a female angel with raised arms standing in front of the guard rail of a racecourse.

[99] Religious phraseology was used in the issue to describe her act, including "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends", which Gullickson reports as being repeated several times in subsequent discussions of the events.

[104] The women marched in ranks wearing the suffragette colours of white and purple, which The Manchester Guardian described as having "something of the deliberate brilliance of a military funeral";[103] 50,000 people lined the route.

[116][117] Crawford sees the events at the 1913 Derby as a lens "through which ... [Davison's] whole life has been interpreted",[11] and the uncertainty of her motives and intentions that day has affected how she has been judged by history.

Collette also sees a more current trend among historians "to accept what some of her close contemporaries believed: that Davison's actions that day were deliberate" and that she attempted to attach the suffragette colours to the King's horse.

[120][121] Davison was a staunch feminist and a passionate Christian[122][123] whose outlook "invoked both medieval history and faith in God as part of the armour of her militancy".

[124] Her love of English literature, which she had studied at Oxford, was shown in her identification with Geoffrey Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, including being nicknamed "Faire Emelye".

[129] She attended the annual May Day rallies in Hyde Park and, according to the historian Krista Cowman, "directly linked her militant suffrage activities with socialism".

[134] In 1990 the Labour MPs Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn placed a commemorative plaque inside the cupboard in which Davison had hidden eighty years earlier.