Emily Davison, the daughter of Charles Davison and Margaret Davison, was born at Blackheath in 1872. Successful at school she won a place at Holloway College to study literature but two years later she was forced to leave after her recently widowed mother was unable to find the £20 a term fees. Emily found work as a schoolteacher in Worthing. Eventually she raised enough money to return to university education. After graduating from London University she obtained a post teaching the children of a family in Berkshire.
Emily joined the Women's Social and Political Union in 1906. She gradually became more and more involved in WSPU activities and in June 1908, was one of the chief stewards at a WSPU demonstration in London. The following year Emily gave up full-time teaching so that she could devote more of her time to the WSPU. Emily also became involved with the Workers' Educational Association.
In March 1909, Emily was arrested while attempting to hand a petition to the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. Emily was found guilty of causing a disturbance and sentenced to one-month imprisonment. Four months later she was in prison again for trying to get into a hall in London where David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was making a speech. Emily went on hunger strike and after five days she was released. In September 1909 she received a sentence of two months for stone throwing. Once again, she was released after going on hunger strike.
A few days after leaving prison, Emily Davison, Mary Leigh and Constance Lytton were caught throwing stones at a car taking David Lloyd George to a meeting in Newcastle. The stones were wrapped in Emily's favourite words: "Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." The women were found guilty and sentenced to one month's hard labour at Strangeways Gaol. The women went on hunger strike but this time the prison authorities decided to force-feed the women. In an attempt to avoid force-feeding, Emily used prison furniture to barricade the door of her prison cell. A prison officer climbed a ladder and after forcing the nozzle of a hosepipe through a window, filled up the cell with water. Emily was willing to die, but before the cell had been completely filled with water the door was broken down.
James Keir Hardie, the leader of the Labour Party, complained about the treatment of Emily Davison in the House of Commons. The general public appeared to agree that Davison had been badly treated. Emily decided took legal action against the men at Strangeways Gaol who had been responsible for the hosepipe incident. On 19th January 1910, Judge Parry pronounced in Emily's favour, awarding damages of forty shillings.
The scale of her militant acts increased and in December 1911 she was arrested for setting fire to pillar-boxes. She was sentenced to six months and during her spell in prison she went on two hunger strikes. Emily Davison was now convinced that women would not win the vote until the suffragette movement had a martyr. Emily took the decision to draw attention to the suffragette campaign by jumping down an iron staircase. Emily landed on wire-netting, 30 feet below. This prevented her death but she suffered severe spinal injuries.
Once she had recovered her health, Emily Davison began making plans to commit an act that would give the movement maximum publicity. In June, 1913, at the most important race of the year, the Derby, Emily ran out on the course and attempted to grab the bridle of Anmer, a horse owned by King George V. The horse hit Emily and the impact fractured her skull and she died without regaining consciousness.
Although many suffragettes endangered their lives by hunger strikes, Emily Davison was the only one who deliberately risked death. However, her actions did not have the desired impact on the general public. They appeared to be more concerned with the health of the horse and jockey and Davison was condemned as a mentally ill fanatic.
Will Dyson, Miss Davison (Daily Herald, 1914)
Forum Debates
Votes for Women
Women and Football
Men's League for Women's Suffrage
Women's History
(1) The Manchester Evening Chronicle described what happened at the Liberal Party meeting at the Free Town Hall on 20th October 1905.
Miss Christabel Pankhurst and Miss Annie Kenney were ejected and later arrested for obstruction outside the building. At the police court Miss Pankhurst was fined half a guinea for assaulting the police officers by hitting them in the mouth and spitting in their faces, and five shillings for obstruction, or in default seven days. Miss Kenney was fined five shillings, or three days. Rather than pay the fine the ladies elected to undergo the imprisonment.
Miss Kenney was released on Monday morning. Miss Pankhurst period expired this morning. By seven o'clock about two hundred people had collected outside the gates of Strangeways Gaol. When Miss Christabel appeared she was hailed with a great cheer and instantly surrounded by a host of male and female admirers. The first to greet and embrace the prisoner was her mother, Miss Pankhurst. Miss Pankhurst fell into the arms of her mother, and the two wept for joy after having been parted for a whole week. As soon as she could break away from her admirers Miss Pankhurst called out, "I will go in again for the same cause. Don't forget the vote for women."
(2) Emily Davison was arrested on 30th July 1909 when she disrupted a speech being made by David Lloyd George at Limehouse in London.
We went outside Lloyd George's meeting at Limehouse. I was busy haranguing the crowd when the police came up and arrested me. We were charged next day at Thames Police Court. I and Mrs. Leigh got the longest sentences, i.e., two months, the rest mostly got two weeks. The governor told us that if we went quietly to our cells we could keep our clothes. Then they took us off one by one after a struggle. When I was shut in the cell I at once smashed seventeen panes of glass. Then they rushed me into another cell. They forcibly undressed me and left me sitting in a prison chemise. Then I was dressed in prison clothes and taken into one of the worst cells, very dark, with double doors.
(3) Emily Davison was sent to Strangeways Goal in September 1909, for throwing stones at the windows of the Liberal Club. Emily decided to go on hunger strike. This account was included in a letter that she wrote to a friend in Switzerland.
In the evening the matron, two doctors, and five or six wardresses entered the cell. The doctor said "I am going to feed you by force." The scene, which followed, will haunt me with its horror all my life, and is almost indescribable. While they held me flat, the elder doctor tried all round my mouth with a steel gag to find an opening. On the right side of my mouth two teeth are missing; this gap he found, pushed in the horrid instrument, and prised open my mouth to its widest extent. Then a wardress poured liquid down my throat out of a tin enamelled cup. What it was I cannot say, but there was some medicament, which was foul to the last degree. As I would not swallow the stuff and jerked it out with my tongue, the doctor pinched my nose and somehow gripped my tongue with the gag. The torture was barbaric.
(4) On June 19th 1909 Emily Davison decided to make a protest against forcible feeding. Emily explained her actions in a statement issued by the WPSU.
In my mind was the thought that some desperate protest must be made to put a stop to the hideous torture, which was now our lot. Therefore, as soon as I got out I climbed on to the railing and threw myself out to the wire-netting, a distance of between 20 and 30 feet. The idea in my mind was "one big tragedy may save many others". I realised that my best means of carrying out my purpose was the iron staircase. When a good moment came, quite deliberately I walked upstairs and threw myself from the top, as I meant, on to the iron staircase. If I had been successful I should undoubtedly have been killed, as it was a clear drop of 30 to 40 feet. But I caught on the edge of the netting. I then threw myself forward on my head with all my might. I know nothing more except a fearful thud on my head. When I recovered consciousness, it was to a sense of acute agony. When I recovered consciousness, it was to a sense of acute agony.
(5) Sylvia Pankhurst described Emily Davison's act at the 1913 Derby in her book The Suffrage Movement.
Emily Davison and a fellow-militant in whose flat she lived, she had concerted a Derby protest without tragedy - a mere waving of the purple-white-and-green at Tattenham Corner, which, by its suddenness, it was hoped would stop the race. Whether from the first her purpose was more serious, or whether a final impulse altered her resolve, I know not. Her friend declares she would not thus have died without writing a farewell message to her mother.
(6) Emmeline Pankhurst described Emily Davison's death in her autobiography My Own Story.
Emily Davison clung to her conviction that one great tragedy, the deliberate throwing into the breach of a human life, would put an end to the intolerable torture of women. And so she threw herself at the King's horse, in full view of the King and Queen and a great multitude of their Majesties' subjects.
(7) Mary Richardson was with Emily Davison at the Derby in 1913. Mary Richardson wrote about the incident in her book Laugh a Defiance.
A minute before the race started she raised a paper on her own or some kind of card before her eyes. I was watching her hand. It did not shake. Even when I heard the pounding of the horses' hoofs moving closer I saw she was still smiling. And suddenly she slipped under the rail and ran out into the middle of the racecourse. It was all over so quickly.
(8) The Daily Mirror, 5th June, 1913
Anmer struck the woman with his chest, and she was knocked over screaming. Blood rushed from her nose and mouth. The king's horse turned a complete somersault, and the jockey, Herbert Jones, was knocked off and seriously injured. An immense crowd at once invaded the course. The woman was picked up and placed in a motor car and taken in an ambulance to Epsom Cottage Hospital.
(9) Votes for Women, 12th June, 1913
Waiting there in the sun, in that gay scene, among the heedless crowd, she had in her soul the thought, the vision of wronged women. That thought she held to her; that vision she kept before her. Thus inspired, she threw herself into the fierce current of the race. So greatly did she care for freedom that she died for it.
(10) The Suffragette, 13th June 1913
Miss Davison, who was completely unconscious, was taken at once to the Epsom Cottage Hospital. The shock of the injuries she had sustained was so severe that for some time it was not thought that she would rally at all. On Thursday afternoon her pulse was a little better, but it was evident that there was bleeding going on inside the skull from a fracture across the base, and from the injured brain. On Friday an operation was performed which gave great temporary relief, but the injured portion of the brain never recovered, and the heart and the breathing gradually failed.
(11) In her book Unshackled, Christabel Pankhurst described how she reacted to the news of Emily Davison's death.
Mother was ill from her second hunger-strike when there came the news of Emily Davison's historic act. She had stopped the King's horse at the Derby and was lying mortally injured. We were startled as everyone else. Not a word had she said of her purpose. Taking counsel with no one, she had gone to the racecourse, waited her moment, and rushed forward. Horse and jockey were unhurt, but Emily Davison paid with her life for making the whole world understand that women were in earnest for the vote. Probably in no other way and at no other time and place could she so effectively have brought the concentrated attention of millions to bear upon the cause.
Available from Amazon
Educational Websites
Standards Site, BBC History, PBS Online, Open Directory Project, Virtual Library,
Education Forum, History GCSE, Design & Technology, Learn History, Music Teacher Resource,
Freepedia, Teach It, Science Active, Geography IST, Brighton Photographers, Sussex Photo History,
Crompton History, Universal Teacher, English Teaching, English Online, History Learning Site,
History on the Net, Black History, Greenfield History, School History, Active History, I Love History,
E-HELP, Ed Podesta Blog, Macgregorish History, Historiasiglo20, Sintermeerten, ICT4LT |
News and Search
Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, New York Times,
Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Google News, Channel 4, ZDNet,
Google, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Netscape, Ask, Search,
Go, Looksmart, Dogpile, Raging Search, All the Web, Kartoo, Search Engine Watch, About
|
