Source Database
Section 23: Derby Day
(23.1) 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.
(23.2) 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.
(23.3) 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.
(23.4) 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.
(23.5) 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.
(23.6) 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.
(23.7) 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.
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