Page 83 - All About History - Issue 12-14

The militant battle for women’s rights

n 4 June 1913, the king’s horse was at the Tattenham “The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can
Corner of the Epsom Racecourse, third from last in the speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of
flat-sprint race. As it rounded the corner, its huge limbs ‘Women’s Rights’, with all its attendant horrors, on which her
pumping back and forth like a piston, a woman ducked poor sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling
Ounder the spectators’ barrier and darted onto the and propriety – God created men and women different – then
middle of the track, directly into the horse’s path. Her name let them remain each in their own position – Woman would
was Emily Wilding Davison and her death would be the latest become the most hateful, heartless, and disgusting of human
outrage in an ever-more violent struggle for women’s rights. beings were she allowed to unsex herself; and where would
The actions of the lone suffragette would create totally be the protection which man was intended to give to the
opposed but equally emotional points of view. Newspapers weaker sex?”
vilified her and hate mail was sent to the hospital where In spite of the Queen’s anxiety, a united front was formed
she remained in a coma for four days before passing. when the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
Meanwhile, Christabel Pankhurst, living in Paris to avoid (NUWSS) formed in 1897, with the formidable Millicent
arrest, hailed Davison as, “a soldier fallen in a war of freedom.” Garrett Fawcett at its head. Committed to peaceful protest,
A tremendous funeral procession was arranged that used the Fawcett worked tirelessly for decades at the head of the
religious-tinged language that Davison had so often used to NUWSS. She began speaking on the subject of women’s
describe her efforts. This was no ordinary struggle; this was a suffrage in the late 1860s and steadily rose to a position
war, a crusade. of authority. However, by the late 1880s there was a clear
The fight for women’s suffrage had begun decades before division between Fawcett and the woman who would
Davison became the movement’s martyr. The issue had eventually lead the militant front: Emmeline Pankhurst.
been first raised in Parliament to general disdain in 1832, but Together with her daughters Christabel, Sylvia and Adela,
it had gathered momentum in the early years of the 20th Emmeline Pankhurst would be the driving force of the
century. Organisations sprang up all over the country, but militant suffragettes, sometimes working in tandem with
disapproval also accompanied the movement, with many the more peaceful suffragists but often deeply opposed
women believing that these suffragettes were either going to them. Driven and relentless, her involvement with the
too far or were simply misguided. One of these women called suffragist movement began in the 1880s and she quickly
Buckingham Palace home. In 1870, Queen Victoria wrote: graduated from hosting gatherings at her home to founding

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