In the early years of the 20th century, British women who were agitated for voting rights were depicted as figures of fun in newspapers and magazines. The Suffragettes as they came to be known were dismissed as unfeminine zealots to find their god given roles as mothers and daughters. Frustrated with their lack of progress as New Zealand and Australian could vote, the suffragettes embarked in a militant campaign in 1905 to focus public attention on their cause. It began when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were arrested for this orderly behavior and assault. The pair disrupted a liberal party meeting to demand women suffrage and went to jail rather than pay the fine. Two years later, Christabel’s mother Emily and her sister Sylvia moved to London to join in the campaign. A woman in her fifties who had fought for women’s rights all her life, Emily inspired many other respectable middle class wives and hundreds of women became engage in the widespread civil disobedience.
On the 21st of June 1908, hundreds of thousands of protesters flocked to Hyde Park to call on the government to get women to vote. But despite such support, the government refused to pass the legislation that would introduce never to suffrage. The suffragettes resorted to directed action smashing windows, shaming themselves to railings, defying peace orders. Many were arrested and sentenced to prison terms where they went on hunger strikes and suffered the pain and degradation of being force fed.
Lady Constance Lytton, a daughter of a wealthy aristocratic family was one of those arrested, but authorities quickly released when they discovered the background. In 1910, she disguised herself as a working pass woman and was sentenced to two weeks hard labor. In her disguise, Lady Constance was treated brutally, force fed eight times when she embarked on a hunger strike. The newspaper article she wrote on her release exposing the appalling conditions injured by suffragette prisoners led to imprudence and suffragettes began to be treated as political rather than third class prisoners.
Public opinion was also influenced by the events on November 18th 1910 which came to be known as Black Friday. That day, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith shut down the conciliation bill that would have given women to vote. Police viciously manhandled hundreds of suffragettes who attempted to storm parliaments in protest, two women died and many were arrested. However, some of the suffragettes’ militant actions alienated the public. Thousands of pieces of mail were destroyed when suffragettes poured acid, lampblack and tar to postboxes around Britain. Communications were disrupted when they cut telegraph and telephone lines between London and Glasgow.
Emily Davidson and five accomplices bombed a partially completed house being built for politician David Lloyd George. But Davidson’s unorthodox approach had tragic consequences at the 1913 Epsom Derby. She attempted for a suffragette flag on the king’s horse during the race. She was knocked down and died of her injuries a few days later. Davidson’s death intensified the suffragette’s struggle in an orgy of vandalism known as the holy war which was inflicted on sports grounds, churches, the castle and the railway station. The National and Tate galleries and the Wallace Collection were forced to close after women deliberately damaged five paintings. The British Museum would only admit women if they carried a letter from someone willing to be responsible for their behavior.
When the first world war broke out in 1914, most suffragettes suspended their activity to concentrate on the war effort. With the shortage of able bodied men, the suffragettes encouraged women to take jobs as doctors, nurses and missions workers. But women were still prohibited from voting in British elections.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services