Iconic Photos

The suffragettes did obtain a martyr at the Epsom Derby on 4th June 1913 when Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913) gave her life for her cause under King George V’s horse Anmer. The circumstances surrounding the incident were unclear on whether it was a suicide or an accidental death. Davison entered the race track (possibly to attach a suffragette flag to the King’s horse) and stepped out in front of the horse.

Instead of stopping, Anmer trampled her, knocking her unconscious. She died in a hospital few days later. Although her detractors had insisted that she had simply intended to cross the track, believing that all horses had passed. However, her record (she went on hunger strike in Strangeways Prison; she threw herself down an iron staircase as a protest at Holloway prison; during 1911 census, she hid in a cupboard in the Palace of Westminster overnight so that on the census form she could legitimately give her place of residence as the “House of Commons”, and in 1913, she planted a bomb at David Lloyd George’s newly home in Surrey), suggested the otherwise. Anmer made a full recovery and made a return to racing. Herbet Jones, the jockey however was so ‘haunted by that woman’s face’ that he eventually committed suicide in 1951. Below, the newspaper headline read: “Anmer rolling over [jockey Herbert] Jones and Emily Davison in the act of falling”.

No matter what her intentions were, Davison’s death marked the end of the radical phase of the woman liberation movement. Her funeral was the last occasion for the suffragettes to display the pomp and circumstance that they had so memorably demonstrated  in earlier rallies. War would soon overshadow all domestic concerns , and for all their anti-establishment fervor, suffragettes channelled their energies into war effort. Emmeline Pankhurst toured the country, this time to give patriotic speeches. Simultaneously, war would prove to be a great catalyst for their movement; as women displaced men in factories and mine, they practically demonstrated abilities and competencies that were denied to them in theory. After the war, they would readily gain the vote.

See a reel of the event here.