Monthly Archives: September 1912

September 29, 1912, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

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September 29, 1912, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

In the letters she writes during the month of September, Davison repeatedly calls

upon her own personal experience to refute seemingly “easy” solutions to the vexing

question of how suffragettes should be treated, what constituted decent treatment,

and what constituted inhumane treatment. She argues her case in the pages of “anti”

papers like The Pall Mall Gazette, and The Sunday Times, which disseminate simple

solutions for complex problems, because they discount the pain and suffering the

suffragettes have undergone. In this letter she uses strong language to rebut the idea

that forcible feeding is “easy and harmless,” pointing out the physical trauma that

accompanies it, the risk of infection, of pneumonia or pleurisy, and the incredible

pain both somatic and mental that the process inflicts—on men and on women. In

another topical reference like the one to the Japanese count Nogi [Sept. 17, 1912],

she concludes by describing forcible feeding as akin to the atrocities then being

suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of the Turks who wished to exterminate

them. Forcible feeding was a threat to women’s bodies and women’s minds, a way of

torturing them under the guise of protecting them, a brutal and sadistic treatment

designed to rob women of their agency, humanity, and perhaps of their lives. But

suffragettes like Emily Davison saw beyond the pain, transforming their suffering into

a powerful tool to expose the illogicality and inhumanity of the government’s position.

Sir, –In your issue of September 22 you have an article on forcible feeding

which you term ‘a misunderstood process’ and ‘easy and harmless.’ In this

article an elaborate description is given of the forcible feeding of a gentleman

who evidently was subject to delusions, the delusion in this case no doubt being

that he had passed over to another life and was being fed by a ‘divine’ process!

But his being so, the case of this poor deluded gentleman and the cases now

before the public differ in one very important essential. The article says ‘he did

not discuss the matter when the tube was suggested, but acquiesced quietly (the

italics are mine). Thenceforth for the space of nine months he took food in no

other way.’ Naturally, he would not refuse ‘the food of the gods’! But this point

removes the value of the whole case and makes all the difference. Even Mr.

McKenna had to own in the House of Commons that the great danger lay in the

resistance of the prisoner. And this is the crux of the whole matter—that we do

resist and intend to resist, and even if some of our more delicate women in the

horror and upset of the operation are so affected as to be almost paralysed for

the moment, still the mental resistance is there.

Moreover, the whole operation is carried out under totally different

conditions from those which hold good in hospitals and lunatic asylums, where it

is necessary. The differences are so considerable that nobody could possibly

claim that the cases are analogous.

(a) Proper precautions are not taken to sterilize the tube before it is used

for another prisoner. This may be occasionally done, but it is not general,

especially when the number of Suffragists to be fed is large. The risk from such

a neglect is incalculable, for the microbes from consumption or any other disease

can easily be passed from the throat of one prisoner to that of another or others.

(b) The liquid administered has to be of a proper temperature. If it is not,

there is danger of the added discomfort of severe indigestion to all the other

injuries and indignities. As far as my own experience goes, the liquid was almost

invariably cold, and I certainly had severe indigestion in addition to other trouble.

(c) If the operation is carried out with much force, or the ‘patient’ has

delicate mucous membranes in the nasal passages and throat, these are liable

to injury and must certainly in time become inflamed and sore. In the case of

any of our members who are singers severe injury has been done and those who

speak have had their voices ruined for a time.

(d) Then there is the still more terrible risk if the tube is passed into the

wrong passage, a thing that can quite easily be done. If any of the liquid passes

into the lungs the victim is certain to die, unless the quantity is of the smallest

amount and the prisoner of the strongest physique. This danger has already

happened among our Suffragist prisoners (vide the Lancet, August 24), the

prisoner was hurriedly released and suffered a severe attack of pneumonia and

pleurisy. I, personally, have often felt that the tube was in the wrong place,

although in my case the fact was discovered.

(e) Lastly, there is the risk from the mental shock due to the operation,

done without the prisoner’s consent. This is the most serious and lasting of all.

Some of the women will never entirely recover from what they have undergone.

May I just remark in passing that it is a testimony to the excellent nervous system

of women, due to the way they have learnt to endure, that the mental effects

have not been worse. May I remind you that the only case where forcible

feeding has had a fatal mental result has been that of a man who had been

trained in his youth as a fine athlete.

The case against forcible feeding is now before you. The question is how

long will the British nation allow such atrocities (not much inferior to those of the

Armenian type) to go on in its midst rather than do justice to women? Yours,

etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

13, Victoria-Road, Brighton

September 26

How to Stop Hunger Striking

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September 26, 1912, To the Editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, “How to Stop Hunger

Striking”

Bare months before the 1913 Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act, also

known as the “Cat and Mouse” Act, because of the way that hunger-striking and

forcibly-fed suffragettes would be let out of prison to recuperate, and, when sufficiently

well, were re-arrested and taken back to jail, Emily Davison wrote this response to

The Pall Mall Gazette’s story suggesting that suffragette prisoners be allowed to starve

for two days, be released for a week’s recuperation, and then re-incarcerated. Her

second paragraph rebuttal uses her own experience to point out the folly of such

a scheme, for it would transform a three week sentence into a protracted period

of “freedom” alternating with imprisonment. She also wonders, given Christabel

Pankhurst’s successful escape to France, how efficient the police force would be in

rounding up suffragettes once they had been released. The letter was written from

Brighton on Sept. 24th.

Sir,– May I comment on the Gilbertian suggestion made in your columns that, in

order to find a way of dealing with our Suffragist prisoners, the authorities should

allow us to starve for two days and then release us, say, for a week, and so on,

toties quoties [repeatedly] till the sentence expires?

On July 30, 1909, I was sentenced and began a hunger strike, which

lasted five and a half days, when I was released. I was nursed up and kindly

treated at home till September 4, 1909, when I was once more imprisoned, and

again made a hunger-strike. I was released after two and a half days as it was

my second hunger strike. The absurdity of your correspondent’s suggestion, due

to want of actual experience, is now evident, for this is how matters went for me

in the days when we only hunger-struck without being forcibly fed, and I suppose

the authorities knew what they were about. At this rate the period for hunger-

striking would soon vanish, and the intervals for recovery between would

increase proportionately so that the whole time was release!

Again, in such a case how would the authorities secure the return of the

prisoner? She certainly would not walk back and surrender herself! To judge by

the marvelous ingenuity shown in the search for Miss Christabel Pankhurst, the

whole available force of constables and detectives would find their work well and

usefully cut out. If the Suffragist prisoners were many in number (as in March)

the unfortunate taxpayer would be severely touched in his pocket which, of

course, he would deserve!

Finally, may the authorities be inspired to try to experiment, as they will

soon come to the conclusion that it would be far easier to yield the vote to

women.

Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING Davison

13, Victoria-road, Brighton, Sept. 24

Forcible Feeding; Mr. Bernard Shaw and the Suffragettes

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September 18, 1912, The Newcastle Daily Journal article, “Forcible Feeding; Mr.

Bernard Shaw and the Suffragettes”

‘”Cold Logic:’ Eat or Die”

Mr. Bernard Shaw has written a long letter to Miss Gawthorpe on the

forcible feeding of the Suffragettes who are serving a sentence of penal

servitude in Mountjoy Prison for attempting to set fire to the theatre at Dublin.

He roundly blames the Government, says the Pall Mall Gazette, and incidentally

declares that nobody would be punished, but ‘restrained they must certainly

be, just as necessarily as a tiger must be restricted.’ Forcible feeding is

described as an ‘abominable expedient,’ at which game the Government has

been ‘ignominiously beaten.’

‘The moment the women go on to graver crimes,’ Mr. Shaw

proceeds, ‘this illogical compounding of a month’s imprisonment for a week’s

torture is no longer possible. An attempt to give the Mountjoy prisoners an

equivalent in forcible feeding for three and a half years’ penal servitude would

probably end either in killing them or driving them mad. The result of that

might be that other suffragists might be goaded into doing something that

would be punished by sentence of penal servitude for life.

‘In that case what would the Government do? To release a really

dangerous criminal after a fortnight’s stomach-pumping would be ridiculous,

and the released prisoner might quite possibly be lynched. To keep the

prisoner would mean allowing her to starve herself to death.

‘STAND AND DELIVER”

‘In such an extremity it seems to me that the prisoner’s right to commit suicide

would have to be recognized. As long as the Government placed within

the prisoner’s reach a sufficiency of food, I do not see how it could be held

accountable for the prisoner’s death any more than if she committed suicide in

any other manner.

‘If a woman meets me on Waterloo Bridge, and says, “Give me a five-pound

note or I’ll jump into the Thames and drown myself as soon as you have gone

a sufficient distance to prevent you from holding me,” I really do not see how I

could reasonably comply with the request, because if it were established as a

rule of conduct that I was bound to do so or else be held guilty of the woman’s

death, all the women in London might make me stand and deliver in turn until I

was a beggar.

‘And in the same way if the Government is bound to release every prisoner who

threatens to commit suicide by starvation, then all the criminals can compel a

general gaol delivery and practically abolish all legal methods of dealing with

crime. The fact that these methods are so bad that one could hardly regret such

a result does not affect the argument, because any methods, however human,

could be evaded in the same way.

‘My conclusion, therefore, is that if the prisoners in Mountjoy are determined

to commit suicide by starvation they must be allowed to do so, and that the

Government could not be held responsible for their deaths if it could convince the

public that the prisoners had plenty of food within their reach.’

Shaw’s lucid, sardonic argument, like Jonathan Swift’s in A Modest Proposal, seems

inhumane and heartless. Yet his words resonate with the reasoning of Mr. W.A.

Dudley, Davison’s earlier correspondent: both point out that the suffragettes were

indeed putting the government in an impossible situation. Davison, however, seems

not to have recognized that Shaw’s brutal logic did not convey assent, but rather laid

out a line of “reason” that would break the current impasse between suffragettes

and government. Davison’s response is full of all too human passion and concern

for two friends who cannot be conveniently de-personalized by a generic terms such

as “suffragette” and “hunger striker.” In fact Davison’s letter reveals her own sense

of personal responsibility for their plight, because she had tried to put a stop to the

practice of forcible feeding by sacrificing herself in failed suicide attempts at Holloway

Prison. She compares her attempt to the recent suicide of Count Nogi Maresuke, a

Japanese samurai who, with his wife, committed ritual suicide after the death of the

Emperor Mejii, in part because such a death followed the code of samurai warriors, in

part because he felt shame for having lost the regimental banner of the Japanese 14th

Infantry Regiment at the Battle of Kyushu in 1876, and partly because of the large loss

of life incurred during his siege of Port Arthur (August, 1904-Jnuary, 1905) during

the Russo-Japanese War. Davison invokes the shame Nogi felt as a parallel to her

own failure, and to the disgrace she suffered when her failed suicide attempt elicited

“ribald jesting” in the House of Commons. She concludes her letter by returning to a

fundamental principle of the WSPU: that imprisoned suffragettes are not criminals

but “honourable political prisoners.”

Sir, — It is impossible to believe that so illogical and inhuman a production could

possibly have emanated from the pen of Mr. Bernard Shaw as that which you

quote in your paper.

George Bernard Shaw maintains that it would be quite permissible, and

even meritorious, of the Government to allow Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans to

die in Mountjoy Prison. Before I consider the point, let me just remind the British

nation what such a thing would mean. It would mean a lasting indelible disgrace

to our nation to allow two such noble and honourable women to be done to death

for conscience’s sake. True it is that these women are ready to pay the heroic

price to gain freedom for their sex, but is the nation quite sure that it desires such

a holocaust, which can bring nothing but disgrace upon it?

I speak as one who does know, as I have faced death several times in this

cause, and faced it quite recently in the way that they are doing now. When I

attempted to commit suicide in Holloway Prison on June 22 I did it deliberately

and with all my power, because I felt that by nothing but the sacrifice of human

life would the nation be brought to realize the horrible torture our women face! If

I had succeeded I am sure that forcible feeding could not in all conscience have

been resorted to again.

Just as Nogi and his wife made the most tremendous sacrifice of all (that

a man lay down his life for his friend) to try and bring Japan back to her lost

ideals, so did I face death! I attribute the fact that my two comrades are facing

torture now to the fact that I failed, a failure which provoked ribald jesting and a

glossing over of facts in the House of Commons. If I had succeeded, I am sure

that the British nation would have prepared to adopt the only sane moral right

and wise course to be adopted in these cases, and insisted upon our being

treated from henceforth as political prisoners! The only alternatives are not, as

George Bernard Shaw states, forcible feeding or death! Hence death in such a

case would be downright, hideous, unjustifiable murder! The course which future

ages will see clearly with discriminating ayes [sic; changed to “eyes” in letter to

Newcastle Daily Journal] to be the only possible course to save Britain and the

present Government from the dishonour of committing torture or murder is to

acknowledge legally that these women are not low and selfish criminals (who

could never face what these heroic women have faced), but honourable political

prisoners. –Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Longhorsley, Northumberland, Sept. 17([25.])

Votes for Women

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To the Editor of The Newcastle Daily Journal “Votes for Women”

Emily Davison’s quick wit and relentless determination to advocate for the cause of

woman suffrage lay behind the brief, witty narrative of this letter which was also

sent with minor variation to The Newcastle Daily Chronicle. Under the title “Equal to

the Occasion” it was published in the The North Mail on Sept. 19, 1912, and in The

Morpeth Herald on Sept. 20th, 1912. This letter also published on Thursday, Nov. 7,

1912 in The Standard, raising the question of whether she kept a copy for subsequent

submissions, or whether the paper delayed delay publishing. The logistics of her letter

writing campaign remain largely a mystery whose solution must be prised out of

incidental details.

Longhorsley, Northumberland

Sir, — Those who carry out the machinery of the law have very often more sense

of justice and more of a saving sense of humour than those who put the laws

on the Statute book! Yesterday, the Revising Barrister for the district visited

Longhorsley to revise claims for the Parliamentary vote. As a militant, I felt that

the chance was not to be lost. Cutting the big ‘Votes for Women’ heading from

our W.S.P.U. weekly, I supplied words above and below, so that my message

ran thus:–

‘May you soon be Revising

VOTES FOR WOMEN

As Well as for Men!’

I enclosed it in an envelope, addressed: ‘To the Revising Barrister,

Longhorsley School Room.’ The missive was entrusted to one of the school

children, who came back with the message: ‘Tell Miss Emily Davison the claim is

allowed!’

Brevity is the soul of wit and the salt of life!

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

17th Sept., 1912

Forcible Feeding

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September 13, 1912, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian, “Forcible Feeding”

Of all the subjects which Emily Davison engaged in the summer and early fall of

1912, none was closer to her heart than the horror of forcible feeding, compounded

by instances of public apathy or ignorance of the pain and danger the procedure

visited on imprisoned suffragettes. On September 5th she had written a letter to The

Manchester Guardian which appeared on September 13th. It is a brief plea for pity on

the suffering of her two friends Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans in Mountjoy Prison:

Sir, — As one who has many times undergone the torture of forcible feeding,

I pray that you will allow me to appeal to the people of England against that

which is now proceeding in Mountjoy Prison. If our nation could only realize the

degradation, the unspeakable misery, which it involves to the helpless prisoner, it

could not allow such re-enactments of mediaeval barbarity to be carried on in our

midst. Can it permit women of noble character to be tortured for consciences’

sake? Yours, &c.,

Emily Wilding Davison

Longhorsley, Northumberland

September 5, 1912

Shortly after this letter was published The Newcastle Daily Journal ran a story about

George Bernard Shaw’s letter to Mary Eleanor Gawthorpe, a WSPU organizer who

had organized “a public petition against the forcible feeding of Mary Leigh and Gladys

Evans in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin”. See September 18, 1912, “Forcible Feeding: Mr Bernard Shaw and the Suffragettes”:

CANADA AND MILITANT SUFFRAGETTES

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PEACEFUL CITIZEN

Emily Davison’s response reveals something of the wide range of connections she had,

and something of how she came by her knowledge of Canadian politics. Her second

paragraph effectively dismantles “Peaceful Citizen’s” claim to superior knowledge,

while the next four paragraphs respond individually to other points of the letter

Davison chooses to engage: the hurtful adjectives of demoniacal and childish, the

notion that what it is to be “womanly” is actually known; the facts of how the suffrage

movement has refrained from militancy, why it resumed militancy, and how the

Liberal Government cruelly over-reacted to the woman suffrage supporters who went

in deputation to Parliament, exercising their constitutional rights. Along the way

she does offer two partial definitions of ideal women: the educated young women of

Eastern Canada suggest that education and knowledge are essential to a “womanly”

woman, and the hard work equally expected of men and women in the West of Canada

suggests that “womanly” women are those who work as equals alongside men to

accomplish mutual goals.

September 13, 1912, To the Editor of The Newcastle Daily Journal

“CANADA AND MILITANT SUFFRAGETTES”

Longhorsley, Northumberland

Sir,– My interest has been greatly aroused by some of the statements made

in a letter which appeared in your columns of September 9th in answer to mine

on ‘Canada and Militant Suffragettes.’ The writer in question prefers as do

most of our opponents, to remain anonymous, adopting the nom de plume

of ‘Peaceful Citizen.’ The word “Citizen’ shows me that the writer is of the male

sex, for women here are not acknowledged as citizens. Whether he would be

so ‘peaceful’ if he were expected and forced to obey laws to which his consent

had by no means been asked, or if he had to pay taxes without a voice in the

spending of them, is by no means certain.

‘Peaceful Citizen’ writes with high tone as one who has lived in Canada,

and apparently takes my ignorance and unwariness for granted. I am not so

unwise as to write of that which I do not know. I have both friends and relations

in Canada, and receive papers and journals of all kinds regularly from that

country, which keep me well posted as to Canadian affairs. Hence,

when ‘Peaceful Citizen’ ventures to make so foolish a statement as

that ‘Canadian people have absolutely no grievance against the Government,’ I

exclaim at his own guilelessness, and see, moreover, that women have more

need of the vote in Canada than I thought, as apparently there, even as here,

they do not count as ‘people.’ I read constantly in my Canadian papers that

Canadian women are very discontened [sic] with the present state of the laws

with regard ‘to dower, the right to homestead, etc.’ (I quote from the Western

Home Monthly for August).

When my opponent so far lets zeal outrun discretion as to put in

juxtaposition two such strangely inapposite epithets as ‘demoniacal and childish’

I feel compelled out of very pity to remind him that courtesy and coolness are two

absolutely indispensable corollaries to success in argument.

‘Peaceful Citizen’ states that ‘Canadian women are more womanly than

some of our English women.’ Here again he dares the perils of rash and

unthinking assertion, for who in this part of the world knows what a ‘womanly

woman’ is, seeing that women have hitherto been cribbed, cabined, and confined

into male ideas of what is womanly, and the sex is no more what it naturally

might be than is the tiny puling little lap-dog in any way to be taken as

representative of that fine animal, the dog! We know now-a-days how grave is

the crime of cramping the child who shows marked ability in one or more

directions into a narrow and often entirely unsuitable routine! At present we give

our boys every possible chance for developing their special talents, whilst we are

only just beginning to see that wisdom demands that the same opportunity must

be given to the girls. As to Canadian women, I have met several. I have found

by experience, which has been supported by those who know, that the Eastern

Canadian girl is as well educated, independent, and self-assertive as her

excellent United States sister, whilst the Western Canadian girl appears to be

expected to work has hard as any man, without the man’s civic privileges. In

each case they seem to be fully worthy of the vote.

‘Peaceful Citizen’ deplores our tactics during the ‘last two years’ and

thereby displays the cloven hoof of ignorance of the movement. During 1910 and

1911 the militants carefully preserved a truce to give the Conciliation Bill a fair

chance; nay, more, they worked might and main ‘Constitutionally’ till Mr. Asquith

destroyed it by his adult suffrage proposition. Then, and only then, was militancy

resumed, beginning with stone-throwing and culminating when our prisoners had

been treated in the most illogical and barbarous fashion, in some more serious

episodes, all of which are quite recent events. ‘Peaceful Citizen,’ of course,

should have said ‘during the last few months.’

‘Peaceful Citizen’ evidently out-Herod’s Herod in his ideas of punishment,

when he says, ‘the Government should have adopted drastic measures at the

commencement,’ when most people know well that the earliest sentences were

exorbitantly severe, considering that in those days for doing so Constitutional

and legal an act as merely going on a deputation to Parliament, women were

given such wicked sentences as one month, six weeks, and three months’

imprisonment. What he apparently does not realize is that Draconic [sic] measures

only make us the more determined, as they prove the need of greater sanity and

morality in the laws on the Statute Book.

Sept. 11, 1912

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

CANADA AND MILITANT SUFFRAGETTES

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Davison’s image of the hydra-headed suffrage movement could equally well apply

to the anti-suffrage forces, for her letter written September 6, 1912

was no sooner published than it evoked a response she paid particular attention to.

In the following letter the sentences and phrases in italics indicate

Davison’s own underlinings, used in her response to “Peaceful Citizen” who wrote as follows19:

September 9, 1912, The Newcastle Daily Journal,

“CANADA AND MILITANT SUFFRAGETTES”

Sir, –Your correspondent Emily Wilding Davison offers some comment upon

a paragraph which appeared in your paper ‘that the immigration officials have

decided to deport all militant suffragettes as undesirable aliens if they attempt

to demonstrate in Canada.” As I have lived in Canada, I can assure her they are

just the sort of people to carry out the threat, and rightly so, as Canadian people

have absolutely no grievances against the Government. They were never happier,

or more prosperous, than they are to-day. Then why should they allow such

demoniacal and childish women to enter their peaceful and happy country to stir

up strife and discontent amongst the people.

I may say that the Canadian women are more womenly [sic] than some of our

English women. Such tactics as have been practiced this last two years by

suffragettes have bred the greatest contempt for them. They have spoilt their

cause entirely. The Government should have adopted drastic measures at the

commencement, and sentenced them to twelve months instead of only two weeks, and

we might now have heard no more of it. In Canada they are very severe on the

lawless, so severe, that the police watch drinking saloons, and pounce upon any

man who comes out staggering and promptly take him to the lock-up.

Suffragists in Midlothian

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September 9, 1912, To the Editor of The Northern Mail, “Suffragists in Midlothian”

While carrying on the correspondence about the Canadian Prime Minister’s visit and

her hopes for woman suffrage measures in Canada, Emily Davison also found time to

address a relatively obscure distinction, but one that clearly made a difference to her,

that is the mis-use of the term “suffragette” in the pages of The Northern Mail. Davison

draws a distinction familiar at the time, but now frequently mis-understood as she

points out that the terms “suffragette” and “militant” were nearly synonymous.

Sir, –In the report of the position of the Midlothian contest in your issue of

September 2nd occurs the statement: ‘The suffragettes are supporting the Labour

candidate, the women Liberals the Liberal candidate.’ A mistake is made here

which I am sure that you will allow me to rectify. Bu the term “Suffragette’ I

conclude that you mean a suffragist who is capable of or who approves of

militancy. As the W.S.P.U. are not taking part in this particular political context,

and the N.U.W.S.S.. are, it is necessary to point out the discrepancy, for the

latter society would not probably appreciate your delicate irony in so describing

them, when they are following out their usual plan of supporting the candidate

who best satisfies their demands.

One of the best results of our by-election work was seen in the recent

contest in North-West Manchester, in what was apparently a safe Government

seat. Our political wisdom is shown by the fact that we do not waste powder and

shot on the nowadays comparatively powerless private member. With us every

shot tells, for whatever Government is in power has now to take us into growing

consideration—

Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

September 3, 1912

Canada and Militant Suffragettes

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Shortly after this exchange, The Newcastle Daily Journal published a brief story

proclaiming that militant British suffragettes were not welcome in Canada:

September 4, 1912, Newcastle Daily Journal news story: “MILITANT

SUFFRAGETTES: Stern Hint from Canada”

It is stated in Ottawa that a warm reception awaits any militant British suffragette

who goes over to Canada. The Dominion immigration officials have conferred on

the subject, and have decided to deport all militant suffragettes as undesirable

aliens if they attempt to make any demonstrations in Canada. This rule will apply

only to the violent sort of suffragists, as the Canadian authorities do not propose

to allow windows to be broken and Ministers assaulted.

Emily Davison challenged the negative cast of this story, turning it into an assertion of

Canadian far-sightedness and suffrage victory:

September 7, 1912, to the Editor of The Newcastle Daily Journal

“Canada and Militant Suffragettes”

Sir, –In your issue of September 4th there is a small paragraph headed ‘Militant

Suffragettes,’ in which you state that ‘the Dominion immigration officials have

decided to deport all militant suffragettes as undesirable aliens if they attempt

to demonstrate in Canada,’ the object being, as your further declare, to prevent

windows being broken and ministers assaulted. These precautions are no doubt

due to the very harmless little reminder which Miss Barrett18 gave Mr. Borden,

that if he in Canada takes up the absurd attitude of the present Government

here towards this question, he will probably find that Canadian women will

not stand any nonsense. Your report looks as if the Canadian authorities are

doing precisely what the W.S.P.U. hoped they would do, i.e., taking stock of the

situation, and that they evidently want to take the bull by the horns in good time.

Will you allow me to suggest that the most effective way would be to avoid

infuriating the bull, and to promptly get the nine various Legislatures to bring in a

measure giving votes for women? By doing so they would accomplish many

desirable things:–

(a) Show themselves to be as progressive as parts of the Empire as New

Zealand or Australia

(b) Encourage women immigrants, of whom at present they stand in great

need.

(c) Avoid the foolish mistake of the old country in seeking to repress what

is inevitable by terrorism and oppression.

The woman suffrage cause is now hydra-headed.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

6th September, 1912

Longhorsley, Northumberland