Friday, October 25, 1912, To the Editor of The Morpeth Herald, “The Woman

Suffrage Question”

Emily Davison’s reply to the preceding letter:

Sir, –I was very glad indeed when I opened the pages of your last issue to find

that Mr. A. Knox had not, as I feared, been chased from the lists, but was willing

to break another lance with me.

Mr. Knox at once plunges into the thick of the fight with what is apparently

his best lance, the differences of the male and female brain, clinging as

tenaciously to his ancient theory as did any of the upholders of the once custom-

established theory that the earth was flat, and that the sun bore to it a very

different relation to what is now known to be the case. The hoariness of theories

is, alas for Mr. Knox, no proof of their validity! So it is with this one, as Mr. Knox

can prove for himself if he will take the trouble to consult the standard authority

on this question, especially in its most recent developments, where he will find

that even so rabid an anti-suffragist as Sir James Crichton Browne is quoted on

the very point as to which Mr. Knox lays so much stress and also many other

equally, if not more, distinguished authorities.

The source to which I refer Mr. Knox is Mr. Harry Havelock Ellis in his

masterly study on Man and Woman in the ‘Contemporary Science Series,’ but it

is necessary to turn to the fourth edition, revised and enlarged in 1904, and to

the chapter ‘The Head.’

After an interesting weighing of the theories until recently held of the

superiority of the average male brain to that of the average female, and showing

their absurdity in light of comparative modern research, on page 117 Mr. Knox

will read: ‘The larger amount of brain in woman which we have found to exist

after the elimination of fallacies caused by indirect criteria of proportion is co-

related with the precocity and earlier arrest of growth in women which exists as

well for the brain as for the general proportions of the body….A relatively large

mass of brain tissue is a characteristic which women share with short people

generally and with children.’

So much for size. With regard to Mr. Knox’s further suggestions as to the

vascular supply of the brain, may I refer him to page 118, where he will find,

after a general discussion on the male and female cerebrum (which is summed

up in favour of the female cerebrum), the following passage: –‘Several

distinctions in the important matter of the vascular supply of the brain have as yet

received little attention. Sir James Crichton Browne and Dr. Sidney Martin have,

however, made a few observations. They found that the combined diameters of

the internal carotid and vertebral arteries which supply the brain taken together

are relatively to the brain mass RATHER LARGER IN WOMEN THAN IN MEN

[caps EWD]. So that women’s brains receive a proportionately larger blood

supply than men’s and would not suffer as they otherwise would from the

comparative poverty which, as we shall see later, characterizes their blood.’ The

latter part of this passage indicates the source of the error into which Mr. Knox

had quite naturally and willingly fallen, having been, as he owns, trained up in the

older school, which was the school that encouraged that comparative poverty of

feminine blood by cramping and enervating influences.

On page 119 Havelock Ellis discusses the theories of the average

cerebellum of man and woman and sums up his conclusions in the following

passage: –‘The most reliable evidence points on the whole to the cerebellum

being RELATIVELY [caps EWD] distinctly larger in women, than men, as stated

long ago by Gall [Franz-Joseph Gall] and Cuvier [George Cuvier].

Broca’s [Pierre Paul Broca] figures show that to a slight extent the

medulla and cerebellum, but especially the latter, are RELATIVELY LARGER

[caps EWD] in women. Dr. Philippe Rey, who has worked up Broca’s figures

with much elaboration, finds that with scarcely an exception all the centres below

the cerebrum are relatively larger in women.

The impartial, scientific and scholarly nature of this part of Havelock Ellis’

treatise is well displayed at the end of the chapter in the following passage on

page 122:–‘While, however, the brain is at present an unprofitable region for the

study of sexual difference, it is as we have seen an extremely instructive region

for the study of sexual equality. Men possess no relative superiority of brain-

mass: the superiority of brain-mass so far as it exists is on the woman’s side:

this, however, implies no intellectual superiority, but is merely a characteristic of

short people, and children….From the present standpoint of brain anatomy and

brain study there is no ground for attributing any superiority to one sex over

another. Broca, the greatest of French anthropologists….believed many years

ago (in 1881) that women are naturally and by cerebral organization slightly less

intelligent than men….This opinion has been very widely quoted: it is not so well

known that with riper knowledge Broca’s opinion changed, and he began to think

it was a mere matter of education…. and thought that IF LEFT TO THEIR

SPOTANEOUS IMPULSES MEN AND WOMEN WOULD TEND TO RESEMBLE

EACH OTHER, AS HAPPENS IN THE STATE.’ [caps EWD]

I would especially draw Mr. Knox’s attention to the fact that the greatest

scientists never lay down absolute theories, but that their greatness consists in

their willingness to re-adjust and even change their ideas and theories in the light

of increasing knowledge, that nowadays empirical statements are

discountenanced, and every theory put forward with caution and reservation. I

would also call his attention to the now rapidly growing feeling that men and

women are both human beings with a large field of common endeavour in the

commonwealth. The old figment, ‘that man has a sex, but woman is a sex’ is at

last making way before the forces of evolution. The ‘manly man’ is beginning to

realize that he wants a ‘womanly woman’ for his helpmate and comrade; not the

masculine product of centuries of one-sided legislation, but a human being ‘nobly

planned, to warn, to comfort and to command,’ left free to develop every side of

her nature, as nature intended.

What woman’s organization or physique will fit her to do none can tell yet,

but in the light of her success during the past half century or so in many spheres

hitherto held to be exclusively male, and that despite the fiercest opposition and

apparently insuperable obstacles we can only exclaim at the crass stupidity, the

arrant obstinacy and wicked prejudice of a world that has deliberately refused to

open an inexhaustible mine of treasure!

Mr. Knox asks me if I think that men would willingly submit to laws being

passed by women if the latter were in the majority, and in the next sentence he

reasserts the old bogey of the absolute necessity of brute force. If Mr. Knox

really thinks that brute force rules the world (save the mark!) can he doubt that

12 million men could not if necessary assert themselves against 13 million

women? If he does not, he is clearly afraid that the women are cleverer than the

men, and has a pretty opinion of human nature! But in either case, Mr. Knox is

no true democrat or believer in self-government and the rights of the people! –

Yours, etc.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Longhorsley

The Knox Correspondence October 18, 25, November 1, 1912

This letter of Friday, October 18, 1912, in The Morpeth Herald, is Mr. A. Knox’s

after the catastrophe of the First World War.

Here is the exchange between Knox and Davison on October 18th and 25th:

October 18, 1912, To the Editor of The Morpeth Herald, “Woman Suffrage”

Sir,–I shall be grateful is you will allow me to respond to the kind and courteous

letter of Miss E. Davison. There can be but little doubt that a movement has

been initiated for the emancipation of women, and that Miss Davison is one

of its able advocates. I am almost persuaded the movement she upholds is

destined to grow, and when I take into consideration the many willing workers

who are prepared to suffer for their cause, I am led to believe the day is not far

distant when woman’s suffrage will be accepted as part of the Government’s

programme.

Miss Davison is within her rights in characterizing my arguments

as ‘antediluvian.’ They are old, but they are arguments that have lost none of

their strength by being old. If I am in error, I beg to be excused, for we men have

had drilled into us, by the medical faculty, that a woman’s brain weighed less

than a man’s and from this we were led to expect a marked inferiority in that of

the female. Although Miss Davison has taken great pains to assure us of the

contrary, yet we cannot force ourselves to accept her statement that it is an

exploded theory; neither can we take in that the quality of the grey matter in the

female is superior to that of the male. Can we do otherwise when we have the

evidence of a great authority, Sir J. Crichton Brown, before us which says that

as the result of many observations which he is now making, not only is the grey

matter or cortex of the female brain shallower than that of the male, but also

receives less than a proportional supply of blood.

Has Miss Davison ever observed that as soon as the brain has reached

its development there is a greater power of amassing knowledge on the part of

the male? The field has always been open to both sexes, yet in no department

can women be said to have approached men, save in fiction. We have

thousands of women who have [hole in page enjoyed?] a better education and

better [hole in page ] social advantages than a Robbie Burns or a Farraday, and

yet we have neither heard nor seen their work. It has been said the cause of this

is that the female mind has been unjustly dealt with in the past, and that they

cannot be expected all at once to rise to the level of man. The treatment of

women in the past is much to be regretted, but we cannot get over the fact that

this fact indicates one of the causes that go to mark the inferiority of women at

the present day. That she now has exhibited a disposition to emancipate herself

may be owing partly to the easy means of intellectual inter-communication in this

age, where a few women, who have felt the impulses of a higher aspiration, have

been enabled to co-operate in a way that it was impossible in former times and

partly to the views of a great many men, which have led to the encouragement

and assistance, instead of suppression, of their efforts.

It is quite evident Miss Davison did not give proper consideration to the

nature of women’s organization when she advocated the social status of women.

If we look the matter honestly in the face, it is apparent that woman is marked

out by nature for different positions in life, and that her organization renders it

improbable that she will succeed in running on the same lines and at the same

pace with man. Hence the necessity of woman keeping to her own sphere of life.

Supposing, Miss Davison, women had the franchise, would they imagine

that if they, being in the majority, combined to pass laws which were unwelcome

to men, the latter would quietly submit? Would they expect that men should fight

for them in war, if by a majority of votes they should determine upon war? Would

they no longer claim a privilege of sex in regard to the defence of the country by

arms? Legislation would be of little value unless there were a power behind it to

make it respected; and where would Miss Davison look for that power but only

where she could expect to find it, in the opposite sex?

The experiment of giving the women the vote will be tried some day and

may be it will not be so black as it is painted. We can only, as a great Cabinet

Minister said, ‘wait and see,’ Yours, etc.,

A. KNOX

Bedlington Colliery

October 4, 1912, To the Editor of The Morpeth Herald, “The Woman Suffrage

Question”

The most protracted and most detailed debates Emily Davison entered into in the

Here is her first letter:

Sir, — Your correspondent, Mr. A. Knox, in a courteous letter in your last issue,

raises gently many of the favourite ‘anti’ contentions to which he evidently awaits

a reply. In the beginning of his letter, however, it is amusing how he owns that

we have a harder rock to assail [? ] in the Cabinet than in the Cabinet’s agents,

though he strikes an excellent note in the hint that we shall probably suddenly

come ‘to a triumphal conclusion.’ When Mr. Knox congratulates me on gaining a

strong advocate he is probably putting too high a value on words which are cheap

and easy compared with deeds, which are not.

But Mr. Knox comes to the gist of the matter when he asks the

question, ‘Why go to the Cabinet Ministers?,’ though probably he knows as well

as I do the answer, namely that it is the Cabinet which pro tem rules, and which

has it in its power to bring woman suffrage to pass. Mr. Knox advises that [it is]

‘not in the country, and not the House of Commons, that the work must be done.’

Here we part issue. In suffragettes’ opinion, both the House of Commons and

the country are to be made to move, and we must neglect neither. Hence, when

smashing windows, we have not confined our activities to Government glass

only, but have also paid attention to the private citizen. Whilst we are actively

bringing pressure to bear on ‘the powers that be’ for the nonce, we never forget

to educate the country itself, knowing well that though the country delegates its

power to the Cabinet for the moment, the ultimate power itself lies with the

sovereign people. Hence our tremendous constitutional programme, which runs

on side by side with the active militant campaign. Hence also, whilst we act in a

strictly legitimate way by the long-established political method of putting

questions and making pertinent interjections at public meetings(which are met by

such ‘political chivalry’ as that lately shown at Wrexham and Llanystumdwy, or

in the even more efficacious method, longer established by ancient usage and

precedent of stone throwing, quite logically aimed at the direct source of power,

the Cabinet, and the indirect source of power, the people, we have never

neglected the equally necessary political method of holding public meetings for

educational purposes.

In the next paragraph, Mr. Knox allows himself to be drawn aside by that

old ignis fatuus that the average male brain is larger than the average female

brain, and therefore that the male is cleverer than the female. In so asserting,

Mr. Knox renders himself liable to many criticisms, especially on the score

of ‘scientific basis.’ The fallacy has been so long exploded that it is strange to

see it resuscitated. It is not wise to isolate statistics from their context. Thus, for

example, Mr. Knox is ignoring the very important fact that the average man is

relatively larger and heavier than the average woman, and there have not been

wanting important scientists who assert that taking into consideration the

question of relative size, female brains are proportionately larger than male

brains. Another point of view is that even if the female brain may be smaller than

the male brain, the quality of the all-important grey matter is superior. Finally, as

to this point, it is impossible to avoid adding that the greater number of anti-

suffragists seem to have a most holy (or unholy!) terror of the superior mental

capacity of woman, for how else can we explain their dread of the absorption of

all power by the ‘female of the species’?

Mr. Knox lightly touches on another equally antediluviin [sic] ‘anti’ theory,

that women, if recognised as citizens of this country, will neglect their home

duties and what he terms woman’s sphere, apparently ignoring the fact that

women, poor souls, have never been allowed to rule, even in the sphere that is

perfunctorily called their[s], the home. Has Mr. Knox forgotten that other oft-

quoted dictum that ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle,’ where he certainly sees

to it that he rules? Let Mr. Knox reassure himself that woman suffrage is partly

the outcome of the fact that the Englishwoman intends to see that she does get

possession of her at present pseudo sphere, and means to see that the home

has a chance, but nationally as well as socially.

Mr. Knox raises the old bogey that woman suffrage means adult suffrage

forgetting that Messrs. Asquith and Lloyd George very astutely, last November,

brought in manhood suffrage to ‘torpedo’ woman suffrage. He puts what he

evidently considers a clincher in, asking ‘what would happen if we men had to

face the prospect of a woman governed country?’ Let Mr. Knox just turn the

question the other way round, and consider that for centuries women have been

groaning under a man-governed country and ask if it is not about time that the

nation consulted two heads instead of one?

Mr. Knox winds up by painting a drab picture, which has as little warrant

for its justification as has the rose-coloured view put before our eyes by some

enthusiasts who think that the millennium will arrive when women have votes.

No millennium or revolution will occur any more than it did in 1832, 1867, or in

1884, but merely a gradual education and upliftment of public opinion in the

direction of a genuine living democracy, the ideal towards which all modern

progressive minds must move, where the concern of one is the concern of all,

and where all women as well as men have a place in the sun. In that day the

problem of the child and the future of the race will have a reasonable chance of

solution, because the expert in the child will have the opportunity to make her

opinion felt and valued. This fight is not for the present only, but for all time,

Yours, etc.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Longhorsley