Author Archives: Emily Davison

October 6, 1912, To the Editor of the Sunday Times

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October 6, 1912, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

The letter below is arguably Davison’s most sustained effort in irony among those

collected in the scrapbook. It shows her ability to match style for style, as she takes

Mr. Edward Grout at his word in his Swiftian plan to simplify forcible feeding. The reference

she makes to Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub is more properly a reference to his A

Modest Proposal, which lays out a plan for the efficient feeding of the population

of Ireland by eating infant children. Swift’s argument concludes with the point

that the English have treated the Irish so inhumanely that they might as well eat

their children, they have taken away everything else from the Irish. It’s notable that

Davison feels she can use irony to refer to force-feeding, a practice she had vigorously

criticized all through the letters. The mask of satire allowed her the freedom of a

more trenchant persona.

Sir, –Your correspondent, Mr. Edward H. Grout, is surely taking a leaf out of the

book of the renowned Dean Swift and things [?] to produce the ‘Tale of a Tube’ in

emulation of ‘The Tale of a Tub’! Hence he welcomes, in neo-Swiftian style, the

prospect that ’much time, energy, and expense will be saved’ to his household

by the use of tube-feeding. To argue from the effect of tube-feeding upon Mary

Leigh and others of our comrades, released at one time at the rate of twenty-

two in a day from the various prisons of the country, we should all agree with him

that the result to his household would be absolutely efficacious and to judge from

the effect upon Suffragist women, the system would be even more successfully

applied to children! If the system could be applied to the whole nation, all the

domestic, social and political problems which harass and distract the country

would find a complete and final solution! Mr. Grout’s invaluable panacea could

then no longer be adequately described by so modest a title as ‘League to

Popularise Simple Feeding.’ No lesser nomenclature would fit it than “League

to Settle the Affairs of the Nation,’ and (if not too effective) a memorial would

certainly have to be erected to the modern Robespierre, the saviour of the

country. Yours, etc.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Longhorsley, Northumberland, October 3

October 4, 1912, The Newcastle Daily Chronicle

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October 4, 1912, The Newcastle Daily Chronicle

The same day the letter above appeared in The Morpeth Herald, the letter below

appeared in The Newcastle Daily Chronicle. The two letters represent the two sides

of Davison’s journalistic personality, quick to adapt its tone and rhetoric to match its

opponent: the first more urbane and reasoned, the second, written in response to what

she describes as an ignorant and ill-informed prejudice, is full of strong modifiers as

well as some sarcasm, moving quickly from point to point, ending with the touch of a

rapier, a reference not only to the militancy of the women’s cause, but also to Davison’s

own strong prose.

Sir,–The letter in your issue to-day (and last night) signed “Danallis” shows the

most extraordinary conception of the value of the individual, worthy only of ante-

Reform days, when the workingman of town and country was looked upon as a

selfish and dangerous scum of the earth, because he was so presumptuous as to

think he had a right to work and a right to live! It is true that nowadays he has not

quite established either claim, but nobody at any rate dares to term him “scum”!

Such is the value of the vote!

Your brilliant correspondent evidently consults neither statistics nor

blatant facts in asserting that the single working woman “lives only for herself.”

He apparently blinds himself to the common knowledge that nowadays the

breadwinner for father, mother, brothers and sisters is only too often the single

woman, whom he beatifically curses. He further ignores the fact that, even if

not so encumbered, the single woman has to support herself because her male

relatives set her a far more blatant example of selfishness in that they tell her to

pay up, sweat and shut up, which curiously enough, she is no longer willing to do!

Hence when she expresses her opinion of their conduct in no measured terms by

weapons even more trenchant than her tongue, it is no wonder if “Danallis” and

his like smart and fume a little. There is no such roarer as your Braggadoccio [braggart]

when he is tenderly tickled with the point of the rapier! –Yours, etc.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Longhorsley, Oct. 3 [1912]

The Woman Suffrage Question

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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

pages of the press occurred during the fall of 1912 with a Mr. A. Knox. Their letters

and thoughts were exchanged in The Morpeth Herald, the local newspaper read

in both Longhorsley and Bedlington, two villages close to Morpeth. The exchange

began quietly enough, with the letter below which contains a series of positions

Davison had advocated in print before, and concludes with one of her clearest visions

of how woman suffrage would ultimately affect British society for the better. For all

her militancy, she took the long view of history and of social change. Davison was a

tactical militant whose rhetoric of the tools of militancy, of rocks, stones, and window-

smashing describe the regrettable means by which a larger strategy can gain its goal.

In this letter she lays out a vision of a unified suffrage movement, and acknowledges

the cooperation of the militant and the more conservative constitutionalist suffragists

as central to achieving their common, ultimate goal. After discussing the politics

of the situation, and the likeliest means of leveraging them, she turns to A. Knox’s

more domestic and personal arguments. Doing so, she enters on the topic that will

dominate their future exchanges, the size of women’s brains, and, by extension, the

sphere in which women are by nature equipped to move. Both Knox and Davison

were indefatigable in advancing their arguments, neither willing to surrender a point.

The exchange was finally ended by the Editor of The Morpeth Herald who publicly

announced that the paper would give no more room to them.

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

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