Author Archives: Emily Davison

Saturday, August 17, 1912, To the Editor of the Manchester Guardian

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Saturday, August 17, 1912, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian

In mid August, 1912 Emily Davison entered into an exchange of letters in the pages of the Manchester Guardian with a Mr. W.A. Dudley who criticized militant tactics. Davison’s response, familiar in its argument, contains a slightly different tone from earlier letters. Her she allies the militant tactics increasingly applied by the WSPU with the prophecy of John Stuart Mill, the great liberal supporter of women’s rights, who foresaw the total dedication a campaign to obtain the full spectrum of civil rights for women would bring forth. Her central argument, in her second paragraph, is the one of women’s courage as a form of British courage, here mingled with frustrated anger at the “ribald laughter” and jeering bigotry in Parliament that had met stories of how imprisoned suffragettes have been force fed and mistreated. She recalls the length of time—four years– that women have “suffered violence in their own bodies” before being driven to violence themselves. No longer forward-looking in her expectations, but defensive and angry, Davison moves on the offensive in the last paragraph.

Her reply was met by Dudley’s subsequent response apparently to Davison and a Miss Barratt, who both took exception to his words. Dudley’s defense echoes the larger public sentiment that militancy will not work because it will create more enemies than friends to the cause, and hinder the achievement of Woman Suffrage. But he goes further to suggest that if militancy prevails, it will set a precedent for future militancy that might threaten the state, not just a particular government. He calls for reliance on the power of the vote, not force, to win the day. A certain circularity appears in this exchange, to use the power of the vote one must have the vote; to have the vote women seem to have to use power and force, because nothing else has worked for over fifty years. By the end of the third letter included in the scrapbook, Davison has moved very close to justifying the kind of sacrifice she herself would become on the track at Epsom. Her writing during 1912 is increasingly full of the rhetoric of sacrifice for the cause, a rhetoric which was not hers alone, but which also appears in various pro-suffrage works such as novels (Suffragette Sally), and in the pages of Votes for Women. Davison’s second letter, the third in the exchange to be included in her scrapbook, expatiates on these themes—that the vote, the surest way and the most desirable way for women to achieve political voice and equality can only come through men who so far have been either indifferent or opposed; that women have suffered grievous injury, to the point of death or maiming at the hands of their own government in their struggle; that women steel themselves to continue by invoking cultural heroes who have faced the prospect of death, here the Christian martyrs whose spirit “inspires us to-day.”

Sir.—Your correspondent Mr. W.A. Dudley evidently does not understand the true meaning of our militant tactics. That was, I venture to assert, very clearly foreshadowed and set forth by our pioneer champion, John Stuart Mil, when he declared that until some women were prepared to put the cause of their political emancipation before everything else in the world, including personal, home, and party ties, they would never win the day. This, of course, is the gist of militancy, which takes various forms according to the need of the moment, the weapon varying from that of the ‘powerful pen’ to the ‘the hammer, the axe, or the firebrand.’

The justification for the latter weapons is the violence used against us. Are we women such backboneless creatures, inferior in caliber to the proverbial worm, that we can tamely submit to the apparently interminable torture of our foremost fighters? Are we to bear without resentment the invariably ribald laughter which greets any mention of our comrades’ sufferings in Parliament? In short, have the women of England none of the pride which has made our island the world-power that it is? The spirit which made our ancestors win their freedom at all costs is burning brightly in the hearts of those who are called militants to-day. But the eyes of the larger number are still so holden [restrained, kept in one place?] that they cannot see, and they excuse their blindness by the readiest means. Until quite recently opponents excused their bigotry by jeering at our ‘pinprick’ methods. Having thereby roused us to the determination to show that we could adopt any methods when they were justified by abominable outrage, those who wish to delay justice to women turn round to abuse our violence, which at present has been done only by the advanced few.

Reforms can only be carried by one of two alternative motives, love or fear. Governments are not yet apparently civilized enough to yield to love. But if they fail to yield to love (the devoted service of women to the State for generations), who is Mr. Dudley, or anyone else, that he can blame women if they bring the motive of fear into play? Mr. Asquith referred in one of the Parliamentary debates on women’s suffrage to the saying that those who take up the sword will perish by the sword. But who took up the sword first in this case? Certainly not the militant women, who, determined though they were, suffered violence in their own bodies for at least four years of valiant agitation before even individual ones retaliated on Government windows.

The onus to prove that militancy, steadily increasing in force, is not needed lies with Mr. Dudley and others who have not won for us yet that weapon, which, well manipulated, is the most effective and least destructive to win reform—namely, the vote. Meantime the justification of our warfare lies in the urgency of our cause and the cant of those who refuse to act up to their principles. Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
Longhorsley, S.O. Northumberland

Feminine Logic

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August 15, 1912, The North Mail , “Feminine Logic”

The article and responding letter below exemplify Davison’s propensity to engage attitudes which she deemed mistaken or dangerous. The title of the article in The North Mail is provocative in itself, while the tone is condescending. Davison’s reply is an example of her focused corrective responses. She draws a fine, but traceable distinction, and explains it by using a word unknown even to editors of newspapers. All in all, given her love of verbal jousting, and her sense of humour, a “victory” for Emily Davison.

The latest manifesto issued by the Women’s Social and Political Union is even more illogical than those which have preceded it—which is saying a great deal. The authors of it say that the militant suffragists desire it to be clearly understood by Mr. Chuchill that they are certainly the women to dare and suffer all things in resistance to the tyranny of disfranchisement imposed upon them by the Government.

This means, if it means anything, that women are voteless because the present Government have disfranchised them. It is hardly possible to conceive of a more flagrant misuse of words.

Response. Saturday, August 17, 1912 To the Editor of The North Mail, “Women and the Vote”

Sir, –In your notes on ‘Affairs of Today’ under the heading ‘Feminine Logic’ you demonstrate very clearly the truth of the adage that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

In criticising the W.S.P.U. application of Mr. Churchill’s own words in reply to Mr. Bonar Law to women in claiming that they will certainly ‘dare and suffer all things in resistance to the tyranny of disfranchisement imposed upon them by the Government,’ you assert that ‘this means if anything that women are voteless because the present Government have disfranchised them.’ This would be as you term it ‘a flagrant misuse of words’ if it were not that you yourselves are guilty of a ‘terminological inexactitude.’ The writer of the notes has evidently confused the two terms: ‘Disfranchisement’ and “Disenfranchisement’ in a way that he would not have done if he had carefully studied his own language. For whereas the term ‘Disenfranchisement’ clearly bears the meaning of ‘the act of enfranchising’ owing to the interpolation of the affix ‘en,’ which has a crescive [i.e. growing, enlarging] meaning, the term ‘Disfranchisement’ simply implies ‘the lack of or want of the franchise.’ Yours, etc.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
Longhorsley, S.O. Northumberland
August 15, 1912

Suffragists in Prison

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June 9, 1912, To the Editor of The Sunday Times, “Suffragists in Prison”

This letter, written from Holloway near the end of her imprisonment there, indicates Davison’s continuing frustration at the Liberal Government’s refusal to treat imprisoned suffragettes as political prisoners. Mr. McKenna’s glib public assurances belied the reality of suffering and the status of the suffragettes who were willing to undergo imprisonment for their cause. The letter also reveals her indomitable spirit, as it promises future protests.

Sir,–It has come to my ears that Mr. McKenna, in receiving the deputation who went to him asking that those who were imprisoned for political offences should be treated as political prisoners whilst apparently denying that in ‘progressive’ England there was any Parliamentary recognition of such an offence, glibly assured the deputation that Suffragist prisoners were well treated in here when they ‘conformed to prison regulations’! Of this condition he apparently made a merit, forgetting that if we had been so foolish as to go on ‘conforming’ in the past we should never have had Rule 243A, mangled or otherwise, offered to us, and would certainly never have been looked upon, as we undoubtedly now are, by all intellectual persons, as political offenders and certainly not criminals. Until we win this recognition fully some ‘non-conformity’ may still be needed and politic!—Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
Holloway Prison, June 5

A CASE OF FORCIBLE FEEDING”; “THE PENALTY FOR ‘NOT TAKING ENOUGH FOOD

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May, 2, 1912, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian, “A CASE OF FORCIBLE FEEDING”; “THE PENALTY FOR ‘NOT TAKING ENOUGH FOOD”

Although the editors of The Manchester Guardian expressed disagreement with Davison’s positions in some of her letters from the end of 1911, The Guardian was generally more supportive of the suffrage movement than other newspapers, especially The Times and The Sunday Times. Their call for an official explanation is somewhat tepid, given the conditions Davison describes. A slightly abbreviated version of the same story also appeared on Saturday, May 4, 1912 in The Standard.

This letter complements other descriptions Davison composed about her experiences in Holloway during the winter-spring of 1912. The narrative is written in Davison’s unique voice and contains references to her self-definition as a journalist, and her incipient career as an author of a manuscript now lost. The prison authorities’ refusal to countenance her request for writing materials, one of the perquisites of Division One status, was a severe blow to her, but she rallied to protest to the Home Office. The Home Office refused her request and soon after the prison authorities decided that she must be force-fed. Her petition to the Home Office to protest this form of torture apparently was not enough to stop the prison authorities who may indeed have been following Home Office directives in this matter. The letters make difficult reading both because of their contents and because Davison is a natural story-teller with a strong sense of narrative flow and telling detail. All the more ironic that the ending of the narrative in the two letters is official deafness to her words.

We have received from Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, who writes from Lindon Gardens, London, W., the following letters from Miss Emily Wilding Davison, a militant suffragist, at present imprisoned in Holloway Gaol. The statements made appear to demand some official explanation, which will no doubt be forthcoming:–

April 9
‘Account of my forcible feeding, February 29 to March 7, 1912—I was sentenced at the Old Bailey for setting fire to pillar-boxes to six months in the third division without hard labour. Hence I was entitled to Mr. Churchill’s new prison regulation, which I received at first. My sentence being a long one, an appeal was made for me against it by the Men’s Society for Women’s Rights, the aim of which appeal I desired to be chiefly that I might be transferred to the first class, so that I might be allowed writing facilities, both because I am a journalist and because I have written a book which at the time had every chance of being published. This appeal was refused on February 5. I was very much upset at the time—so much so that I lost my appetite and could take little food. Then on February 10 and 12 the remainder of the twenty companion suffragettes whom I had with me finished their sentences and went out. Meantime I had petitioned (February 6 or 7) to the Home Secretary for writing facilities and to be allowed to see the publishers who were disposed to take my book. I received no answer to this petition till February 27, surely a very long delay.

“Owing to my anxiety and to my loneliness (I exercised alone and was practically alone all day) I got more and more depressed, and could only eat with difficulty. I always took something, as I had a dread of forcible feeding. I was not weighed during this period for some time, when I had, of course, lost weight considerably. No notice was taken of my poor appetite and depressed state of health till about February 26. Then all of a sudden the prison authorities began to make remarks. I always told them that I took what I could. On Tuesday, February 27, Dr. Sullivan (then acting as Governor) came to me and told me that my petition for writing facilities was refused. The next day, February 28, an expert from the Home Office (I am told) came to see me with Matron and Dr. Sullivan. To him also I said that I had always eaten, even when I did not want food.

“Next day, February 29, I saw Dr. Scott, who was back, and asked for a petition form to the Home Secretary, which I received and wrote. I explained all that happened, and drew the Home Secretary’s attention to the fact that even if forcible feeding were legal when the person refused food, it was not legal when the person was eating. Dr. Sullivan came to my cell about twelve, and said he was going to feed me by force and said ‘as I know you can stand it.’ I protested in the same way. He left the cell. A few moments later four or five wardresses came into my cell with a wooden armchair, seized me in spite of my holding on to the bars of the window, and carried me shrieking ‘Shame!’ across the courtyard to the Remand Hospital. I was carried up the stairs clinging to all I could seize, and taken to the end of the corridor, and then fed by force as quickly as possible. My clothes were torn open. I was then put into one of the cells near. When I was left alone I barricaded my cell from the door to the window with the iron bed, wash-stand, table, and night-chair. When they came about four they could not open the door. They went away and fetched people. Men with crowbars came. There was a sort of wicket in the door, which they burst open. There was a long struggle. As fast as they moved the bed I forced it back. Crowbars nearly fell on my head. In the struggle my hand was severely injured, so that blood was shed all over the floor, walls, and one of the men’s trousers. The finger is still unhealed. They were busy bursting the door. At last the man, who had tried several times and failed, put his foot through and got in, and then he removed the barricade. I was seized, and forcibly fed. I was put into another and darker cell. There I remained in bed, and was fed by force twice a day for fifteen times. I refused to speak to anyone. On the Saturday the Governor came in to read me an answer from the Home Secretary, to say that he had given authority for my being forcibly fed. One day I became aware by certain signs that my suffragette friends were in Holloway. I felt so miserable and helpless that I felt that the best thing was for me to get to them and get their mental and moral support. The whole condition of weakness and loneliness made me feel so bad that I realized that I must get away.

“On Thursday afternoon, March 7, I told the Governor that if he would take me right away from the Remand Hospital (of which I now have a horror, as I realize how absolutely one is in the power of authorities there) and treated me well, I thought I could take my food. They tried me with food in the Remand Hospital first, but I steadfastly refused it. I got up, bathed and dressed, when I found how weak I was, and that I was actually much thinner than when I last had my clothes on. I was taken to the Convicted Hospital, and fed up there for a week. I was then allowed to go in amongst my suffragette companions. To every possible authority since (including the Prison Commissioners) I twice protested against being fed by force when I had not refused my food.
(signed)

“EMILY WILDING DAVISON”

“April 10, 1912
“To-day I saw the Visiting Magistrate. I said ‘I wish to protest at the fact that I was fed by force here from February 29 to March 7, although I had not refused my food. I understood that the only legal justification for the operation against the person’s will was that the person refused food.’ Here the Chairman prevented my saying any more by interrupting: ‘In short, you complain that you were fed by force without just cause,’ I replied, ‘That is so,” He then said, ’Have you any other application?’ I said, ‘No.’ He then requested me to retire for a few moments. I had to do so. When I returned, the Chairman (I believe he is Sir Vezey Strong ) said to me: ‘We have inquired into the matter. The doctor says that you were not taking enough food to keep you in good health, and we consider he was justified.’ I at once said, ‘Please allow me to state my case!” But he refused to hear me any further. I was forced out of the room by the wardresses, just managing to get out as I went: ’But things were neglected which ought not to have been neglected.’ If the prison authorities are allowed to take this view, who is safe from forcible feeding?

“E.W.D.”

This story, slightly abbreviated, appeared also on Saturday, May 4, 1912 in The Standard.

Earnest Exchanges, the Letters of 1912

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Earnest Exchanges, the Letters of 1912

In the novel No Surrender by Constance Elizabeth Maud, a conversation between an opponent of woman suffrage and a suffragist turns on an exchange of letters in The Sunday Times initiated by an “anti,” and rebutted by a suffragist who wrote to lay out the truth, answering the original letter point for point.

Among the events and themes that Maud weaves into her story of the awakening of two young women to the social, economic, and personal transformation woman suffrage could offer to all of British society, the inclusion of the verbal dimension of the struggle carried out in the pages of various national and local newspapers is a small part. But the work involved in such exchanges as Maud references through her fictional event, took time, energy, and commitment. If the WSPU was, as they styled themselves, an army of willing and dedicated soldiers, Davison served as one of a regiment of skilled sharp shooters who guarded the truth of the movement’s goals and means, working and writing at the periphery of the WSPU’s intellectual territory, living in a liminal position engaging the enemy on a daily basis.

Emily Davison’s letters from 1912 reflect both her own and the suffrage movement’s tenuous circumstances. From January to June she was a prisoner in Royal Holloway where she suffered an egregious round of forced feeding, not because she was hunger striking, but because she was deemed not to be eating enough. The torture she endured forms the basis of two of the few letters she wrote while in prison. After her release she went back to Longhorsley in Northumberland, to live with her mother and regain her strength. From Longhorsley she resumed her letter-writing campaign to national and local papers. The scrapbook contents from this period reveal her thinking. One can see her underlinings in the letters she chose to engage, and see how she answered them point for point in her own responses. The letters, reflecting the concerns of the WSPU, overwhelmingly defend the militant tactics of the group, they also repeatedly address the unjustified brutality of forcible feeding, and they lay bare and refute widespread popular prejudices about women.

The scrapbook contains an extended exchange between Davison and an “A. Knox” of Bedlington Colliery in the pages of The Morpeth Herald about the nature of women’s brains. Eventually the editor of the Herald put an end to the public debate between the two, objecting that they were writing too much and too frequently. Because both Knox and Davison were inflexible in their beliefs, and because each was a skilled correspondent, their exchange, which mirrors then-current thinking about women’s physiology, mental capacity, and fitness for the vote provides an excellent summary not only of suffrage ideas, but also of the kind of entrenched and mistaken “certainty” composed of cultural bromides and prejudices that passed for science when speaking of women.

The last letters in the scrapbook are dated early in 1913 when Davison was still at Longhorsley, and before she returned later that winter to London where she rejoined the militant suffrage movement in whose service she would shortly die.

February 11, 1912, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

Written from Holloway prison where she was serving a six-month sentence for having set fire to Post Office mail boxes in December, 1911 as a protest against the government’s treatment of suffragettes, this letter documents that by February Davison had access to pen and paper, and a means of sending a letter out of the prison. It also implies that she had access to newspapers. All of this may be the result of the infamous rule 243b, approved by Winston Churchill, Under-Secretary in the Home Office, granting suffragettes some of the perquisites and comforts of Division One status reserved for political prisoners; however, they were not accorded the dignity of the title, a distinction which Davison and her fellow suffragettes had long petitioned for.

Lily Langtry was well-known for her anti-suffragette views and “Helping the Cause” was a satire of the suffrage movement Langtry wrote herself. Davison protests making fun of the torture of forcible feeding, and indicates her own attitude toward the suffrage movement when she deems it a “holy cause.”

Sir, –It has come to my knowledge that Mrs. Langtry has for the past week being [sic] playing a skit on the Suffragette question and forcible feeding entitled ‘Helping the Cause,’ at the Manchester Hippodrome, which is to be also produced in London. Good-natured satire is an admirable thing, but no one who has any spark of humane feeling in them cares to jest at that which others hold sacred! Mrs. Langtry clearly has never met any Suffragette who has undergone the disgusting and painful process of forcible feeding for the sake of her holy cause, or she would as little have thought of staging such a burlesque as a man with the truly sporting instinct would think of hitting anyone below the belt! –Yours, etc.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
Holloway Prison, London
February 10 [1912]

The Proposed Women’s Suffrage Amendment

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Friday, December 15, 1911, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian, “The Proposed Women’s Suffrage Amendment”

This is the last letter Davison would write in 1911, and the last one for many months, forin early 1912 she was incarcerated in Holloway prison. Here she warms once more to the theme that men can be as “illogical” as women. The subject is the WSPU’s rejection of woman suffrage dependent on “arbitrarily determined” qualifications such as residency requirements or income requirements–-“fancy franchises” based on an arbitrarily determined qualification. The WSPU sought the parliamentary vote for women on the same basis as men had it, a simple goal, yet one that seemed in December, 1911, both tantalizingly near and agonizingly distant. Her conclusion that the goal will be achieved by “frank and fearless militancy—the policy of keeping on pestering” presages her own actions and writing in the year to come.

Sir, –The letter of ‘Disfranchised by Marriage’ proves completely and incontrovertibly how absurd is the position taken up by Mr. Lloyd George and those who agree with him as to the solution of the women’s suffrage question. The only logical and possible ground on which to fight for this reform is that insisted upon by the W.S.P.U.—‘The vote on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men,’—otherwise the question is landed into the old quagmire of ‘fancy’ franchises against which Mr. Lloyd George and others have inveighed so much in the past. It really is extraordinary how illogical people are on this franchise question? [sic] You yourself sought to beg it by declaring that the new bill will not mean a manhood suffrage qualification, but a change from a number of fancy franchises to that of residence—another fancy franchise. It is no doubt possible to cure one evil by another evil, but often the last stage of the experiment is worse than the first.

The plain truth of the matter is that the sex which claims to be logical is so absolutely illogical that it seems impossible to pin it down to fact. Hence it is that frank and fearless militancy—the policy of keeping on pestering—seems to be ‘the only way.’ Yours, &c.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31 Coram Street, London, W.C.

[Why is the qualification by a brief residence a ’fancy franchise’? It includes everybody who has any kind of fixed abode. We can imagine nothing much less fanciful. If the female sex is the logical one our correspondent is perhaps not a good sample of it. To try to wreck every practicable policy is apparently her conception of the logical way of setting about to get something done.—Ed. ‘GUARD.’]

December 12, 1911, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian

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December 12, 1911, To the Editor of The Manchester Guardian

Among the charges leveled at the suffragettes was the charge that their partisans were paid employees, “hirelings” who were more interested in their pay than the cause that they worked to promote. Davison’s retort to such a charge leveled by one Katherine Beaumont reflects the reality of the situation. Middle class and upper class women of means were able to “support the cause,” but women without financial security required some sort of support in order to allow them to live and to protest. Just where Davison fell on the spectrum of the comfortable is not entirely clear. She speaks in passing of holding various kinds of employment—secretary, journalist—all related in some way or another to language and writing, which were her passions.

Miss Davison writes from 31, Coram-street, London: — Your correspondent Katharine Beaumont, of Bath, casts some unfounded aspersions on those who lifted up ‘the voice’ on behalf of women at Mr. Lloyd George’s meeting on November 24. She repeats as the remark of one of the men ejected the remark made by Mr. Lloyd George himself, that the interrupter had earned his railway fare. None of the men themselves would make such a remark as that. It was Mr. Lloyd George who on a previous occasion characterized such men as ‘paid hirelings.’ If Mr. Lloyd George knew the amount of batterings these brave men receive on these occasions he would rather exclaim that such heroism was ‘without money and without price.’ Miss Beaumont asserts that the curse of the women’s movement is the paid agitator. That shows how little she knows of this militant movement, of the countless sacrifices of position, money, friends, and all that enriches life. She apparently is ignorant of the fact that most of the militant and other work is done entirely voluntarily by those who can possibly afford to do so. As for the few who cannot possibly devote their lives to this movement that they love so well unless a little money is given to them to keep body and soul together, there is a true saying that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire,’ and surely never were there more devoted labourers!

The Demand for Sex Equality

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December 12, 1911, To the Editor of The Yorkshire Post, “The Demand for Sex Equality”

On the eve of her letter box campaign, Emily Davison returns to some of the themes she wrote about in letters written earlier in 1911. In response to “George Mack” she recalls her own rhetoric about the progress of “today” and the need to take care for the future welfare of the State. Her argument that strong citizens come from strong women is bolstered by her evidence that women have exhibited better self-control in moments of public stress than men have. By the end of the letter she has implicitly charged men with the “emotional and hysterical” behavior imputed to women.

Sir, — Your Anti-Suffragist correspondent, George Mack, is very prehistoric in his ideas. To-day when it is acknowledge that the future welfare of the State and the race lies in the upbringing of the child, therefore of the mother, he announces that he does not ‘see any logical connection between maternity per se and capacity for State government.’ Yet it is truly surprising that such a remark should come, seeing that Anti-suffragists are constantly raising outcries about the decline in the birthrate, and race degeneration. These problems which are fundamental to the State’s well-being, to res publica, will never be effectively dealt with till women have a voice in the State. Of what use to produce the greatest Dreadnoughts in the world, unless you have a sound, fine race to man them? Mr. Lloyd George in his speech at Bath gave testimony to the need of the woman’s point of view in the state since the State is now greatly concerned with social and moral legislation.

Mr. Mack maintains that women are emotional and hysterical. There may be women to whom these epithets apply, as they do to a great number of men. In moments of danger, sudden outbreaks of fire, during shipwreck, and when police have been in imminent danger, women have shown themselves of late more un-selfish, level-headed, and cool than men. On the other hand, on Mafeking night, recently in Parliament, and also in the late General Elections, and in the great strike scenes, men have not at all times evinced that self-control which is claimed to be the peculiarity of their sex.

Mr. George Mack is setting up personally biased special pleadings against an irresistible principle of justice! Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31, Coram Street, London, W.C., Dec. 9, 1911

December 9, 1911, To the Editor of The Standard

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December 9, 1911, To the Editor of The Standard

Emily Davison’s religion was an important element of her life. She was an Anglican, and according to Gertrude Colmore’s biography, fond of singing hymns. Whether she adhered to a formal dogma or not, her writings make manifest that she was a spiritual thinker and really did believe that she was doing God’s work in helping the evolution of human culture. Her seemingly off-hand response to the prison authorities documented in the letter below belies her deep conviction about the divine authority at work she saw in the struggle for Woman suffrage.

Sir, –Mrs. M. A. Tipper says that what the woman’s movement needs is that it should have ‘a great religious ideal,’ for, she declares, ‘it would then cease to be a mere feminine movement, but would become a great human uplifting of our race, and, through our race, of the whole world.’ Mrs. Tipper has put admirably into eloquent words exactly what this movement is to the women who are fighting in it.

When I, together with others, took up the line forced upon us by indifference to our spoken protests, of rebelling against prison discipline, I was subjected to the usual category of questions put to every prisoner. Amongst them I was asked, ‘What is your religion?’ I answered, ’Votes for Women.’ ‘That is no religion!’ ‘Excuse me, it is mine and that of thousands of women.’ My words were quite true.

(Mrs.) [sic] EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31 Coram-street, W.C.

Militantism

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December 9, 1911, To the Editor of The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, “Militantism”

As she prepares for her own militant actions, Davison continues to engage in a public defense of militancy as the WSPU employs it-—in a measured and highly directed manner. Her second paragraph addresses the main issue she contests; in it she points out that the suffragettes involved in the stone throwing on the night of November 21st were highly specific and highly restrained in the damage they created. More distressing, surely, must have been the cruel “gibe of prison-whinings” and the charge that suffragettes might enjoy being sent to prison. Given the horrible tortures many of them endured, and which Davison herself had experienced in under-going forcible feeding, such a thoughtless charge must have been exceedingly hard to take. Her response is phrased in the height of “masculine” rhetoric designed to redeem the suffragettes from charges of hysteria and emotional reaction: “As soldiers we are ready to accept the fortune of war.”

31 Coram Street, W.C., 29 November, 1911

Sir, –Will you allow me to protest at the gibing tone adopted by you in your issue of 25 November on the recent militancy of the W.S.P.U.? You say that ‘we shall soon be regaled by some more insolent abuse of magistrates by Miss Pankurst and some more prison-whinings’. What you mean by this ‘cryptic’ utterance is not clear. We of the W.S.P.U. are not aware that the magistrates of this country have at any time been treated with ‘insolent abuse’ by us. If you had been present in the various courts at which our people have been tried, you would probably have been struck by the dignified bearing of our prisoners, a term which could not have been applied to them if they had stooped to abuse. As to the gibe of prison-whinings, it sounds very quaintly side by side with the other ‘polite fiction’ often raised against us that we enjoy going to prison. Both are equally absurd and equally untrue. As soldiers we are ready to accept the fortune of war.

You then go on to jeer at us for throwing stones ‘at all the windows we could find’. Surely this is a gross exaggeration. The stones thrown on 21 November broke windows in Whitehall, the Strand, one or two West-End establishments, and two newspaper offices. Are these all the windows we could find? That this stone-throwing was not done indiscriminately and hysterically is proved by your next remark, ‘It is something (and surprising) that stones were not thrown at the police’. This noteworthy fact proves how deliberate and self-restrained the women were. Your remark in brackets arose quite naturally from the involuntary reflection as to what men would have done in similar circumstances! But we know when to cry ‘Thus far and no further’! Our militancy is capable of proceeding to the greatest extremes, but only if necessary.
Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON