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