logo
  • Home
  • About the Project
  • Browse Letters

October 4, 1912, The Newcastle Daily Chronicle

Posted on October 4, 1912 by Emily Davison Posted in Letters

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 Newcastle Daily Chronicle
« The Woman Suffrage Question
October 6, 1912, To the Editor of the Sunday Times »

Read the Book

Available now from the University of Michigan Press:

In the Thick of the Fight: the Writing of Emily Wilding Davison, Militant Suffragette, by Carolyn Collette.

Interview

Carolyn Collette talks about the life of Emily Wilding Davison

Archives

  • January 1913
  • December 1912
  • November 1912
  • October 1912
  • September 1912
  • August 1912
  • June 1912
  • May 1912
  • February 1912
  • December 1911
  • November 1911
  • October 1911
  • September 1911
  • August 1911
  • March 1911

Tags

and Art East Anglian Daily Times Literature M.A.P. Newcastle Daily Journal Paper unknown Science Sunday Times The Croydon Times The Daily Chronicle The Daily Graphic The Evening Standard The Eye Witness The Finsbury and City Teachers’ Journal The Graphic The Irish News The Leeds Mercury The Manchester Guardian The Morning Advertiser The Morning Leader The Morning Post The Morpeth Herald The New Age The Newcastle Daily Chronicle The Newcastle Daily Journal The Newcastle Evening Chronicle The Newcastle Weekly Chronicle The North Mail The Queen The Saturday Review of Politics The Schoolmaster The Standard The Stratford Upon Avon Herald The Sunday Chronicle The Sunday Times The Throne The Throne and Country The Times The Westminster Gazette The World The Yorkshire Observe The Yorkshire Observer The Yorkshire Post The Yorkshire Telegraph The Yorkshire Weekly Post
© 2013 Carolyn Collette and others