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.

In this letter Davison engages the state of British law as it applies to women’s rights as wives and mothers. In response to R.W.E.’s contention that legislation has given women rights that they had never had in Britain, Davison points out that the rights women can exercise in marriage are largely the result of hard campaigns led by women, pointing out the sex prejudice embedded in the laws of Britain even in 1911—that a man will be more lightly sentenced for severely beating his wife, than for committing a theft.

Sir, –Your correspondent R.W.E. brings forward as a proof that ‘man-made law’ is not so bad as it is painted by suffragists various proofs that women nowadays are almost privileged under the law. He quotes the fact that mothers may be given the custody of children, and also the fact that nowadays a woman has the right to leave her husband. Will you allow me to point out that these features of the English law on marriage are due (a) to the scandalous state of affairs which obtained in olden days, when the wife was in the eyes of the law exclusively the chattel of her husband; (b) to the noble and tireless labours of devoted women? That this is so is well proved by the way in which the two main laws which give women certain rights as to the guardianship of children were put on the Statute book in 1839 and 1886. The former is due to the life-long work and martyrdom of the Hon. Mrs. Norton, who made a gallant attempt to get the custody of her children from her worthless husband. The other, the Act of 1886, is due to the splendid efforts of Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, by which the mother has the right of joint guardianship with any guardian appointed by the father. This same noble pioneer was also one of the main spirits who obtained the epoch-making Married Women’s Property Act, which enacted that women could own separate property. These two acts of elementary justice were only won by herculean effort and suffering by brave women. But the great mass of the injustice of the marriage law still remains, which allows the law to give a man a smaller penalty for nearly killing his wife than for committing a theft.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31, Coram-street, W.C.

Davison likely knew of Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) because of the spectacular success

claim full humanity and autonomy.

Sir, — The contribution of Miss Marjorie Bowen to ‘Women’s Platform’ headed ‘The Spirit of

Unrest’ will do more to win converts to the Suffrage cause than many an eloquent defence

of it. This young girl of genius who has leapt suddenly into unexpected fame is clearly

a ‘darling of the gods’; but still, no one could have foreseen that she could conclude her

article with such an entirely selfish note as that struck by the words: ‘A gifted woman can

now, without touching even the fringe of masculine activities foreign to her nature, exercise

an influence and achieve a fame equal to the utmost that the demand for freedom could

wring from a weakening race of men in any lamentable future.’ Because Miss Marjorie

Bowen and Mrs. Humphry Ward have been so lucky as to achieve this result, are they

to tell the thousands of slaves of sweating and the white slave traffic that women ‘are

as free as they are ever likely to be under any conditions of affairs’? Such a statement

is a hideously selfish mockery. What Miss Bowen has failed to grasp is that the spirit

manifested among women is the spirit of the age, which no longer allows us to be poor

dumb brutish things, but human beings with a voice, a will, a soul, an intellect.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Great Coram-street, W.C.

cities stood on the matter of the bill.

November 10, 1911, The Standard, “Funds of Suffragists”

Sir, — In extracts from letters Mr. A. Geeson asks why suffragists collect thousands of

pounds at meetings which they use for ‘paying salaries’ and organizing processions

of ‘sweetly pretty girls,’ when they might use them to help excellent charities and

similar institutions. Mr. Geeson has surely not seriously reflected when he made such a

suggestion. To apply suffragist funds to other purposes than those for which they were

raised would, if described in plain or in legal language, be termed by a very ugly word.

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

Emily Davison engages two important elements of suffrage politics in this brief letter.

New York: 1994).

Sir, –With regard to the physical force argument which is always being raised by Anti-

Suffragists, as, for example, by Lord George Hamilton yesterday, will you allow me to

quote some words of Mr. William Ewart Gladstone in his “Gleanings of Past Years,” which

come in very aptly, as the Antis are always quoting his opinions 39:–

“But when we are seeking to ascertain the measure of that conception which any

given race has formed of our nature, there is perhaps no single text so effective as the

position which it assigns its women. For as the law of force is the law of brute creatures, so

in proportion as he is under the yoke of that law does man approximate the brute; and in

proportion, on the other hand, as he has escaped from its dominion is he ascending into the

higher sphere of being, and claiming relationship with deity. But the emancipation and due

ascendency of women are not a mere fact: they are the emphatic assertions of a principle;

and that principle is the dethronement of the law of force and the enthronement of other

and higher laws in its place, and in its despite.”

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Coram-street, W.C. Oct. 31

Special Points

Nov. 2, 1911 con’t The Standard

Miss Emily W. Davison writes: –“Men can use the vote to get women the vote, for the vote

will not be really effective until it is genuinely representative. Injustice hurts the offender

more than the sufferer.”

Sir,– My letter, which was dated and sent off October 11, refers to Miss Pott’s

communication, headed a “Challenge to Mrs. Despard,” in your issue of October 10, in

which she asserted, “The Report (official) on the Textile Trades, published in 1906, affirms

positively that between 1886 and 1906 the average wages of women in those trades rose

22 per cent., as against 20 per cent. For men. The wages of female domestic servants have

increased over 20 per cent. Since 1860.” I explained the rise.

Emily Wilding Davison

31, Coram-street, W.C.

In these two letters Davison again engages with Gladys Pott to refute rosy assertions about

result of “natural” economic forces entirely separate from labour movements or suffrage.

Sir, Miss Gladys Pott utters a bold challenge to Mrs. Despard, which with your permission

I should like to take up. With unusual wiliness for an “Anti,” Miss Pott has culled a few

exceptional statistics from a great mass which goes far to prove Mrs. Despard’s contention.

Miss Pott takes two special trades, that of the textile women workers, and that of domestic

service, in both of which women’s wages have risen, and cleverly insinuates from that fact

that in all women’s trades wages have risen. But Miss Pott of course knows, as do we all,

that to get an average you take the very lowest as well as the very highest. There are very

clear reasons why wages in these two trades have advanced. The textile women workers

are wonderfully organized into trade unions together with the men, and by this means have

direct representation in Parliament. Hence their wages and conditions are better than in

any other trade.

As to the wages in domestic service, there is a very simple explanation there. It is

the law of supply and demand. Since the year 1860, mentioned by Miss Pott, profession

after profession, trade after trade, has been opened out to women, with the result that they

no longer overcrowd the only occupation, which, together with governessing, was once

open to women.

Emily Wilding Davison

31, Great Coram-street

Although Davison welcomes renewed interest in the question of woman suffrage in this

to the printed word as a means of influence.

Sir, –There is a long account in your paper of a campaign against woman suffrage which

is being waged along the East Coast, to which you give great prominence. The National

League for Opposing Woman Suffrage is evidently quite awake to the fact that the

enfranchisement of women has every chance of taking place next year, and that if they are

to prevent it they must make super-human effort.

In despair the anti-suffragists are clinging to the straw that woman suffrage has

never been before the electorate. It has been before the electorate for the last 50 years, but

it has never been a live issue till six years ago. The jaunty assumption of Miss Gladys Pott

that ‘no member of Parliament has yet won his seat on the question of votes for women,

either one way or another,’ is somewhat ambiguously worded, but Miss Pott had better

turn up the Government organs on Mr. Masterman’s recent election by a much reduced

vote to see that woman suffrage figures very largely as a force in election contests to-day.

The National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage is doing us a great service in

removing the last shreds of apathy upon the question in the country,

I am Sir, your obedient servant,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31 Coram-street, W.C.

This letter shows how, in the absence of facts, Davison is always ready with a logical

public spaces.

Sir, in your issue of Saturday, you give an account of the difficulties which appear to be

arising in Washington State, owing to the fact that women will not serve on juries, a civic

responsibility which comes upon them as a result of their enfranchisement. One is tempted

to point out, however, that there are probably special circumstances, which have forced

the women who were put down for duty to protest and to reject the duty. One seems to

be that they had not proper accommodation provided for them in their deliberations. It is

quite evident that where juries may have to discuss a case for some hours, where there is

a mixed jury, special arrangements may be necessary. Such facts as these must be made

clear before the charge is hurled against the women of Washington of wanting full civic

privileges without full civic responsibilities.

There is another thought to be put forward—that owing to the far better

consideration given to women in the United States women do not feel the same need for a

fairer chance before the law as is felt by English women, who would fain serve on juries.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Coram-Street, W.C.