This letter is Davison’s response to “Bachelor’s” letter of November 3, the previous week, alleging women’s inferiority in respect to male accomplishments. She takes a new approach, arguing that women have expressed their ability and creativity with people, in the family especially, an argument that changes the playing field of the debate and rouses little opposition in people who fear that suffrage will separate women from their domestic duties:

Sir, –The point missed by your correspondent is that women have been creative and inventive all down the ages and centuries, but that until recently their efforts have been confined to persons rather than to things. That is the subtle distinction. Mothers and wives of great men have been the greatest creators of their ages and their name is legion and ever recurring. It is only in a later age that women, being in the majority, have found that the human field is no longer the exclusive object of their constructive power. –Yours, etc.

This letter from “Bachelor” is included in Davison’s scrapbook, perhaps

perceptions was work worth doing:

Sir,–Would you allow me to point out to your correspondent, Miss Witte, who

maintains that women do not imitate men, that they have virtually no choice but

to do so? A Sex which is practically devoid of creative faculty must imitate the

one which possesses it, and notwithstanding the malignity with which suffragists

regard men, they pay them that tribute of flattery in everything they attempt.

The only practical test to which the problem of the equality of the sexes

can be subjected is achievement and weighed in this balance the pretensions of

women can only be characterized as sheer audacity. Modernity is a blessed

word in the mouth of the Ibsenite and Shavian female of to-day, but so far as the

promotion of modern developments are concerned she has been a signal and

complete failure. However great may be the laurels which the suffragist has

garnered in the arena of hooliganism, mechanical invention, aeronautics and

medical research know her not. A woman philosopher has yet to enlighten

humanity and a woman historian with any power of generalization remains

unborn. As playwrights, a lack of constructive talent has been the most salient

feature of the productions emanating from their pens. Clamouring in season and

out of season for the possession of a vote, not so much as a publication from

their ranks has been issued on such subjects as Tariff Reform, Bimetallism, or

Imperialism. Poetical inspiration they have but little and of humour they are

almost wholly destitute.

In that most superficial of all forms of literature—fiction—women have

undeniably achieved a vast measure of success, but in their hands the novel has

lost its artistic purpose and been converted into a medium of propagandism and

the channel by which as Mr. Maxwell wittily remarked the other day, the ‘crank

gets at his victim.’

The inevitable Madame Curie will, doubtless be trotted out as a

convincing refutation of the sterility of women so far as science is concerned, but

as that lady has never been an independent investigator, as radium as a substance

was the discovery of M. Becquerel, I am not prepared to recognize even

this exception to an army of strenuous futiles. Yours, etc.

BACHELOR

This letter appeared the same day as the next letter, “Bachelor’s,” did in The Sunday Times . Its different focus and tone show that while many mocked and laughed at women’s hopes for political and ultimately social equality with men, many others—especially women—were putting their lives and health on the line for change. Davison’s recourse to Christian example, and the example of Christ above all, is a particularly vivid manifestation of the spiritual dimension of the suffrage movement, with its call to martyrdom.

Sir,– In your last week’s issue there was a letter, signed anonymously, which was a tirade against the ‘mock heroism’ of militant suffragists. All down the ages there have been found those who would jeer at that which they did not understand, that of which they themselves were incapable. It is the hall-mark of ignorance! Under the shadow of Calvary ‘the laughter of fools’ was not absent and yet was hushed into awe by the majesty of suffering grandly borne.

The British public has had before it two such examples this week. In the one case the magistrate, who, unlike so many of his colleagues, had a perception of the truth, when he declared that the law holds no terrors [terror?] for those who see its errors, therefore refused to put the law to shame by displaying its incompetency to quell the truth. The other example is afforded by the speedy release of another young girl, who dared to brave all consequences in her just cause. ‘Opprimit leges timor’ [fear oppresses laws]. The laughter of fools is silenced in terror before that which is higher and holier than all things temporal. ‘Deus est in pectore nostro’ [God is within our heart]. Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
Longhorsley, Northumberland, October 31

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

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

In the letters she writes during the month of September, Davison repeatedly calls

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

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

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.

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.