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Sherlock Bones Investigations is thrilled to bring you into the team.  We have a cold case to consider here which requires your keen edge and past knowledge.  May I introduce you Detective to Emily Wilding Davison, known to her friends as Pem.  In 1913, Pem died as a result as an accident after she was hit by the Kings Horse at the Derby.  However, the question we much answer is 'was this an accident?'  Gathered in your case file you will find copies of all of Pem's possessions on the day she ran out on the course.  Detailed footage and plans of the race, and a lengthy biography of the woman herself.  However, to really get into this case you must delve deeper in the to facts of the Women's suffrage movement in Britain in this time.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find out more about Pem's past actions, and potential motivations.  To know more about what happened on that fateful day, and to decide if indeed she intended to martyr herself for the cause or was it a stunt gone wrong?

This is not going to be an easy question, and you will need both the past knowledge and evidence in this file to really understand what happened in 1913.  I just hope you are up to the task.

Good Luck Detectives.

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To solve the case you need to be able to answer these questions

1. What were the arguments for and against women's suffrage?

2. Given her physical condition, items in her possession, and past actions did PEM mean to martyr herself?

3. To what extent is PEM the ultimate symbol of the Women's Movement?

4. How would PEM and her fellow compatriots be viewed in modern society?

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According to the mainstream science of the time, “Women simply had inferior brains, which made them unsuited to the rigors of voting,” says Cheryl Jorgensen-Earp, a professor at the University of Lynchburg who studies rhetoric in science and the British women’s-suffrage movement. “Anti-suffrage cartoons poked fun at women’s reasoning ability … which showed the interior of a woman’s head filled only with letters, puppies, hats, chocolates, and the faces of admiring young men.”

And if women overexerted their already inferior brains, the thinking went, their health could suffer. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, before studies of exercise and metabolism suggested otherwise, many people believed that the human body contained a finite amount of energy. This perception proved more inconvenient for women than for men, as it implied that women needed to channel their energy toward their reproductive system rather than their mind. If women were out voting and participating in politics and thinking, their ovaries would atrophy.

Such activity was especially dangerous while a woman was pregnant. “We must not forget pregnancy and lactation, both of which are a great strain on a mother’s vitality,” Sedgwick said. “Any further strain, like the responsibilities of the suffrage, is bound to be harmful to both mother and child.”

The effects of mental exertion only worsened during menstruation, which further destabilized women on its own. Periods, anti-suffragists argued, produced a temperament unfit for politics.

“For man the physiological psychology of woman is full of difficulties,” wrote the British immunologist Almroth Wright in a 1912 letter to The Times of London, which Sedgwick would later quote. “He is not a little mystified when he encounters in her periodically recurring phases of hypersensitiveness, unreasonableness, and loss of the sense of proportion.” Even menopause made women ineligible to participate in elections, Wright said, because it gave rise to “serious and long-continued mental disorders developing in connection with the approaching extinction of a woman’s reproductive faculty.” Having a uterus seemed to be a lifelong disqualification.

Information taken from -
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/womens-suffrage-nineteenth-amendment-pseudoscience/593710/

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Emily Wilding Davison was born at Roxburgh House, Greenwich, in south-east London on 11 October 1872. Her parents were Charles Davison, a retired merchant, and Margaret née Caisley, both of Morpeth, Northumberland.[1] At the time of his marriage to Margaret in 1868, Charles was 45 and Margaret was 19.[2] Emily was the third of four children born to the couple; her younger sister died of diphtheria in 1880 at the age of six.[3][4][5] The marriage to Margaret was Charles's second; his first marriage produced nine children before the death of his wife in 1866.[1]

The family moved to Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, while Davison was still a baby; until the age of 11 she was educated at home. When her parents moved the family back to London she went to a day school, then spent a year studying in Dunkirk, France.[6] When she was 13 she attended Kensington High School and later won a bursary to Royal Holloway College in 1891 to study literature. Her father died in early 1893 and she was forced to end her studies because her mother could not afford the fees of £20 a term.[7][a]

On leaving Holloway, Davison became a live-in governess, and continued studying in the evenings.[9] She saved enough money to enrol at St Hugh's College, Oxford, for one term to sit her finals;[b] she achieved first-class honours in English, but could not graduate because degrees from Oxford were closed to women.[11] She worked briefly at a church school in Edgbaston between 1895 and 1896, but found it difficult and moved to Seabury, a private school in Worthing, where she was more settled; she left the town in 1898 and became a private tutor and governess to a family in Northamptonshire.[11][12][13] In 1902 she began reading for a degree at the University of London; she graduated with third-class honours in 1908.[14][c]

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In 1902 she began reading for a degree at the University of London; she graduated with third-class honours in 1908.[14][c]

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Extract from The Illustrated London News © Images on display from the Women’s Exhibition, held at Princes Skating Rink, Knightsbridge, London on 13-26 May 1909 (Catalogue ref:  ZPER 34/134)

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New Scotland Yard, S.W.

6th April, 1910

Sir,

I am directed by the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to acquaint you, for the information of the First Commissioner of His Majesty’s Works, &c., that at 6.30.pm. on the 3rd instant the Police Constable patrolling the Vestibule adjoining the Strangers’ Dining Room, Smoking Room Corridor, House of Commons, on opening the small glass panel of a new-pull ventilating shaft, found a Woman concealed therein standing on a ladder inside immediately above a temporary staging fitted up for workmen.

In reply to questions she gave her name as Emily Davison, of 4, Clements Inn, Strand, and stated that she was a suffragette and that it was her intention to gain access to the House in order to ask a question.

She stated that she entered the House by the Victoria Tower about 3 p.m. on Saturday, while it was open to visitors, and gained access to the shaft after passing through the South East door of the lower Waiting Hall; the Police on duty in the Lower Waiting Hall and his party, passed through the door in question between the hours of 2 and 4 pm on Saturday. The ventilating shaft door is opened and examined hourly by the Police Constable on duty, but the woman …

The Secretary
H.M. Office of Works, &c

remained no doubt on the small platform at the top of the ladder, about 20 feet above the doorway, and out of sight of the Police who do not enter the shaft. When detected she had apparently just visited the fountain in the Vestibule to obtain water and had been unable to regain her former position before the Constable opened the door.

I am,
Sir,
Your obedient Servant,

G. Bathurst,

Chief Clark.

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Many suffragettes refused to be counted in the 1911 census, in protest at their inferior status as individuals rather than citizens with parliamentary voting rights. Emily took her protest one step further by hiding overnight in a cupboard in the House of Commons near the Chapel. Unfortunately she was discovered by a cleaner and added to the schedule for the Houses of Parliament, albeit with her name spelt incorrectly. She was also counted at her lodgings. During her lifetime Emily hid 3 times in the Houses of Parliament. Such imaginative and novel escapades made her well known.

The 1911 census was the first where respondents completed their own details and uniquely included a question for married couples on how many children they had, both living and dead. This census provided data for campaigners for the vote who saw enfranchisement as a means to improve the general lot of women.

7EWD/C/7/1

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This 26 page handwritten document is Emily's address to the London Westminster and County Bank Debating Society. She lays out her case with fervour and clarity:

"There is not a single question in the country which touches men which does not also touch women, and for that reason in order that such questions may be fully and adequately dealt with the women's point of view is needed equally with the man's."

The text is carefully planned with headings including: 'The National Standpoint' which deals with figures on infant mortality and 'The Imperial Viewpoint' which points to the forward looking nations of Australia and New Zealand with their universal suffrage. 'The Moral Standpoint' quotes the great nineteenth-century social reformer Josephine Butler, whose Papers are also held in The Women's Library @ LSE Collection, and who worked to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, passed in the 1860s, to provide compulsory medical examinations of those believed to be prostitutes. 'The Financial Standpoint' asks for equal pay for equal work since, as Emily said, "Women are cheap today".

The manuscript ends with her summary and what could be her notes from the debate itself.

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Emily's handwritten paper describes the campaign of setting fire to post boxes which she started late in 1911. She sets out the legislative impasse regarding the granting of the vote to women and describes how she decided to step up public protest from stone throwing to pillar box fires. The account is detailed and, with some humour, tells of her arrest and trial. Her actions were very public and after the first attempt she made certain that she was seen. At her trial she stated that she was acting on her own. She was sentenced to six months in prison and, despite her efforts, was not given leave to appeal. Although not on hunger strike, she was forcibly fed for 8 days in March 1912.

The page shown describes her first incendiary route down the Strand to the Fleet Street Post Office.

"I took out of my pocket a packet of the same size as an ordinary letter. It was of grease proof paper tied with cotton. Inside was coarse linen well soaked in kerosene ... I calmly applied a match ... held it for a second ... I let the packet, now well alight go down the receptacle, & threw the matches in afterwards. I then quietly walked on down Fleet Street & turned into the first Lyons I came to to get lunch."

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Fawcett was an academic and the wife of a Liberal MP Henry Fawcett (his widow actually, for most of the campaign, after he died in 1884 aged 51). She was a great political strategist, very astute and skilled at gauging society’s reaction to the campaigns that she had in mind. She often second-guessed parliament and public opinion and was able to guide the campaign so as to make people sympathise with their cause, rather than fight against it, which was an extraordinarily sensitive and perceptive thing to do.

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In prison, Emily wrote about barricading herself in her cell and the forced entry of her warders to force feed her. It was subsequently published by the WSPU.

"I called at the top of my voice 'I will not be fed by the doctor if it must be done it must be by the Senior Dr...'"

This was the first occasion on which she joined the suffragettes' hunger strike to protest differential treatment accorded to some prisoners who, as WSPU leaders, had higher status and privileges in prison. She bravely withstood the torture of being fed through a tube forced into her nostrils as she writes:

"The senior doctor (then operating) said: 'Miss Davison you are determined' I replied in the brief interval as the tube was out 'I am'." Nevertheless the sound of other women being similarly tortured made her determined to protest and she later twice threw herself off the prison landing railings, causing herself considerable injury.

Many of the contemporary descriptions of force feeding were smuggled out of prisons to alert supporters outside. Women and men who suffered this treatment had subsequent associated health problems throughout their lives.

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On the morning before the Derby Emily is recorded as having visited the WSPU offices and asked for 2 flags without giving any particular reason. There is some evidence that Emily was seen as a lone protestor and as somewhat beyond the control of the official organisers of the WSPU campaigns.

It is possible she planned to put one of the flags on the King's horse and one was certainly pinned inside her coat and is visible in photographs at the scene.

Her close friend Mary Leigh, another militant suffragette, visited Emily in hospital along with Rose Lamartine Yates who donated so many of Emily's possessions to The Women's Library Collection and whose lawyer husband, Thomas, represented Emily's family at the inquest into her death. Contemporary descriptions record that her friends hung the WSPU colours around Emily's hospital bed. Mary Leigh visited Emily's grave in Morpeth every year after her death and took with her one of the flags. Mary later carried it at the first Aldermaston "Ban the bomb" march in 1958. The CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) collections are also at LSE.

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Suffragette Emily Davison knocked down by King's horse at Epsom

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Historians have suggested that Davison was trying to attach a flag to King George V's horse and police reports suggested two flags were found on her body. Some witnesses believed she was trying to cross the track, thinking the horses had passed by, others believed she had tried to pull down Anmer. The fact that she was carrying a return train ticket from Epsom and had holiday plans with her sister in the near future have also caused some historians to claim that she had no intention of killing herself.

In 2011 the horse-racing historian Michael Tanner argued that as Davison was standing in crowds on the inside of the bend at Tattenham Corner it would have been impossible for her to see the king's horse.

But new cross-referencing between the cameras has revealed, say the C4 programme makers, that Davison was closer to the start of Tattenham Corner than thought and so had a better line of sight. In this position she could have seen and singled out Anmer.

Historians have suggested that Davison and other suffragettes were seen "practising" at grabbing horses in the park near her mother's house and that they then drew lots to determine who should go to the Derby.

After colliding with Anmer, Davison collapsed unconscious on the track. The horse went over, but then rose, completing the race without a jockey. Davison died of her injuries four days later in Epsom Cottage Hospital.

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The small purse retrieved as part of Emily's personal possessions listed by the Metropolitan Police, Epsom on 10 June 1913 contained at the time:

A few coins totalling 3 shillings and 8 pence three farthings
The half return ticket to Victoria (item 12)
2 post office counterfoils
A railway insurance ticket for New Oxford Street station
8 halfpenny stamp

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JOURNAL ARTICLE

Emily Wilding Davison: Secular Martyr?

Gay L. Gullickson

Social Research

Vol. 75, No. 2, Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Denial (SUMMER 2008), pp. 461-484 (24 pages)

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40972072?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

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Although Davison’s intentions at the Derby have been hotly contested, her status as a martyr for the cause and claims that her death was indeed ‘for women’ remain accurate. New image enhancing technology has revealed that Davison was in fact attempting to place something on the bridle of Anmer rather than an act of suicide to bring attention to the suffragette plight. Earlier reports of suffragettes practicing the grabbing of horse bridles along with the fact that the activist was found holding two small suffragette flags support these findings as she may have intended to place on the horse’s bridle to wave across the crowds for the remainder of the race. Regardless of her intention that day, Davison’s legacy is one of complete dedication to the fight for women’s suffrage despite the consequences of her actions. Her perseverance and commitment to action in the face of adversity show that personal struggle and defeat can result in the progression of a greater good.

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With the onset of World War I in 1914, Davison’s funeral procession was the last great organized act on the part of the WSPU, which disbanded to focus on the war effort. While it was the circumstances surrounding the War that ultimately brought about British women’s suffrage in 1918, the WSPU and their militant activism, often times spearheaded by Davison, changed prior notions of women’s positions as activists as well as activism as a whole. Davison and her fellow suffragettes disliked and disagreed with the men in power and, rather than continue to play by their rules in hopes of eventual change, they took matters into their own hands by maintaining the attention of the public and refusing to let the oppressors continue their daily lives unfettered by those whose rights they have stripped.

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•Diamond Jones – never raced again.

•Many believe that Anmer horse was put down, yet in fact he was exiled as a political move, and spent the rest of his life out of the country.

•In 1951 Jones took his own life, found gassed by his Son in his kitchen, claimed he always saw that woman's face.

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The letter displayed is from Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to the leader of the constitutional suffrage campaign Millicent Garrett Fawcett, dated 5 August 1928, marking the end of the campaign to obtain parliamentary suffrage for women on equal terms with men.  Baldwin expresses the sentiment that he never doubted that it would be passed in the ‘simple and complete form it ultimately assumed’ and finishes by stating it ‘will be for the good of our beloved country’. This letter is a fitting conclusion to the great social movement that Millicent Fawcett led to victory. Her fellow campaigners continue to campaign for women’s equality through what is now the Fawcett Society.

Reproduced with permission from The Women's Library.

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For some reason, in my head I have switched to a thick Belgian accent, and I have started to twiddle my neat moustache.  No matter Detectives!

Did you solve the case?  Was it deliberate or accidental?  Did Pem know what was going to happen?

The headscratcher for me Detectives, is the question of does it really matter?  Yes, yes, Pem was an amazing woman and her death was a tragedy, BUT, does the motivation for her death really matter?  Should the fact be simply that she died and became part of the vital weave which ultimately helped the fight for women's rights win the day?  Is her story perhaps but one of hundreds of acts of sacrifice and bravery that collaborative turned the tide?

Alas detectives, I think we will never know exactly, and it is up to you to decide.

Congratulations on completing your first case. I can see a very successful career in your future.