Suffragette

[Secular Sanity]

I watched this film. It was really good and really sad. Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison are both real characters. It ends by stating that Emily's funeral was reported around the world; and that certain women over 30 in the UK were given the right to vote in 1918, rights over their own children in 1925, and the same voting rights as men in 1928. Scrolling text lists countries that preceded Britain in giving women the vote and others that did so later.

Real Footage

As Emily Davison lay dying in hospital, she received a lot of hate mail but this one stood out.

Miss Davison,

I am glad to hear you are in hospital. I hope you suffer torture until you die. You idiot. I consider you a person unworthy of existence in this world and should like the opportunity of starving and beating you to a pulp. Why don’t your people find an asylum for you?

Yours,
An Englishman

'Suffragette': The Real Women Who Inspired the Film

"Davison's last militant act took place at the Epsom Derby in June 1913. There, she ran in front of, and was subsequently trampled by, the king's horse; she died a few days later. Davison's true intentions have been debated: Some feel she wanted to become a martyr, others believe she only aimed to make a statement by placing the suffragette colors of purple, white and green on the king's horse. The facts that Davison had a return train ticket in her purse and was planning a vacation in France indicate she didn't intend to commit suicide, but there is no definitive answer."

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/056FI2Pq9RY

[C C]

Hi-tech film analysis of Emily Davison's motives ... "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."

Now that would be quite a coincidence if Davison was really randomly chosen, since she was already tailor-fit for a job like that after the jump from a prison balcony. After her release, the WSPU seemed to want to discourage her from unauthorized, roguish activities like the arson incidents. So ironic that it would sanction a select group for the high-risk danger of attaching a suffragette flag to the King's horse.

Or else unlikely that WSPU did do so. But alternatively crazy that Davison would bother setting up a covert training operation like that herself, when it was she who had garnered solo derring-do status. (Historian speculation, sheesh.)

. . . As Emily Davison lay dying in hospital, she received a lot of hate mail but this one stood out.

Miss Davison,

I am glad to hear you are in hospital. I hope you suffer torture until you die. You idiot. I consider you a person unworthy of existence in this world and should like the opportunity of starving and beating you to a pulp. Why don’t your people find an asylum for you?

Yours,
An Englishman

Though they would hardly need to be recruited as theoretical candidates (plenty of genuine nut-cases abroad), I guess Herbert Jones surely had relatives and friends -- a few that might have been temporarily outraged. Jones could have also been killed or crippled rather than suffering a mild concussion.

He certainly didn't carry a personal grudge since he presented a wreath years later at Pankhurst's funeral, also in co-memory of Davison (still haunted by what had happened to her). He actually committed suicide himself in 1951, à la gas in the kitchen.