Emily Wilding Davison was a militant activist who fought for women's suffrage in Britain.
She was jailed on nine occasions and force-fed 49 times.
She is best known for stepping in front of King George V's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby
on 4 June 1913, sustaining injuries that resulted in her death four days later.
Emily Davison's funeral on 14 June 1913 was organised by the Women's Social and Political
Union.
Thousands of suffragettes accompanied the coffin and tens of thousands of people lined
the streets of London.
After a service in Bloomsbury her coffin was taken by train to the family grave in Morpeth,
Northumberland.
Modern historians agree that Davison was trying to disturb the Derby in order to draw attention
to her cause, rather than to commit suicide, and 2013 analysis of newsreel has supported
the idea that Davison was reaching up to attach a scarf to the bridle of the King's horse.
Analysis of newsreel also indicated that her position before she stepped out onto the track
would have given her a clear view of the oncoming race, further countering the belief that she
ran out in a haphazard way to kill herself.
Early life and education
Davison was born in Blackheath, London, the daughter of Charles Davison and Margaret Davison.
She had two sisters, a brother and half-siblings from her father's first marriage including
a half-brother, retired naval captain Henry Jocelyn Davison, who gave evidence at her
inquest.
She later attended Kensington High School and won a bursary to Royal Holloway College
in 1891 to study literature and modern foreign languages.
She took up her place in January 1892, but she was forced to drop out the following year
when her father died and her mother could not afford the fees of £30 a term.
She then became a private governess before becoming a teacher in Edgbaston and Worthing,
raising enough money to study Biology, Chemistry, English Language and Literature at St Hugh's
College, Oxford.
She obtained first-class honours in her final exams, though women were not at that time
admitted to degrees at Oxford.
Davison then began teaching the daughters of the Moorhouse family in Spratton, Northamptonshire.
Activism In 1906, Davison joined the Women's Social
and Political Union.
Formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, the WSPU brought together those who felt strongly
that militant, confrontational tactics were needed in order to achieve women's suffrage.
In 1908, Davison left her teaching post to dedicate herself completely to the movement.
In the same year she entered the University of London examinations as an external candidate
for a degree in Modern Foreign Languages.
She gained a reputation as a militant and violent campaigner.
On her own initiative and without WSPU approval, her actions developed from disrupting meetings
to stone throwing and arson.
She was arrested and imprisoned for various offences nine times, including a violent attack
on a man she mistook for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George.
During many of these prison terms she went on hunger strike and was force-fed.
On 2 April 1911, the night of the 1911 census, Davison hid in a cupboard in St Mary Undercroft
the chapel of the Palace of Westminster overnight so that on the census form she could legitimately
give her place of residence that night as the "House of Commons".
The 1911 census documents that were uncovered state that Emily Wilding Davison was found
"hiding in the crypt" in the Houses of Parliament.
In 1999 a plaque to commemorate the event was set in place by Tony Benn MP.
In June 1912, near the end of a six-month sentence in Holloway Prison for arson, she
reacted to an episode in which she and dozens of fellow suffragettes were force-fed, by
throwing herself down a 10 metre iron staircase.
Her intention, as she wrote afterwards, was to stop the suffering of everyone else by
carrying out this action.
As a result she suffered severe head and spinal damage, causing discomfort for the remaining
twelve months of her life.
Injury at Epsom Derby
On 4 June 1913, Davison attended the Epsom Derby.
As the race was underway, she ran on to the track and attempted to grab the bridle of
Anmer, the horse owned by King George V.
The horse collided with her and she fell to the ground, where she was trampled by its
hoofs as it too fell.
Meanwhile, the jockey, Herbert Jones, was thrown but had his foot caught in the stirrup.
The horse did a somersault, got up, and resumed running the race, dragging the unconscious
Jones before his foot came loose.
Bystanders unsuccessfully attempted to revive both Davison and Jones, before they were carried
off by ambulances.
Davison's purpose in attending the Derby is not clear.
She had purchased a return rail ticket and a ticket to a suffragette dance later that
day, both of which are now in the collection of the Women's Library in London, which suggests
that martyrdom was not her intention.
Although it later became clear it was the only type of rail ticket available for purchase,
it is noted that she carefully kept the return half in her purse.
Further evidence is a postcard she wrote to her sister Laetitia, who lived in France and
to whom she was very close, which suggests she was going on holiday a few days after
the Derby to visit her sister and her niece.
It is a possibility that she entered the race track in order to attach a flag to Anmer,
so that when the horse crossed the finishing line, it would be flying the WSPU flag.
According to police reports, two flags were found in her possession.
Pathé News captured the incident on film.
Film, taken at Tattenham Corner, shows Davison stepping out onto the racecourse just as the
leading horses swept by.
She was then seen standing in the middle of the racecourse as two more horses passed on
the inside of her, and was then knocked to the ground by one of the last few trailing
horses, the King's horse Anmer.
The film is unclear, but it is possible that by this point she had taken the banner of
the WSPU out from where it was concealed in her clothing, with the intention of attaching
it to the horse.
Eyewitnesses at the time were divided as to her motivation, with many feeling that she
had simply intended to cross the track, believing that all horses had passed.
Others reported that she had attempted to pull down the King's horse.
It is sometimes suggested that a few weeks beforehand Emily Davison and other suffragettes
were "practising" grabbing horses in the park near her mother's house in Morpeth and that
they drew straws to decide who should be the one to go to Epsom.
Horse racing historian Michael Tanner, in a 2011 TV interview at Epsom, pointed out
that, as Emily Davison was standing on the inside of the bend at Tattenham Corner amidst
heaving crowds, and with no racetrack commentary as there is today, it would not have been
possible to know whether the King's horse had already gone past.
In addition, considering the speeds the horses were going, it would not have been possible
for her to identify any particular horse even if she had meant to.
This suggests that the fact it was the King's horse that she collided with was just a coincidence.
Tanner later described the story of her "practising" with galloping horses and "drawing straws"
as "folklore at best, pure hokum at worst," emphasising that "by 1913 Davison's modus
operandi was acting alone – no one knew of her plans, in Morpeth or elsewhere."
The most recent theory is that she intended to throw a Votes for Women sash around the
neck of the King's horse to gain publicity for her cause.
A sash apparently found at the scene immediately after the collision was recently purchased
at auction by author Barbara Gorna, the closest losing bidder being the Jockey Club, and now
hangs in the Houses of Parliament.
This theory received support from a 2013 examination of the incident, in which forensic experts
examined and correlated footage captured by three different newsreel cameras, and determined
that Davison was much closer to the start of the bend than had been previously assumed,
and so would have had a much clearer view of the oncoming horses than previously thought.
It concluded that Davison, who clearly carried in her hand something that could have been
the folded Votes for Women sash as she ducked under a barrier and onto the course, did intend
to attach it to the king's horse, and that there was no question of her deliberately
throwing herself under the horse.
However, in his 2013 book The Suffragette Derby, Tanner examined the provenance of this
"sash", which is in fact a scarf, and found it wanting: its original owner, Richard Pittway
Burton, was not Epsom's Clerk of the Course, as claimed, but an East End docker with no
racing connection whatsoever.
Nor, he argued, could the article in Davison's hand be safely identified as a scarf in the
first place: the evidence was skewed to suit.
In a letter to the Racing Post Tanner went on to deplore the reiteration of "several
myths" attached to Davison that he had debunked in his book, and expressed deep reservations
about the film footage analysis, stressing once more that "from her position wedged tight
against the rail, Davison would need to have been on a 20-foot ladder to have seen over
the heads of the people to her right and then the leading bunch of nine horses to single
out the figure of Anmer hidden behind...
she was already ducking under the rail as the first horses passed and had missed two-thirds
of the field altogether – which for all she knew may have included Anmer.
It was pure chance that she stumbled upon Anmer."
Death Davison died four days later in Epsom Cottage
Hospital due to a fractured skull and internal injuries caused by the incident.
Jones suffered a mild concussion, but allegedly was "haunted by that poor woman's face" for
much longer.
In 1928, at the funeral of Emmeline Pankhurst, Jones laid a wreath "to do honour to the memory
of Mrs Pankhurst and Miss Emily Davison".
However, Tanner rejects both this and the inference that the Epsom incident contributed
to the jockey's suicide in 1951, having interviewed both of Jones's children for his book: "Their
father killed himself 38 years later following the death of his wife and a loneliness brought
on by deafness."
Commemoration
Davison is buried in the church yard of St. Mary the Virgin, Morpeth, Northumberland,
in a family plot where her father was buried.
The cemetery is about 7 miles south of Longhorsley, where she had lived with her mother and family.
A memorial service, which attracted a great crowd, was held at St. George's church in
London on 14 June 1913.
Her coffin was brought by train to Morpeth for burial on 15 June.
Her gravestone bears the WSPU slogan, "Deeds not words."
On 18 April 2013 a plaque was unveiled at Epsom racecourse to mark the centenary of
the death.
An Emily Wilding Davison Memorial Campaign was also established ahead of the centenary
to campaign for a minute's silence at the 2013 Epsom Derby.
However, the campaign failed after the racecourse said that this would be "logistically impossible".
Legacy Like other acts of suffragette militancy,
Davison’s actions divided public opinion, some admiring her courage, others decrying
the disruption of sport, the injury to the jockey, or the slight to the King.
But the direct consequence was to galvanise male political support for suffrage, in the
form of the Northern Men's Federation for Women's Suffrage.
This initially took the form of a deputation to the Prime Minister Asquith; when this was
rebuffed, it became a standing organisation.
Its president was the former actress Maud Arncliffe-Sennett.
It was mainly composed of town councillors, ministers, lawyers and similar civic figures
from Glasgow and Edinburgh, and had little following beyond central Scotland, even in
Davison’s Northumberland.
Beyond the Federation it is difficult to distinguish Davison's effect from that of the broader
militant tradition in Britain, which continued until the political landscape was changed
by the outbreak of World War 1.
Emily Davison is the subject of an opera, Emily, by the British composer Tim Benjamin.
She is also the subject of a song by American rock singer Greg Kihn, whose elegy "Emily
Davison" is included on his first album, 1976's Greg Kihn.
In 2014, English folk singer, Maz O'Connor, released a track "Derby Day" viewing events
as if she were a young boy watching the race sat on his father's shoulders.
The track is included on her album, "This Willowed Light"
See also List of suffragists and suffragettes
Timeline of women's suffrage Women's suffrage organizations
References
External links An exhibit on Emily Davison, London School
of Economics.
History Learning Site Bio Writer Barbara Gorna on Women's Parliamentary
Radio claiming Davison's death to be a tragic accident not suicide
Picture of the plaque placed by Tony Benn in the House of Commons
The original Pathé footage of Emily Davison running out of the crowds at the Derby
Film about Emily Davison showing the collision at approximately 4:02 on YouTube.
"Emily Wilding Davison".
Suffragette.
Find a Grave. 11 April 2005.
Retrieved 18 August 2011.
'Emily Wilding Davidson' a poem by Ethel Rolt-Wheeler published in the Daily Herald on the 14 June
1913 Pathe video of the accident
Archives The archives of Emily Davison are held at
the Women's Library at the Library of the London School of Economics, ref 7EWD