A century ago, on 5 June 1913, Emily Wilding Davison died while trying to throw a banner over King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby. Emily’s action – either heroic or reckless, depending on your viewpoint – is one of the most iconic images of the suffragettes’ long struggle to win women the vote.

But Emily’s attempt to get the public’s attention over the issue of women’s right to vote was just one small part of a long and eventually successful campaign that took place over the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many women involved in the fight were prepared to do anything to advance their cause – including starving themselves, being arrested and imprisoned, and lampooned in the press.

The suffragettes were a collection of women, largely from upper and middle-class backgrounds, and including many teachers, who were frustrated by the limitations that society and government put on them due to their gender. Although some men, such as John Stuart Mill, had first proposed women’s suffrage back in 1865, it would be decades before women – and some men – joined forces in an organised movement to argue for women’s right to vote. In 1897, Millicent Fawcett set up the Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies – a collection of local groups – to campaign for voting rights through the writing and distribution of leaflets and petitions. The Union had a limited effect, however, and in 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst established the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

Emmeline believed that any movement needed to be both radical and militant if it was going to have any effect; but the willingness of members to use violence if necessary was seen as proof in some quarters that women were too illogical and hysterical to deserve the vote. Journalist Charles E Hands, writing in the Daily Mail, coined the term ‘suffragette’ to describe this new breed of militant protestor.

From 1905, the suffragettes attempted to gain publicity through peaceful protests. These sometimes led to arrests on what seem, to modern eyes, to be absurdly trivial charges. For example, in 1909 a 61-year-old nurse, Elise Evans, was charged with wilfully and persistently causing an obstruction. Her crime had been to chalk the phrase ‘Votes for Women’ on the pavement on the Strand. She was fined 20 shillings.

In 1908, the WSPU decided to try and enter the House of Commons in order to approach the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and argue their cause. Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst spoke at a public meeting in Trafalgar Square beforehand, stressing that they wanted to remain non-violent. They asked women to come unarmed and without sticks or stones to give their support, producing a handbill to this effect. The Pankhursts were then issued with a summons, accusing them of conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace – it being argued that the handbill had incited the public to do a certain wrongful and illegal act in storming the Commons.

By the time they tried again to storm the Commons, in 1911, the suffragettes’ tactics had changed. On 21 November, a group from the WSPU again tried to storm the building – this time armed with stones and hammers. Their action illustrated a militant phase of the campaign to get votes for women. This behaviour also saw some suffragettes chaining themselves to railings, committing acts of arson, and smashing windows, as well as organising marches on Parliament. It has been estimated that in the period up to 1914, around a thousand suffragettes were imprisoned in England.

The suffragettes, under the WSPU banner, lobbied to get their arrested and convicted members recognised as political prisoners. This would give them better treatment in prison, including being allowed frequent visits. However, they were unsuccessful, and failed to be given any privileges due to their social or political position. This led to some suffragettes starting hunger strikes in prison – the first woman to do so being Marion Wallace Dunlop, who had been imprisoned in Holloway back in 1909 after being convicted of vandalism. Dunlop’s hunger strike continued for 91 hours; the Government feared that she might become a martyr and the Home Office duly released her from prison early on medical grounds. Others then started hunger strikes in order to also get released early.

The WSPU saw its hunger strikers as heroines; a banner produced in 1910 contains the signatures of 80 such women, who had faced death without flinching. The government attempted to deal with the phenomenon of hunger striking women, as well as those women who purposely starved themselves in order to get released from prison. In 1913, the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-health) Act – commonly known as the Cat and Mouse Act – was passed, enabling prisoners on hunger strike to be temporarily released from prison until they had regained their health. At that point, they could be rearrested and made to continue their prison sentence.

The lead-up to the World War One had a major impact on the acts of the suffragettes. Many focused their attention on the war effort, hunger strikes largely stopped, and in the summer of 1914, all suffrage prisoners were released on an amnesty, with Emmeline Pankhurst ending militant activities soon after. Politicians had felt that the suffragettes’ militant activities actually antagonised public opinion; so when they started focusing on the war effort, and publicising their activities in this field, public opinion started to turn. Partial enfranchisement of women occurred at the end of the war, in 1918. In February that year, the Representation of the People Act let women over 30 who also met minimum property qualifications get the vote. Seven months later, women were allowed to become MPs. However, it took another decade before the 1928 Representation of the People Act made women equal to men, letting anyone over 21 eligible to vote. The suffragist movement had been long and sometimes violent; but ultimately the suffragettes were successful in their aims.

The Disillusioned Suffragette

Dora Marsden was a Yorkshire-born suffragette who, although not quite as well known as the Pankhursts or Emily Davison, was involved in both peaceful and militant action with the Women’s Social and Political Union.

The 1881 census shows her parents, Fred and Hannah, living at The Step in Marsden, Yorkshire, where Dora was born the following year. Her father deserted the family in 1890 and emigrated to America, leaving her mother Hannah to support her children by working as a seamstress.

According to the Dictionary of National Biography Dora won a scholarship to enter Owens College, Manchester – later Manchester University – in 1900 and graduated with a 2:i in 1903, by this point having become part of a group of feminists in Manchester who included Christabel Pankhurst.

The Times Digital Archive (available in some libraries) shows that on 31 March 1909, Dora, together with other suffragettes, took part in an attempt to force an entrance to the House of Commons, and was arrested. On 1 April, The Times recorded that Dora had been charged with assaulting the police. Six months later, The Times reported that Dora had created a disturbance outside Manchester University while Lord Morley was delivering an address, and she was again arrested.

However, Dora became disillusioned with the WSPU’s leadership – which was firmly focused on the Pankhursts – and withdrew from political activity in 1913. She had a nervous breakdown in 1934 and, suffering from a psychotic depression, was admitted to hospital in Dumfries, where she died in 1960.

In and out of the 1911 census

It is estimated that several thousand women may have chosen to boycott the 1911 census, in some cases avoiding the enumerators by packing in large numbers into hidden rooms or lurking in sheds and barns.

However, many also used the census forms as an opportunity to express themselves, as excellent quality images from the 1911 census collection at data website TheGenealogist reveal. The pictures shown here reveal how many women defaced the census forms. Others (who can be found using the site’s keyword search) wrote heartfelt statements of their frustration. For example, an Isabella Leo in London wrote: If I am intelligent enough to fill in this census form, I can surely make a X on a ballot paper.

Researching the Suffragettes

If you are trying to locate a suffragette ancestor, your first port of call should be The National Archives (TNA). It has several records relating to the suffragist movement, located mainly within its Metropolitan Police and Home Office collections. For example, in the former collection, there is a list of suffragette complaints against the police in 1911 (MEPO 3/203), and a history of the suffragette movement (MEPO 2/1145).

In the Home Office papers, there are details of the suffragettes’ treatment in prison, and the remission of some of their prison sentences, dating from 1922 (HO 45/11088/437465). There is also a report on the picketing of Downing Street by women who were subsequently convicted of obstruction (HO 144/1038/181250), and the raiding of a suffragette’s flat in Maida Vale, West London, which was being used as the headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1913 (HO 45/10695/231366).

Not all of the records relate to the capital; there are details of the imprisonment of nine suffragettes in Birmingham’s Winson Green Prison in September 1909, following their protests when Prime Minister Herbert Asquith visited the city (HO 45/10417/183577). One of the women involved in this protest was Laura Ainsworth, who was then sent to Winson Green for 14 days, during which time she had gone on hunger strike. The authorities deliberately released her early in the morning of 5 October – just before 7am instead of the usual 8.30am – in order to avoid her receiving publicity or support from other suffragettes. Although The Times noted that despite having undergone forced feeding, she appeared very little the worse for her experience – a statement somewhat undermined by the subsequent comment that she was taken straight from prison to a nursing home to recuperate. Her first forced feeding involved being placed in a chair and her head forcibly held back, her mouth was forced open, four or five wardresses held her in the chair and milk was poured down her through a feeding cup. The next day, she refused to take the cup and so a tube was pushed into the mouth and down the throat; a cork gag was placed between the teeth so as to keep the mouth open, and four wardresses held her. This was carried out twice a day, with meat extract forced through her teeth at lunchtimes.

This article shows how newspapers – both national and local – can be an invaluable source of information about individual suffragettes and their actions. In terms of books, The Ascent of Woman: A History of the Suffragette Movement by Melanie Phillips (Abacus, 2004), The British Suffrage Campaign: 1866-1928 by Harold Smith (Longman, 2009), and Women in England 1760-1914 by Susie Steinbach (Phoenix, 2005) are all worth a read. If you are looking to research a suffragette ancestor’s life, try reading Jennifer Newby’s Women’s Lives: Researching Women’s Social History 1800-1939 (Pen & Sword, 2011).