Suffragettes & Satire

Suffragettes & Satire
CAMPAIGNERS AND REPRESENTATION

VOL. 1 NO. 1 NOVEMBER 2015

National Records of Scotland, HH44/16 ELIZABETH THOMSON
National Records of Scotland, HH44/16
University of Glasgow Archive, UGC 53/1/1 Elizabeth Thomson was a traveller, teacher,
missionary, and suffrage campaigner. She
wrote The Life Story of Miss Elizabeth
Thomson, 1847-1918 in the early twentieth
century, detailing her many adventures.
Thomson’s memoir remains unpublished
and can only be found in the University
of Glasgow’s archive. Thomson was born
on the 14th September 1847 in Glasgow.
Her grandfather, Thomas Thomson, was a
professor of Chemistry at the University
of Glasgow from 1818 to 1852. Her father,
also called Thomas Thomson, graduated
with a medical degree from the University
in 1839. Elizabeth and her sister Agnes
were educated in London before leaving to
travel through Europe and Asia, undertaking
teaching and missionary work. They joined
the Women’s Social and Political Union, the
Pankhursts’ militant branch of the suffrage
campaign, in 1909 and took part in many
marches and protests. In May 1913, at the
age of 65, Elizabeth Thomson was sentenced
to time in Calton prison in Edinburgh for
her involvement in a plot to burn down the
grandstand at Kelso racecourse. The pictures
on the left show her bail, which was set
at £100 - approximately £8000 in today’s
money. Thomson went on hunger strike and
was quickly released due to ill health. She
died five years later, a full decade before
women attained equal voting rights to men.
Thomson led an incredibly interesting
life that deserves attention. Her life and
opinions were often in direct opposition to
those of the mainstream media of her time
and these media sources are largely what
informs what we now know of this period of
political history, meaning that the primary
sources of women’s struggle for the vote,
like Thomson’s unpublished memoir, which
detail the many dangerous elements of their
campaign, are so often left out of the story.

PUNCH NEWSPAPERS

Punch was a British weekly magazine, In general, the British daily press was not
first published on the 17th of July 1841 in support of the militant actions of the
and running until its close 1992, with a Women’s Social and Political Union, often
brief revival between 1996 and 2002. The siding with the government of the time
magazine’s content was of a satirical and
topical nature although it is best-known The news of Elizabeth Thomson and others’
for its illustrations. Punch’s website calls attempt to set fire to the Kelso racecourse
it ‘a very British institution renowned grandstand reached several national and
internationally for its wit and irreverence’ international newspapers. As can be seen
and claims that ‘it introduced the term below, The Scotsman covered the story,
“cartoon” as we know it today.’ More than going on to give much detail of the case
for its wit, irreverence or even for inventing against them but not a great deal of their
the cartoon as we know it, Punch was defence. The Glasgow Herald also wrote
infamous for the controversial opinions that on the trial in their 20th May 1913 edition,
it promoted, often straying into racist and refering to Thomson and her sister Agnes as
sexist territory. Despite these shortcomings, ‘elderly ladies’ but also noting that the pair
Punch was hugely popular, reaching its peak carried out philanthropic and missionary
in 1915 when it had a weekly print run of work. The news of the inital arson attempt
approximately 150,000. was even covered by the Boston Evening
Transcript in April 1913, where the women
were described as ‘fire fiends’ who were
caught red handed.

Punch, 5th March 1913 National Records of Scotland
The Scotsman, 20th May 1913

WHO WERE THE SUFFRAGE NEWSPAPERS
SUFFRAGETTES?

Punch, 30th October 1912

Not everyone who campaigned for women National Records of Scotland, HH44/16
to have the vote was a suffragette. Officially,
the suffragettes were members of Emmeline
Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political
Union - the WSPU. The term ‘suffragette’
was first used as a derogatory remark by the
Daily Mail newspaper, later being reclaimed
by the campaigners themselves. Those
campaigners were the militant branch of
the suffrage fight. The WSPU’s slogan was
‘deeds not words’ and they lived up to that
by bombing post boxes, smashing windows,
hunger striking, and conducting numerous
other violent protests to publicise their cause.
Other campaign groups for the female vote
included the National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies, the more peaceful
suffragists who were led by Millicent
Garrett Fawcett. There were some tensions
between the various suffrage societies and
their members, as illustrated by the Punch
cartoon shown above which refers to the
disagreement between Emmeline Pankhurst
and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence over the
WSPU’s militant actions.

Glasgow Women’s Library

Punch, 23rd October 1912 HUNGER STRIKE
Punch, 3rd September 1913
National Records of Scotland, HH44/16 One horrific element of the campaign for women’s
suffrage which has remained well-known is that
of the hunger strikes and subsequent force feeding
that some suffragettes endured in prison. Elizabeth
Thomson was imprisoned in 1913, when she was
65 years old, for her part in the attempted arson of
the grandstand at Kelso racecourse. Thomson was
sentenced to three months in Edinburgh’s Calton
prison because she received a delivery of explosives
to her home in Hartington Place. Others involved
in the plot were sentenced to nine months in prison
but Thomson received a more lenient sentence
because of her age. Despite being well into her 60s,
Thomson went on hunger strike and was released
due to ill health shortly thereafter. Speaking of her
experience to protest, Thomson said:

‘We had water placed beside us, but refused all
other food. [...] On Friday I felt too weak to get up,
and remained in bed all day.’

Sylvia Pankhurst, a founding member of the
Women’s Social and Political Union alongside her
mother and sisters, also discussed her experience of
the hunger strike in her 1931 book. Pankhurst called
hunger striking ‘a nightmare-like torture of pain and
misery’ and gave graphic detail of the act of force
feeding. She described it as:
‘A man’s hands were trying to force open my
mouth; my breath was coming so fast that I felt as
though I should suffocate. His fingers were striving
to pull my lips apart - getting inside. [...] A stab of
sharp, intolerable agony.’

These first-hand accounts of hunger strikes from
both Elizabeth Thomson and from Sylvia Pankhurst
are horrible, graphic and gruesome. They are most
definitely not a source of humour. Punch magazine
thought differently though and many examples can
be found of illustrations that satirise the pain of
these female protesters. One example from 23rd
October 1912 which shows a child refusing to eat
until her nursemaid allows her to have cake before
her bread and butter. This belittles the act of the
suffrage campaigners, making their cause seem
childish and futile.

Thomson and Pankhurst’s descriptions of their
own hunger strikes show that it was actually an
incredibly difficult and necessary ordeal.

BLACK FRIDAY

Black Friday is the name given to a suffrage protest Punch, 6th July 1910
which took place outside the Houses of Parliament
on the 18th November 1910 during which over a Punch doesn’t directly reference Black Friday but
hundred people were arrested, at least two women the magazine deals with violence and the suffrage
died, and a far greater number were badly injured. campaigners in an incredibly biased way. The 6th
The suffragettes, mostly members of the Pankhursts’ July 1910 issue of Punch features an illustration
WSPU, went up against the violent police force by Arthur Wallis Mills called ‘The Suffragette
and came out brutally beaten. The Times newspaper That Knew Jiu-Jitsu’ which shows the suffrage
did not see it like this, however, describing the campaigners as the very much the violent side.
protesters as ‘extremists’ and complaining that Although this issue of the magazine was published
‘several of the police had their helmets knocked several months before the events of Black Friday,
off’ although, apparently, ‘as a rule [the police] kept it seems to foretell the exaggerations of the
their tempers very well.’ Similarly, The Guardian mainstream media by showing a female campaigner
wrote of Mr Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland, single-handedly battling seemingly scared
being ‘surrounded and hustled and kicked by an policemen; even knocking off their hats as The
unmannerly mob of members of the Social and Times would later use as proof of the suffragettes’
Political Union.’ If we had only access to these extremism in November 1910. The suffragette
popular and widely-read newspaper accounts of this depicted by Punch is most likely based on Edith
day in history it would be easy to think of Black Garrud, a jujutsu instructor who trained WSPU
Friday as a day in which the suffragettes conducted members in self-defence. The character of Edith in
an unnecessary riot against the police. the 2015 Suffragette film, played by Helena Bonham
Carter, is said to be based on Garrud.
However, Elizabeth Thomson describes her own
experience of Black Friday, which she took part in
with vigour despite being in her 60s at the time, as
something of a terrifying ordeal. She writes:

‘Once a man struck me a blow in the back and after
an hour and a half or more we were driven down a
side street, and so returned to Caxton Hall. A second
meeting was held, and Mrs Pankhurst stood up and
said “Who will follow me to Downing Street”? A
number of us started up and said, “We will.” We
mustered twenty or thirty and marched under the
escort of one or two policemen to Downing Street.
When we nearly reached No. 10 large number of
police rushed into Downing Street from Cannon
Row, and some of those in the front were knocked
down. A[gnes] [Elizabeth’s sister] fell with five
ladies on top of her. She was severely bruised but
almost miraculously not suffocated, as the ladies
were so careful not to hurt each other.’

Elizabeth’s story of the day makes clear that the ‘Suffragette struggling with a policeman on Black
police force were at least partly to blame for the Friday’
violence, described as ‘rushing in’ and knocking Museum of London
innocent women to the ground. Her claim that ‘the
ladies were so careful not to hurt each other’ shows a
collectively caring side to the suffrage campaigners
that popular media has managed to erase over time.

SURVEILLANCE ‘On the 31st of May 1913, I began to prepare for my
escape. [...] I covered my hair in the front with some
The 2015 Suffragette film featured a police detective old veils and then I had a thick silk veil over my
character, played by Brendan Gleeson, who traced face. About five o’clock I left the house. Curiously
the women across London. This surveillance of enough, there was no one in the road at the time.
the suffrage campaigners really did take place. The [...] I went up to Greenhill Gardens without meeting
documents above and below, both from the National anyone and took the car to the Post Office. There I
Records of Scotland, show the Edinburgh police changed into a Leith car which put me down not far
force’s inability to keep track of Elizabeth Thomson, from the Docks. [...] We reached Hamburg docks at
who had fled to Germany without their knowledge, 3 o’clock on Monday afternoon, the second of June.’
as described in her testimony to the right.
The Life Story of Miss Elizabeth Thomson, 1847-1918

EMILY DAVISON

Perhaps the most famous single act of suffrage protest which remains in the cultural consciousness to this
day is Emily Wilding Davison suffering critical injuries in front of King George V’s horse in the Epsom
Derby on the 4th June 1913 and dying in hospital four days later. Historians are still to this day disagreeing
over Davison’s intentions, citing future plans and rail tickets as evidence that she did not mean to become
a martyr that day but rather that she intended to throw a banner over the King’s horse. Whatever actions
Davison meant to take that day, it’s clear that the outcome was a tragic one that left her suffragette colleagues
in mourning. Sylvia Pankhurst the death in her book, calling it ‘a tragic happening’ and describing Davison
in a positive light. Pankhurst wrote:
‘She was condemned and ostracised as a self-willed person who persisted in acting upon her own initiative
without waiting for official instructions. All such criticism was now for ever silenced; she had risen to the
supreme test of her faith. There remained only the memory of her brave gallantry and gay comradeship.’
This testimony, along with the lavish funeral procession that was thrown in her memory on the streets of
London, suggests that Emily Davison was a respected and subsequently missed member of the WSPU and
the wider campaign for women’s suffrage.
The mainstream media did not share this view. The Guardian, on the 9th June 1913, just one day after
Davison’s death, described her conduct at the racecourse as:
‘a wicked act, an ignoble and painful death, and a bequest of added difficulty to the whole host of women
who are seeking honourably and sanely the enfranchisement which is their right.’
It is important to note that The Guardian was largely in support of the suffrage campaign, calling it
honourable and sane here, but that the extreme actions of Davison, whether they were intentional or not,
ruined it for everyone else. If the photographs of the many thousands who turned out to mourn her are
anything to go by then this was not the case. The Scotsman newspaper also reacted negatively to Davison’s
actions, calling it ‘an act of sheer madness, which endangered other lives than her own’ on the 20th June
1913, pointing out that had she survived she would have been punished by law, not celebrated as she has
been since her death.
While these newspaper reports are not exactly celebratory, it is easy to understand why some saw Davison’s
death as unnecessary and extreme. Punch magazine, however, went further than negativity and into
distastefulness when they published a cartoon clearly referencing Davison on the 8th July 1914. Showing
a horse racing track that has been made ‘suffragette-proof’ with the addition of walls and a roof, this
illustration pokes fun at a tragedy that was still recent enough to be raw for the friends and colleagues of
Davison and the Women’s Social and Political Union.

Punch, 8th July 1914

WHAT ABOUT NOW?

The suffragettes’ spirit of feminist and political However, the popular media is not always on
protest lives on in the 21st century. Campaigns to the side of female campaigners. In recent years,
improve the lives of women in the United Kingdom movements have included the No More Page 3
take place constantly, such as the recent challenge petition, asking for The Sun newspaper to end their
by some MPs to remove the tax on sanitary products daily images of topless women, as well as numerous
and the protests outside London’s Jack the Ripper protests aimed at the Daily Mail newspaper’s sexist
Museum, to name just a few. Even the launch of the coverage of women’s appearances.
2015 Suffragette film, directed by Sarah Gavron,
did not escape political protest. A group called In October 2015, The Spectator magazine published
Sisters Uncut, using the WSPU’s purple and green an article by Emily Hill which proclaimed that
colours, took over the red carpet to campaign against feminism is over as women have won the battle
violence against women. against the patriarchy. In the article, which the
magazine ran as its cover story, Hill claims that
feminists portray women as ‘feeble-minded —
unable to withstand a bad date, let alone negotiate a
pay rise’ and asserts that female campaigners have
lost the sense of sisterhood that the suffragettes
maintained.

The Telegraph, 7th October 2015 The illustration that The Spectator chose to
accompany the article features a suffrage campaigner
Glasgow Women’s Library, in partnership with the and has echoes of Punch’s early 20th century
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, organised an event cartoons which were similarly used to denigrate
on 7th March 2015 which replicated suffragette women’s tough battles and hard-won achievments in
marches through the city. The March of Women the political sphere.
event, which celebrated International Women’s Day,
also featured an updated version of the Scottish
suffragette Cicely Hamilton’s play A Pageant of
Great Women and involved women of all ages and
from a variety of backgrounds. March of Women
was featured on the BBC news and covered by
several local newspapers, raising the profile of the
Women’s Library. The event has since been made
into a film, titled March.

Daily Record, 7th March 2015 The Spectator, 24th October 2015

INTERESTED IN FINDING OUT MORE?

ARCHIVES
Glasgow Women’s Library
23 Landressy Street, Glasgow, G40 1BP
National Records of Scotland
General Register House, 2 Princes Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3YY
University of Glasgow Archive
13 Thurso Street, Glasgow, G11 6PE
ONLINE RESOURCES
http://punch.photoshelter.com/gallery/Votes-For-Women-Cartoons/G0000W1sZfQA1jaQ/
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/teach/suffrage/suffrage.html
BOOKS
Godfrey, Emelyne, Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature and Society:
From Dagger-Fans to Suffragettes (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
Pankhurst, E. Sylvia, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals
(London: Virago, 1977)
Tickner, Lisa, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907-1914
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1987)
Thomson, Elizabeth, The Life Story of Miss Elizabeth Thomson, 1847-1918
(unpublished typescript, University of Glasgow Archive)

Panko Card Game, Glasgow Women’s Library