The Women's Suffragette Campaign

CONTEXT
On the 24th of January 1913, a police report was issued by the Criminal Investigation Department of the New Scotland Yard, reporting the details of a public meeting held by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Sloane Square. The report documents, presumably verbatim, two speeches by radical, militant suffragettes, reported under the names Mrs. Dove-Wilcox and Miss Hazel.
The radical and pro-militancy rhetoric employed by both women in the reported speeches situates them at the inception of the most radical phase of the suffragette campaign. As this public meeting was held, a Franchise Bill was being presented before the House of Commons, concerning the possibility of women’s suffrage. For this reason, Mrs. Dove-Wilcox

While early 1913 signalled the beginning of an intensified militant effort – six months after this meeting, Emily Davison threw herself before the King’s horse – it wasn’t the beginning of suffragette militancy altogether. The militant campaign of the suffragettes is typically dated around 1908, with suffragettes heckling and disturbing public political meetings, holding marches, and holding meetings of their own. In January 1913, the suffragettes were in the midst of their militant and increasingly violent campaign, which had been consistently escalating since 1911, with instances of bombing and arson increasing after 1912. According to Kat Gupta’s research into the contemporary representation of the suffragette movement, The Times newspaper reported on suffragette activities using the term “suffrag* + disturbance” twice as much in 1913 as in 1908, with the term “suffrag* + violence” peaking similarly in 1913, used at almost twice the rate as it was in 1912, and almost twenty times the rate in

Where Purvis and the suffragettes agree that male politicians needed to be terrified into suffrage legislation, broad historical opinion suggests otherwise. According to Andrew Rosen, the WSPU’s militancy was not effective enough to implement the national crisis that may have forced the government’s hand; in June 1913, Lloyd George claimed that militant behaviour was the “chief barrier to enfranchisement.” Months after this meeting was held, once the fresh wave of intense militancy had begun, The Times claimed that “militant suffragists have done their own cause more harm than they know,” further consolidating the popular notion that the militancy of the suffragettes was nothing but a hindrance to their