A young woman misjudges the path of a horse

Ask the woman or man in the street what the defining event of the suffragette movement was – aside from women actually winning the vote in 1928 – and chances are you’ll receive a reply along the lines of, ‘There was that woman who committed suicide by throwing herself in front of the King’s horse.’

And there’s no denying that they’d have a point (although many people mistakenly name Emmeline Pankhurst as having carried out the deed) for it caused a sensation at the time and the grainy 14-second film of the incident remains a popular, if ghoulish, view on the internet today. What the clip shows is a stream of horses galloping around Tattenham Corner at Epsom Racecourse on 4 June 1913, Derby Day. After the main field has gone by, a young woman, Emily Wilding Davison, steps out from the crowd, takes a few hurried paces onto the course and turns to face the final five runners. Two pass on the inside of her before she is struck at great speed by the third, Anmer, a racehorse owned by King George V. She tumbles over backwards. Anmer falls, unseating his jockey, Herbert Jones. The horse gets up but Jones lies flat out on the grass. The crowd catches its breath for a second before pouring onto the course, engulfing the two motionless figures.

Anmer finished the Derby jockey-less and went on to compete in several more races. Herbert Jones was mildly concussed but recovered soon afterwards. The 40-year-old Davison was knocked unconscious and died four days later in Epsom Cottage Hospital. She had suffered a fractured skull and other internal injuries.

The story – though horrifying – seems simple enough: Emily Davison, the well known activist with the militant Women’s Social and Political Union who had been arrested nine times for crimes that included arson, and who had been force-fed 49 times while on hunger strike in prison, had gone one step further and martyred herself for the cause of women’s suffrage, choosing the king’s horse to ram home her point.

Scratch below the surface, though, and it appears that this was not really what happened at all. The first problem with the story is that Davison was found to have purchased a return ticket to Epsom. Furthermore, she had made plans to go on holiday with her sister. Neither of these are the actions of a woman intent on ending her life.

So, if she was not trying to commit suicide, the question remains as to what exactly her intentions were that fateful June day.

Evidence has emerged that Davison was one of several suffragettes who, prior to the Derby, had spent some time in a park close to her mother’s house, apparently training themselves in the little-practiced art of grabbing at passing horses. The group are then said to have drawn straws to determine which of them would attend the race meeting to put their newly honed skills into action.

When she was taken to the local hospital after the event, Davison was found to be carrying two purple-green-and-white flags. This led to speculation that she had originally been planning to affix one to Anmer somehow, so that the king’s horse ran the rest of the race flying the colours of the suffragette movement. An investigation filmed for Channel 4 by sports presenter Clare Balding unearthed the story of a ‘Votes for Women’ sash that was reputed to have been found on the course after the incident. If it had been dropped by Davison at the moment of impact with Anmer, it would suggest that she had been attempting to slip it around the horse’s neck. The sash went up for auction and was donated by the winning bidder to the Houses of Parliament, where it can now be viewed.

In the famous film of the episode, Davison is clearly reaching up with both hands as her chosen horse approaches, though it is impossible to see whether she is holding anything in them, and indeed, it rather appears that she is not. The first British newsreel was broadcast in 1910, so it’s somewhat surprising that just three years later, no fewer than three cameras were filming Tattenham Corner that day, catching the collision from different angles. Footage from the other two cameras, though not completely conclusive, does tend to give more support to the sash theory.

It therefore seems more than likely that, rather than attempting to kill herself, Emily Wilding Davison simply misjudged the line the horse was taking. Given the fact that she had just a couple of seconds to position herself correctly in order to throw a sash over the onrushing steed (assuming that was her intention), and this was her first attempt to do so during a proper race, it’s not altogether surprising that the tragedy occurred.

Whilst placing a sash over the king’s horse would certainly have caused a stir, the death of such a prominent suffragette in such dramatic circumstances did much to help stimulate support for votes for women. This was particularly true among men who, with notable exceptions, had been slow to warm to the cause. Davison’s death also led directly to the creation of the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage, an association formed the same year by the actor Maud Arncliffe-Sennett and which largely drew supporters from Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The campaign was halted for the duration of the Great War, during which the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed. The Act of Parliament gave the vote to women for the first time in the UK, which in that day included the whole of Ireland. However, it was restricted to those aged 30 or over (men could vote from 21, or 19 if they had seen service in the war) and only then if they were a property owner (or married to one), or if they met one or other obscure criteria, such as being a graduate who lived in a constituency with a university. It wasn’t until 1928 that the playing field was levelled and women were granted the same voting rights as men.

It’s fitting that Emily Davison has been honoured in the Houses of Parliament, even if it is not for the way she met her end. In order to be able to enter on her 1911 census form that she resided at the House of Commons, she spent the night of 2 April hiding in a cupboard in the chapel of the Palace of Westminster. In 1990, the Labour MP Tony Benn secretly placed a plaque on the cupboard commemorating the incident. The plaque is still there today.