The number of flags carried by Davison at Epsom to advertise her ‘Cause’ has always intrigued; their present whereabouts equally so.
Colmore says Davison took two flags to Epsom: ‘one round her body, under her coat … another rolled tight in her hand.’ Some newspapers (The Sporting Life, the Morning Post and Daily News & Leader) refer to Davison having a suffragette flag ‘wrapped round her waist’. Neither claim can be verified. Davison was removed before any reporters arrived on the scene to see for themselves; neither photographs nor newsreels reveal evidence of a flag in her hand or worn as an apron.
Two flags, however, were found on Davison by PS Bunn when she was removed to Epsom Cottage Hospital, folded and pinned inside the back of her jacket, measuring 1½ yards (54 inches) by ¾ yard (27 inches). The Women’s Library in Aldgate, home to the Davison archive bequeathed by her friend and colleague Rose Lamartine Yates in 1985–86, holds two flags (7/EWD/M/10), presumably those noted by PS Bunn and reclaimed by Thomas Lamartine Yates. However, when requested for examination on 14 April 2005 neither flag could be located.
The Museum of London also holds a flag some claim to have been carried by Davison at Epsom that measures 44.5 inches by 27 inches. This flag incorporates a pole that protrudes a further 5.5 inches: Davison definitely wasn’t waving a flag on the day. However, this flag’s provenance is excellent, having been presented to the museum by Davison’s closest suffragette confidante, Mary Leigh, who was one of the last people to visit her before she died in Epsom Hospital and had draped a suffragette flag around her bed. Perhaps this is that flag. This might also explain the presence of the pole as Leigh carried this flag at George Bernard Shaw’s funeral in 1950 (declaring he’d been a good friend of the suffragettes); at the re-dedication of Emmeline Pankhurst’s statue in Victoria Tower Gardens; on the first Aldermaston ‘Ban the Bomb’ march in April 1958; and at annual May Day Parades in Hyde Park and suffragette gatherings in the Caxton Hall well into the 1960s before donating it to the museum. In addition, Leigh made an annual pilgrimage to Davison’s grave on the anniversary of her friend’s death and took the flag with her. So, this flag seems likely to have been associated with Davison, if not actually owned or carried by her on Derby Day, but seems unlikely to be either of the two flags described in the Yates collection. Adding to the confusion is an exhibit loaned by the Museum of London to the Derby Day 200 Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (5 April–1 July 1979) which purports to be a ‘Fragment of the suffragette flag carried inside Miss Davison’s coat at Epsom’.
Then there’s the sash claimed to have been worn by Davison at Epsom that is now on display in the Palace of Westminster. Acquired by the film-maker Barbara Gorna at a Sotheby’s (New York) sale in 1997, it’s not a sash at all but a suffragette motor scarf measuring 82 inches by 12 inches, in Japanese silk, lettered at each end with ‘Votes For Women’.
Its provenance is questionable – as Sotheby’s acknowledged. The catalogue stated:
Lot 550: A silk suffragette sash reputed to have been worn by Emily Davison during her demonstration in the cause of female suffrage at the Epsom Derby 1913. From the estate of the late Frances Annie Burton. On her instructions a draft affidavit was produced in March 1997 by Miss Burton’s solicitors relating to the history of this sash. However, she unfortunately died before it was possible for her to approve and swear the affidavit. The sash is sold with a copy of Miss Burton’s draft affidavit and another sworn by her solicitor verifying that it accurately reflected her instructions. The draft affidavit states: ‘My father Richard Pittway Burton and my mother Alice Annie Burton were both keen supporters of the Suffragette Movement. On the day that Emily Davison threw herself under the King’s horse during the Derby in 1913 my father was working as a Clerk of the Course at Epsom. He identified the body whilst it lay on the course since he knew Emily Davison personally due to his connections with the Suffragette Movement. My father gave me the sash when I was about six years old on his return from the First World War. I remember that he explained to me about the Suffragette Movement and that Emily Davison has sacrificed her life to bring the campaign of votes for Women to a head. He told me that he removed the sash for safe-keeping.’
The scarf is well worn, bearing, it is further claimed, the hoof prints of Anmer. According to the doctor who examined Davison, however, she bore no traces of being struck by hooves. A few newspapers, the Morning Post and Daily Express for example, did mention her wearing a ‘sash’ as others mentioned an ‘apron’. PS Bunn’s report mentioned neither. However, the Burton scarf could never be confused with a sash or a flag; a stickler for accuracy, as Bunn showed himself to be, would never have described either as a flag. Moreover, if she was wearing a scarf or sash brazenly declaring her suffragette sympathies, why was she bothering to conceal two flags inside the back of her jacket? Sotheby’s were prudent to go no further than ‘reputed’ when discussing the item’s whereabouts on Derby Day 1913.
This scarf may or may not have belonged to Davison. But whether she was wearing it on Derby Day is dubious. Quite apart from any qualms concerning the accurate recall of a lady in her ninth decade, who was, furthermore, apparently in need of funds to pay nursing-home fees at the time she dictated the draft affidavit, four areas demand attention:
What we do know with absolute certainty is that when Miss Burton was born just nine days before the 1913 Derby at her parents’ home, 283 Old Ford Road in Bow, East London, her father’s occupation was given as ‘Dock Labourer’. It amounts to some leap of faith to place Richard Pittway Burton in a position of influence at Epsom racecourse on Derby Day just over a week later. Until evidence far more convincing appears to the contrary, one’s left with little alternative but to view the claims made for the scarf as bogus.
Once Davison was dead, however, her possessions – genuine or otherwise – assumed the status of religious relics and were valued accordingly. There may be as many Davison relics in circulation as there are parts of the true cross.