User menu
Main menu

Emily Wilding Davison

60 second histories

This video covers:  Explores who Emily Davison was and what she did for the suffrage movement.

Emily Wilding Davison was a character almost inevitably developed by a struggle such as ours; she was very well educated and had taken first class honours at Oxford in English Language and Literature. Yet she put all this aside and devoted herself to the work of the union. She suffered many imprisonments, was forcibly fed and most brutally treated. On one occasion, when she barricaded her cell against the prison doctors, a hosepipe was turned on her from the window and she was drenched and all but drowned in the icy water. After this she was convinced that only the sacrifice of human life would awaken the public conscience. At one time she tried to kill herself by throwing herself off the upper galleries in the prison but succeeded only in sustaining cruel injuries. After that, she clung to her conviction that one great tragedy, the deliberate throwing into the breach of a human life, would put an end to the intolerable torture of women. And so she threw herself into the path of the King’s horse.
Eras: 
20th Century
Suffragette Movement
Topics: 
Key people
Suffragette Movement
Character: 
Emmeline Pankhurst
Key words: 
Women's suffrage, women's rights, suffrage, suffragette, suffragettes, suffragist, Emmeline Pankhurst, Emily Davison, Emily Wilding Davison, prison, force-fed, force fed, hosepipe, icy water, sacrifice, Epsom, Epsom derby, King's horse, kings horse, King George V, KS3, key stage 3, key stage 3 history, secondary, KS3 videos, KS3 clips, KS3 history, KS3 videos, KS3 history film, KS3 history clip, Victorian, Victorian Reformer, Victorian reformers, Y7, Y8, Y9, Year 7, year 8, year 9, 20thC, 20C, 20th Century, 20th C, suffrage, suffragette, suffragette movement,