Well, I did the washing up and I had a few vegetables with my lunch. That was the high point. I’ve done some interesting reading on water works in 1914 (and the fear of Germans poisoning our water supply), and the Suffragette bombing campaign of 1912-14. That came up because they attacked a canal and two reservoirs in their bombing campaign – if successful, both of them would have resulted in serious disruption, and probably loss of life. That was the thing about the Suffragettes – very few of their bombs actually went off. Considering that they used nitro-glycerine for some of them it’s a miracle nobody was killed.
Some of the early efforts at direct action were things like disrupting meetings, smashing windows and changing the flags on golf courses to display suffragette colours. They must have been irksome if your shop window was one of the smashed ones. Churchill was attacked by a woman with a horse whip However, they did go beyond that, and in 1909 a returning officer ws blinded in one eye by acid and the Liberal Agent badly burned on the neck at the Bermondsey by-election. In 1914 the Rokeby Venus was vandalised (by a Canadian who would later join Moseley’s British Union of Fascists – make what you like of that). It was attacked again in 2023 . by Just Stop Oil – someone would tell them it’s already been done.
However, by the time the bombing campaign was over four people had been killed in arson attacks and at least 24 had been injured (two of them being suffragettes).. Homes of government ministers were burned down, and in several cases houses of their family members, letter bombs were sent, post boxes were filled with noxious chemicals and railway signals were sabotaged.
Thirty two churches were attacked, as were at least three schools, a hospital and four football grounds, plus the All England Tennis Club and the rowing club in Nottingham. The Church of England was seen as opposed to female suffrage, and male sports were targets, but why schools, a hospital and a tennis club with women players were seen as targets, I have no idea.
So – an interesting and educational day, but not one which advanced my house move or my September presentation. It did however draw some parallels with current protests and the drive to lock more people up to keep them in line. Nearly a thousand Suffragettes were imprisoned, some more than once – so far we can only guess how many people will be jailed over the recent riots. Interestingly, the protesters who closed the M25 (irritating though they may be) have longer sentences than most of the people being convicted of offences of violence during the recent riots. This doesn’t seem logical to me. That’s one for my future PhD researcher to work out. Assuming that someone ever uses this blog to research my life and times.
I just pressed something and seem to have mislaid the Tags button. I hate computers.
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