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August 20,1911, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

Emily Davison — Sun, 20 Aug 1911 00:01:51 +0000

August 20,1911, To the Editor of The Sunday Times

A letter so convoluted in its argument that only those who know the references to New

Zealand politics may have understood it. In all likelihood Davison did not have a copy of the

New Zealand Offiical Year Book for 1910 to hand, but she knew where to find one and how

to use it to support her argument from fact, not memory. Clearly Davison has her dander up

here—she dislikes being criticized and she definitely does not like to be reduced to the level of

stereotypes of women: “No one but a woman would think that a reply.”

Sir, — Mr. F.W. Sharp politely accuses me of being “tone-deaf” and of “a little discrepancy of

fact,” What of this gentleman’s own original statement that “the only issue of any kind in

New Zealand is Prohibition, aye or no, and for this the women vote on one side and the men

on the other”? When Lady Stout completely disproved this statement by figures from the

New Zealand Official Year Book for 1910, which showed that men as well as women voted

against beer, which did away with his fiction that men voted pro-Beer and women contra-

Beer (for otherwise Beer would have gained the day), Mr. F.W. Sharp petulantly exclaimed

that “No one but a woman would think that a reply” or would attempt to prove anything

from figures.

At this point I stepped in and Mr. Sharp then turned his attentions to me and

attacked me because I used the term which he himself used and chose at the beginning of

the argument, “Prohibition,“ which he declared to be “the only issue of any kind in New

Zealand.” All the world knows what he apparently ignores, that the power of Prohibition

was inaugurated and “passed” for New Zealand by the Alcoholic Liquor Sale Act of 1893,

which instituted Local Opposition. This Act determined that voters should decide:

(b) Whether the number shall be reduced.

Mr. Sharp leaves himself a small loophole of escape by the remark “I speak from memory,”

for his statement that “with the exception of four or five of the smaller towns (I speak from

memory) or as we should call them villages with populations averaging 3,000 to 4,000

there is no Prohibition in New Zealand, and therefore it cannot have been passed by a very

decided majority.”

I should strongly recommend him to buy and study the New Zealand Official Year

Book for 1910, where he will find some very interesting lists referring to sixty-eight

licensing districts, each including inhabitants varying between 5,000 and 9,000. His

attention should especially be drawn to page 457, on which occurs the following passage:

“From the foregoing table it will be seen that 175,671 votes were recorded in favour

of continuing existing licenses….162,562 for reduction, and 221,471 for no license. In

thirty-four of the sixty-eight licensing districts no proposal was carried, in fifteen the

majority of the voters was in favour of continuance, in seven reduction, in six no license

was carried, and six non-restoration was carried. In thirty-eight of the districts a majority

of the polls was for no license, but not in sufficient number to make up the three-fifths

required to carry that issue. Of the total number of persons who voted 235,554, or 55.82

per cent., were men, and 186,399 or 44.18, were women… The increases in the number of

votes recorded for no license or reduction are prominent features in the (given) table.”

The full value of the above passage is clear if the student turns to the Local Option

Polls of the Year Book of 1900, where he will find that all the licensing districts

carried ”reduction” and one which carried “no license.” Where now is Mr. Sharp’s accuracy

and authority? __ Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON

31, Coram Street, W.C., August 10 [1911]

The Spirit Behind History

Emily Davison — Sun, 06 Aug 1911 15:11:16 +0000

To the Editor of The Sunday Times, August 6, 1911.
“The Spirit Behind History”

This letter reflects Davison’s interest in contemporary currents of historical thought, especially the notion of continuous development of human history toward an apogee of enlightened individual development. The conception of a process driven by “an animating spirit” which Davison elsewhere identifies with God, structures a rebuttal framed as a critique of out-dated thinking. This is a mode Davison frequently uses, believing firmly in ideas of evolution, progress, and the value of contemporary, as opposed to traditional, attitudes and modes of thinking. The former she identifies with freedom from inherited patterns of power. As in other letters, she identifies the enemy of individual liberty as “feudalism” glossed here as “days of privilege,” a metonymy for the entire world of money, property, and class which had controlled England for centuries. (¹)

Sir,–Mr. Williams does not belong to the modern comparative school of history or he would not pick out separate events or individuals and make empiricisms from them. All historical students now reject this method and turn instead to the comparative study of history recognizing that it is not “a mere string of episodes, but a continuous development.” A better example of the newer school could not be given than the Cambridge Modern History, which was taken in hand by the late Lord Acton. If Mr. Williams turns up volume after volume he will see that each is entitled after some great world event, such as the Renaissance, or the Thirty Years’ War, the comprehensive study of the origin, development, and result of which sometimes covers many reigns, different countries, and sometimes even centuries. He could not do better than study carefully the scholarly Introductory Note to Volume I. of the work by the late Bishop of London, Dr. Mandell Creighton, on the aims and methods of Modern History, who gets well at the root of the matter when he says: “After marshalling all the forces and ideas which were at work to produce it [history] he [the student] still feels that there was behind all these an animating spirit which he cannot but most imperfectly catch whose power blended all else together and gave a sudden cohesion to the whole.”

It is this illuminating idea—this power of historic vision—which Mr. Williams evidently at present lacks. As a result, he is unable to grasp the true significance which lies behind the days of Cromwell and the Civil War, and of that even greater event, the French Revolution. He cannot see the wood for the trees. He is so busy looking at the little details, the faults and horrors, that he cannot see the true significance of the whole. The real meaning is the destruction of feudalism and the ending of the days of privilege.

May I refer Mr. Williams to the Cambridge Modern History, in Volume VIII., of which he may read: “The French Revolution is the most important event in the life of modern Europe. Herder compared it to the Reformation and the rise of Christianity…. Like them, it destroyed the landmarks of the world in which generations of men had passed their lives, because it was a movement towards a completer humanity, and because it was a religion, with its doctrines, its apostles, and its martyrs…. As Christianity taught man that he was a spiritual being, and the Reformation proclaimed that nothing need stand between the soul and God, so the Revolution asserted the equality of man, conceiving individuals as partakers of a common nature, and declaring each one of them, regardless of birth or religion, to be possessed of certain inalienable rights.”

Finally, in the same chapter Mr. Williams will see that the doctrine that women as well as men had a right to personal liberty really arose at the time of the French Revolution, which doctrine is the reason that women are now fighting the last battle against feudalism.

I am not at all surprised that Mr. Pickup considers reference to the dictionary a work of supererogation; in fact, I should imagine from his use of the words democracy, people, evolution, etc., that it is a habit in which he seldom indulges, but which he might with advantage adopt.

May I just name a few of the injustices of English legislation due to the fact that the women’s point of view is not consulted as well as the men’s?

The double standard of morality is bad: it injures both men and women, although the toll falls the more heavily upon the latter.
The mother as well as the father should be recognized as the legal guardian of the child.
The present unfair position of women in marriage and divorce is a national scandal.
The Government leads the way in giving lower pay to women because they are women, where they do equal work. The teaching profession is an excellent example. Sweated work done in uniforms is another.
Legislation is being introduced every day in which the women’s point of view is not fairly treated. The National Insurance Scheme is one example. The present amendment to the Coal Mines Act, which throws 3,000 women out of work, is another.
The existence of the white slave traffic and the fact that a Bill to check this has no chance of becoming law is a national crime.
I could give many more examples to prove my point that it is “penny wise and pound foolish” policy of the nation to exclude women from citizenship. Acquiescence in such injustice would be sharing in the crime! – Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31, Coram Street, W.C., August 3

Footnote ↩

Suffragist Methods

Emily Davison — Sun, 26 Mar 1911 14:33:11 +0000

The letters that follow are arranged chronologically, in a pattern somewhat different from the one in which they appear in the scrapbook. The first, to the editor of the Sunday Times, reflects the tenor of her essential argument throughout the collection: the fitness of women for full citizenship, the fierce opposition women face from sectors of society doomed to extinction in the onward progress of social enlightenment, women’s determination to win their cause no matter the personal cost. The letter is typical, too, in its citation of examples drawn from international public affairs, references to contemporary events and people, like Frances Maud Wright, the metropolitan policewoman decorated for bravery. Its opening, typical of most of her introductions, invokes a well-known concept; here she invokes Hamlet’s reflection on whether to suffer without end or to rise up and oppose “a sea of troubles,” and by opposition, achieve victory (Hamlet III, I, ll?). There was never any question about what Davison would have done in Hamlet’s place.

Sir,– My hint that evolution might have to be hastened by revolution has aroused a storm of hysterical protest from several opponents. I, of course, am quite ready to
take up arms against a sea of Anti’s.

Several of these gentlemen, noting my threat that Englishwomen will stick at nothing, delightedly assert that I am proving that, after all, “physical force is the ultima ratio” of politics, and that, therefore, in an appeal to such a tribunal the women are bound to be worsted. Not at all! It is just one of those examples where the sex which claims to be logical makes glaring errors through its inability to see anything which is not under its own nose. It is not physical force nowadays which rules the world, and that is why the women will win. They will win it probably through intense suffering to themselves, some of which they have already gone through in taking up this terrible fight against convention and prejudice, which has led them to face ridicule, abuse, personal ill-treatment, indecency, deadly insult, which has led them to face exposure and discomfort, to face the hunger-strike, and that “torture of tortures,” which is not practiced in Russia, forcible feeding, besides other sacrifices which will never be known, not to speak of the loss of friends, position, and livelihood. Women have all along faced the fact that in order to win the final victory some of their number may probably have to pay the last and extreme penalty, because physical force is still so strong. They have faced it already, and will face it again, and therein lies their power. They have the moral courage to face it! Christianity itself is an evidence that physical force does not rule the world. This nation has a conscience and cannot afford to have its fair name forever sullied in the eyes of the civilized world.

The next argument brought forward by my excellent foes is that women do not perform citizen duties and therefore have no claim to citizen rights. These criticisms specially interest me, as they prove up to the hilt that my gallant opponents do not consider women as “people” in the ordinary sense of the word, but as “sub-human.” I suppose, then, the wonderful task of bringing into the world its citizens, of rearing and tending them in their most impressionable and tender years, and of mothering them when they are grown up by looking after their homes, nursing them and advising them, is not an important duty of citizenship—is, in fact, “nil”; yet it is far more important and necessary than all those duties which two of your correspondents have chosen to name. As Mrs. Zangwill wittily put it, the chief line of defence for the country is its “infantry in arms.” Humanity could get on without war, but not without babies.

For the sake of argument, let us, however, examine these citizen duties which women do not fulfil. Women do not sit on juries,. But they are most anxious to do so and only recently one of our best police-court magistrates has asserted in public that cases in which women are tried, especially in connection with marriage or divorce, cannot possibly be conducted fairly so long as there are no women jurors. The present position is an offence against the principle of Magna Charta and the sooner it is amended the better.

The next two instances of exemption, those of the maintenance of order and the defence of the country, are duties which only fall on a few men, who assume them voluntarily, and consequently they can hardly be held to be citizen duties. It is, moreover, a strange but remarkable fact that there are such things as women policemen, witness Mrs. Frances Wright, and women warriors are not unknown to history. To judge from Mr. Winston Churchill’s remarks about the way men would be speedily dispersed by the police, if they went on a deputation, a corps of Suffragists might one day be of more value than a regiment of soldiers.

It was very unwise of my opponents to quote the fact that in an emergency women are given first chance of safety. I have in mind three notable examples which disprove this statement. In the Berlin riots women were put in front of the battle and fought with the greatest bravery; in a terrible attack on a wedding party near Tashkend [sic] the women were thrown to the wolves, and only two men survived; in a prairie fire in America men rushed to board a train going to safety, beating back the women, but one woman coolly held them all at bay with a loaded revolver till the women and children were safely on board. The papers are full of tales of heroism by women in the face of sudden danger. As for the giving up of seats in a tram or railway-car, this form of chivalry is so debased that it is generally limited only to the young, the pretty, and the well-dressed, and so can be at once dismissed. This and many of the so-called marks of chivalry are generally governed by a false standard, which makes a man think that if he makes himself conspicuous by lifting his hat, or giving up his seat, or any other of the little points which mark that he is condescending, the more important duties of life can be ignored.

As to W. Stevenson’s remark that the movement is due to maternal instinct, he is entirely right, but not in the sense he means. It is because women want to mother the defenceless children of humanity that they are fighting this battle. It is because they want to give their own children a better chance when they grow up that they are determined in the fight. It is because they want to get at the moral evil, which is one of the worst causes of infantile mortality at present. W. Stevenson, by the way, is quite wrong in his facts about New Zealand. Since women got the vote New Zealand has had the highest marriage rate of any European [sic] country, except Hungary; it has a higher birth-rate than any European country except Italy and the Netherlands, and except two Australian States. The birth-rate has been steadily increasing since 1899, and it has the lowest infantile mortality in the world. That is mainly the result of the woman’s vote, which was gained in 1893. The infantile mortality per 1,000 in 1882 was 88.3 ; this has steadily lowered, till in 1909 it dropped to 61.6, while in England it is 132.

It is strange that some men will call women the emotional sex, forgetting that one of men’s own excuses for their infidelities is that they are governed by their passions. But there is no rhyme or reason in the arguments of the Anti’s; they are mutually destructive.

A final world of apology for the amount of space which my letter must occupy. But my opponents are many, and a Suffragist never fears to face the foe.—Yours, etc.,

EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31, Coram Street, W.C., March 23