NEWS CENTER
About the events of June 4, 1913
On June 4th, 1913, Emily Davidson rose to worldwide fame. Emily Davidson, a militant campaigner for women’s rights, stepped onto the track at the King of England’s horse race, in front of the cameras of the world’s media, and collided with the King’s racehorse. After the collision, Davidson collapsed unconscious on the track.
Four days after this action, on June 8, 1912, she succumbed to her injuries without regaining consciousness. But she created awareness in the world public for the struggle of the suffragettes.
Emily Davidson was born on October 11, 1872 in Blackheath, London and gained regional notoriety for her militancy in the suffragette movement. In 1906 she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union and was arrested for the first time in 1909 for rioting. In the year in which the suffragette movement gradually became more radical.
The male state power tried to suppress the female resistance and resorted to the brutal means of violence of the male state. They wanted to leave half of society in political and economic immaturity at all costs. Emily Davidson gave up her jobs as a governess and teacher to devote herself full-time to the fight for women’s rights. For her holy vocation, for her, was the fight.
During her detentions, she joined the Resistant Women hunger strike and was tortured by force-feeding. The state was not at all willing to accommodate the women’s demands, so Emily Davidson sought more radical action to give the suffragettes’ demands the weight they needed.
She smashed windows, set mailboxes on fire, threw stones and more. She was arrested eight times. However, during the imprisonment she did not give up her resistance, barricaded herself in prison and to protest against the mistreatment of her suffragettes who were imprisoned with her, she tried to kill herself. She was convinced that self-sacrifice alone would serve her purpose.
Emily Davidson’s funeral turned into a powerful women’s rights demonstration, attended by thousands of students, employees and union members. Emily Davidson is buried in St Mary’s Cemetery in Morpeth. Her tombstone reads, “Deeds, not words.”
