Emily Davison

Was the death of Emily Davison a deliberate suicide or a protest that went tragically went wrong? This essay is about Emily Davison’s death. Emily Davison was a member of the Social and Political Union Organisation. She was campaigning for ‘votes for women’. Her death is still investigated today because people are still trying to figure out if she wanted to commit suicide or it was a protest that went wrong. I am going to answer this question by talking about both sides of these suggestions and looking at it at another point of view. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Emily Davison trying to kill herself by throwing herself under the chains, for example in source H it shows that she was attempting to kill herself twice before injuring herself really badly, this shows that she was willing to commit suicide. It also shows in evidence B Emily was trying to kill herself as it shows evidence B when she’s talking to a friend at a suffragette meeting and she asked her “What are you going to do?” and Emily replied “Ah ha.. Look in the evening paper and you will see something”. This evidence shows that she was planning to do something because she would have had to do something big to be on the newspaper. On the other hand source G suggests that Emily Davison may be considered a peaceful protester.

Evidence to support this is that found in her purse was a return ticket from which we can infer that Ms Davison didn’t want to kill herself and instead she expected to return home. What’s more is that she had a ticket for a suffragette festival the day after the Derby had 1 half of a return ticket in her purse. That shows that she was planning to return after the Derby race. In source D it also suggests that Emily was not trying to kill herself because an eye witness said “She was trying to make a grab for the reins of the horse”. This evidence is reliable because someone was there while the event happened and it shows that an Emily trying to protest not commit suicide. This evidence can also be un-reliable because the eye witness could have made it up or lied completely.

In source A it shows the prison record of Emily Davison, it showed what she did and how long she had to stay in prison for. The things she did was for the suffragette movement, this shows that she was just protesting for the suffragettes and not trying to commit suicide for it. Also it was said in source F, one of her friends said “she would have written a farewell message to her mother”. If she was planning to commit suicide. I think she was trying to protest for the suffragette’s by putting the flag in the horse’s reins but couldn’t see what was going on and unfortunately that led her being ran over by the horse and getting killed four days later. Overall I think it was a protest that went tragically as it shows in evidence G,D,E,F.