Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from April, 2020

“Cheap and easy railway traffic”: Suffragettes and the Railways, Part 3: Arson on the Railways

In Part 1 of these three articles exploring the way in which the rail network influenced the suffrage campaign, I looked at how trains were instrumental in facilitating suffrage campaigns, including militant activism, as well as enabling suffrage organisations to set up and run their national networks. I also explored the way that trains became arenas for sometimes violent encounters between suffragettes and politicians. You can read "Cheap and Easy Railway Traffic: Suffrage and the Railways Part 1 here. The second part described how the Glasgow to London train became the focus of a struggle with the police when suffragettes attempted to rescue Mrs Pankhurst on her way to Holloway Gaol. You can read " Cheap and Easy Railway" Traffic Part 2: The Battle to Free Mrs Pankhurst here. In Part 3, I take a look at how trains and railway stations were themselves targets of suffragette militancy. In March 1913, Hugh Franklin, who we met in Part 1 when he assaulted...

“Cheap and easy railway traffic”: Suffragettes and the Railways, Part 2: The Battle to Free Mrs Pankhurst

In Part 1 of these three articles about how the rail network influenced the suffrage campaign, I looked at how trains were instrumental in facilitating suffrage campaigns, including militant activism, as well as enabling suffrage organisations to set up and run their national networks. I also explored the way that trains became arenas for sometimes violent encounters between suffragettes and politicians. You can read Part 1: "Cheap and easy railway traffic": Suffragettes and the Railways here.   In Part 2, I tell a tale of suffragette derring-do with the story of the struggles to free Mrs Pankhurst on the train between Glasgow and London in 1914.           By 1914, Mrs Pankhurst was protected by a suffragette bodyguard armed with clubs who tried to prevent the police arresting her whenever she appeared in public. On 9 March 1914 she was due to speak at St Andrew’s Hall in Glasgow. Heavily cloaked, she got into the hall with the audience, ap...