Suffragettes take the fight to Dublin

Itwasn’t easy to be the prime minster while women were fighting for their right to the vote, and none was more henpecked (or rightfully picked upon) than that vehement anti-suffragist PM, Mr Herbert Henry Asquith. Although the war for suffrage had been raging with a growing intensity since the middle of the last century, from 1907 onwards the Women’s Social and Political Union and its members – known as suffragettes – committed to a far more violent course of action.

When Asquith visited Dublin in 1912, they threw a hatchet at his supporters and tried to set fire to a theatre he was scheduled to attend. Wherever he went, different feminist groups were determined to have their say. Earlier in the evening, despite elaborate police precautions against “a suffragette surprise”, three boats carrying parties of women had appeared off Kingstown Harbour (now known as Dún Laoghaire), where Asquith was due to arrive. The women carried red parasols, on each of which “Votes For Women” had been painted in large letters to catch his eye. Scrambling to try to apprehend the women and the boats, a launch was immediately procured from the Board of Works, and a party of detectives set out after the suffragettes. Their fate is currently unknown.

News story sourced from britishnewspaperarchive. co.uk and rediscovered by Fern Riddell. Fern regularly appears on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking