Manchester Evening News

Hammer attack on city’s art treasures

More than a century ago suffragett­e trio staged unusual protest in gallery

- By ADAM MAIDMENT newsdesk@men-news.co.uk @MENnewsdes­k

AT around 4.30am on February 19, 1913, a loud bang was heard coming from Pinfold Manor in Walton on the Hill, Surrey.

Someone had planted two bombs in the property, which was under constructi­on as a summer home for the then-chancellor, later Prime Minister, Manchester-born David Lloyd George.

The next day, suffragett­e leader Emmeline Pankhurst took to the stage at an event in Cardiff and claimed responsibi­lity.

On April 1, 1913, the then-53year-old appeared in the Old Bailey and was found guilty of having ‘feloniousl­y procuring and inciting persons unknown to commit felony’ at Pinfold Manor.

The Moss Side-born activist was sentenced to three years in prison and promised to go on a hunger strike. She said she would come out of prison dead or alive.

Word of Mrs Pankhurst’s sentencing spread like wildfire. Her supporters were furious.

Two days after her sentencing, three suffrage activists from Manchester staged an extraordin­ary protest in Manchester Art Gallery at Mosley Street.

“Two attendants ran into the Gallery and found three women, Lillian Forrester, Annie Briggs, Evelyn Manesta, running round, cracking the glass of the biggest and most valuable pictures in the collection­s. It had been well planned. Nowhere else in the Gallery were hung so many famous pictures, so close together,” the Manchester Evening News reported, after the incident.

It was about 9pm and the gallery was about the shut when the scene unfolded.

Works by Pre-Raphaelite and late Victorian artists including Frederic Leighton, Gabriel Rossetti, George Frederick Watts and John Everett Millais had been set to with a hammer.

A total of 13 paintings were damaged.

The attendants attempted to arrest the women but they were able to make an escape from the room.

A doorkeeper became aware of the commotion and was able to close the main doors to prevent them from escaping the gallery altogether.

The three women were later charged by police and were identified as Evelyn Manesta, aged 25, Annie Briggs, 48 and Lilian Forrester, 33, from Whalley Range.

Following police questionin­g, the women were released on bail until their trial for ‘malicious damage’ at Manchester Assize Court on April 22.

By that time Emmeline Pankhurst had been released from prison on licence, having served just ten days due to her refusal to eat.

During the trial, the trio were identified as members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), a group set up by Mrs Pankhurst.

Lillian Forrester declared that she didn’t stand in court as a malicious person but as a patriot.

She said that while they ‘broke the glass of some pictures as a protest,’ they ‘did not intend’ to damage the pictures.

She told the jury that finding her guilty would ‘redound the credit’ of Manchester where the suffragett­e movement had begun, praised Mrs Pankhurst and her achievemen­ts, and said that her degree in history had spurred her to fight for women’s freedom.

Annie Briggs, who cited her occupation as a housekeepe­r, said that she was not guilty of the charges brought against her.

She told the jury: “I gave my comrades my fullest support but in no way aided them. Our women take their course on their own deliberate responsibi­lity. This is not a personal but a world question.”

She added that if she were to be found guilty, she would feel it would only be due to her being a member of the WSPU.

Evelyn Manesta, stating she was a governess, told the jury she was a ‘political offender’ and felt the laws applying to men and women were unequal.

Ultimately, the jury acquitted Annie and found both Lillian and Evelyn guilty.

Lillian was sentenced to three months in prison, while Evelyn was sentenced to one.

It was claimed that the judge had said that a ‘round the world trip in a sailing boat’ would be the best sentence for them.

The Manchester incident led other suffragett­es to attack paintings as a form of protest.

The Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery and Clausen’s Primavera at the Royal Academy were both vandalised in 1914, leading to extra security measures being imposed in museums and galleries across the country.

The rationale for gallery attacks was summed up by suffragett­e Ethel Smyth, who said: “There is to me something hateful, sinister, sickening in this heaping up of art treasures, this sentimenta­lising over the beautiful, while the desecratio­n and ruin of bodies of women and little children by lust, disease, and poverty are looked upon with indifferen­ce.”

Little is known about what happened to the Manchester trio after the trial.

But Evelyn Manesta was thrust back into the headlines, years later when Home Office files that were released in 2003 discovered that she had been part of the first known police-manipulate­d image in Britain.

In September 1913, the Home Office ordered all suffragett­e prisoners to have their photograph­s taken without their knowledge.

Following their release from prison, copies of these photograph­s would be distribute­d amongst agents assigned to keep an eye on their activity.

The undoctored photo of Evelyn Manesta featured the arm of a prison warden around her in an apparent attempt to keep her still while the photograph was taken.

When Scotland Yard published the photo, the image had been doctored with the prison warden’s arm removed.

Five years after the trio’s trial and the campaign for women’s suffrage reached a milestone.

In 1918 women over 30 were given the right to vote if they, or their husband, were homeowners while women were also allowed to stand for parliament.

On December 14 of that year, women voted in the general election for the very first time with 8.5 million women eligible to have their voices heard.

Ten years later, in 1928, the Equal Franchise Act gave women equal voting rights with men and meant that any woman over the age of 21 could vote in an election.

Following restoratio­n, many of the paintings targeted by the suffragett­es continue to be on display at Manchester Art Gallery today.

And, more than a century on, Manchester’s Pre Raphaelite works are still sparking conversati­ons about our attitudes to gender equality.

 ??  ?? An 1894 painting of the interior of The Manchester City Art Gallery, by Henry Edward Tidmarsh
An 1894 painting of the interior of The Manchester City Art Gallery, by Henry Edward Tidmarsh
 ??  ?? Evelyn Manesta, Annie Briggs, and Lilian Forrester
Evelyn Manesta, Annie Briggs, and Lilian Forrester

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