'We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.'
It was long contested whether Davison intended to give the ultimate sacrifice for her cause or whether she had in fact intended to pin a suffragette scarf to the King's horse. Whatever her intentions the hundreds of people who turned up to her funeral on the 14th of June, (a week after she had died from her injuries) believed that she was. It was clear that the suffragettes had their martyr. Modern consensus is that she was trying to attach a scarf to Anmer's saddle when she was knocked to the ground and fell unconscious, remaining so for the last three days of her life. The horse and rider Jones both survived. However, Jones was knocked from his horse and unconscious being dragged a number of metres along the floor when the horse got back up to his feet. Fifteen years later he honoured both Davison and Emmeline Pankhurst at the latters funeral and he continued riding for another decade after the incident.
Davison was a well known militant member of the suffragettes. She had once assaulted a man she wrongly believed to be the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George. She was jailed for this another offences no less than nine times and during this time joined the hunger strikers and was force fed over forty times. She's also well known for on the 2nd of April hiding in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft so that she could put her address for that night as the House of Commons.
There may however be a small amount of evidence which could cast a little doubt on it being an accident (which I truly believe it was) and that was what had happened in the June of 1912 at Holloway Prison (facing a six month sentence for Arson) Davison and many other suffragettes were being subjected to the demeaning force feeding that stemmed from their Hunger Strikes. Davison threw herself down a metal staircase and sustained head and spinal injuries which left her in pain for the following twelve months leading up to her death at Epsom. It is believed and inferred by her herself that she did this to end the suffering of all. Presumably to show those performing the force feedings what it was doing to the women.
My belief that it was a tragic accident is backed up by a number of small discrepancies - such as her having a two part return ticket (admittedly, the only kind of ticket you could buy) tucked into her purse as if she had the full intention of using it. Amd that she had purchased a ticket for a Suffragette ball that night). And that I believe Emily Davison would have wanted to see the Suffragette cause through to the very end - of course due in no small part to her bringing women's suffrage to the forefront of peoples minds - female householders over the age of 30 gained the right to vote in 1918. And later in 1928 it was brought up to all women over the age of 21 equal to the rights of men.
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