1-192-448 - © London Museum/Heritage-Images

Emily Wilding Davison, the most famous suffragette of all, 1909. Emily Wilding Davison gave up her teaching post to become a career militant. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union in 1906. She served nine prison sentences, and endured many sessions of force-feeding, for a wide range of offences including obstruction, stone throwing, window smashing, setting fire to pillar-boxes, and assaulting a Baptist minister whom she mistook for the Liberal Cabinet Minister David Lloyd George. She also hid in the House of Commons broom cupboard on census night in 1911, and a memorial to her has been placed there. In the 1913 Derby she ran out on to the racetrack and attempted to stop the king's horse, Anmer. She received serious head injuries and died four days later at Epsom Cottage Hospital, surrounded by a suffragette guard of honour and purple, white and green flags. Emily is photographed here wearing her Holloway Badge.