On Monday 16th March 1914, the Birmingham Daily Post reported an incident that had occurred in Birmingham that weekend:

MILITANTS BUSY NIGHT
SACRILEGE AT BIRMINGHAM CATHEDRAL.
INTERIOR DISFIGURED WITH WHITE PAINT.

“The militant suffragists of Birmingham have during the week-end added to their list of outrages by completely disfiguring the interior of the Cathedral Church of St Philip. In the past these misguided furies of the movement have discredited their cause in the city by many acts of wanton foolishness, but none has roused deeper execration, and done more to alienate public sympathy than will this latest act of vandalism. The actual damage is not so great as in many other outrages, but the fact that a place of worship has been profaned with such calculated malice can only create widespread resentment among church people generally. One heard nothing but angry and bitter comments against the perpetrators of the outrage from the men and women of yesterday’s congregations when their eyes first fell on the handiwork of the militants.”

The newspaper then went onto describe some of the slogans that were painted on the interior:

“Many of the words which the women had painted are almost indecipherable. It appears though they had worked hurriedly, and the large printed characters are like a first childish attempt at expression—as childish as the spite that prompted the deed. Along the wooden front of each of the two side galleries are sentences in faltering white letters, evidently painted from above. One reads, ‘Stop torturing English women in prison’, and the other ‘Stop torturing women’. On the pavement of the centre aisle has been written ‘Stop feeding by force. The Church has weight and influence’. Under each window are the words, ‘Stop forcible feeding’, a cry that recurs with parrot-like persistency. Even the organ has not escaped attention. Across the front of it is scrawled ‘Stop forcible feeding’, while some of the enamel had dripped on to the keys.

ON STAINED GLASS WINDOW
Most serious of all is the attack on the west window, the stained glass being roughly painted with the words ‘Give women the vote’ and ‘Stop torture’. Round the base of each of the pillars is some roughly-written, disconnected sentence, which as a rule can only be read with difficulty. All the more or less familiar war-cries of the militants are be found there, some of the gems being ‘Rise up ye people and see justice done’; ‘By giving the vote stop militancy’; ‘The Church can act’, and ‘Give women their just right’. On the oak front of the wall facing the south aisle is printed ‘The Church has a great responsibility towards women’, while on the door of the vestry the white characters read ‘The clergy must rise on our behalf’. ‘Give women justice’, is the cry on the switchboard. The baptistry has been painted with many similar sentences. ‘Stop torture’ and ‘Give women the vote’ are repeated, and there also ‘The Church is responsible’. Even more militant is the appeal ‘Be just to women before worse —’ , the last word of the sentence being indecipherable.”

During that same weekend eight train carriages at Kings Norton train station were destroyed at a cost of £1,000 worth of damage. The fire took two hours to extinguish and could be seen up to two miles away. A copy of a suffrage newspaper was found nearby. The tennis pavilion at Olton Lawn Tennis Club was another victim of fire on the Friday evening. Here also a copy of a suffragette newspaper was found, attached to some wire near the pavilion. The damage this time was estimated at £300.

This weekend of vandalism and arson was not unusual by this stage of the campaign for the right to vote. There had been an escalation in militancy since the passing of the Temporary Prisoners’ (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Bill in early 1913, or ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act as it came to be known. This meant that hunger-striking women would now be released before they became seriously ill and then expected to return to prison after they had recovered. This led to the pursuit of many women who were not prepared to serve the rest of their sentence, including Emmeline Pankhurst who had been given three years penal servitude in April 1913 for causing an explosion at Lloyd George’s house in Surrey and was repeatedly returned to prison during that year.

Birmingham has the unfortunate claim of being the first place in the UK to carry out this treatment of suffragette prisoners. After a protest in the city during a visit by Prime Minister Asquith in September 1909, 10 women were arrested and, after being sent to Winson Green Gaol, went on hunger strike and were forcibly fed. Hunger striking as a tactic had only just been adopted, instigated by suffragette Marion Wallace-Dunlop, who had been imprisoned in Holloway in July that year. She had protested against her treatment as a common criminal within the prison system and demanded that she be moved from the second division to the first in recognition for her conviction for a political offence. By September the Government had decided that instead of releasing hunger-striking prisoners early they would instead forcibly feed them, and it was to be justified as ‘ordinary hospital treatment’, administered in order to save their lives.

The cathedral attack

The militant action at Birmingham Cathedral was part of a wider WSPU campaign that targeted the Anglican Church – they sent deputations to official residences and if and when members were granted an audience, Church leaders were asked to protest against forcible feeding. Votes for Women published an article on March 20th 1914 that described a recent deputation to the Bishop of Manchester, asking for his support in agitating for the repeal of the Cat & Mouse Act. The Bishop defended the Government, remarking bizarrely that he could not advise them to abandon ‘it’s only known method of protecting the subject against violence’, and asking for a guarantee from the WSPU that they would cease acts of militancy. The Bishop of London had even made visits to Holloway Prison to investigate allegations of women being poisoned but he found no evidence and his statements referred to ‘kindest possible spirit’ – WSPU saw it as a whitewash.

The Church League for Women’s Suffrage which was founded in 1909 had, by 1914, 5,000 members, both men and women. A Birmingham branch of this organisation operated from the home of a Miss Griffiths at Harborne Road. But while some individual members of the Church were supporters of women’s suffrage, that was made difficult by the attack. For example, W. A. Newman Hall of St Philip’s Church in Dorridge wrote to the Daily Post, that ‘as a suffragist of 20 years standing…such attacks on sacred buildings leave me no alternative but to withdraw my support from the movement to secure votes for women…when desecration of God’s house is thought a fair and right means to secure a great moral reform, it behoves us to show practically the indignation we feel’. A letter in response to Newman Hall appeared a couple of days later: Mr W. H. Ryland of Edgbaston wrote: “Sir,— It is difficult to decide which of the so-called arguments against woman suffrage the most illogical, but perhaps the palm may be awarded to the one put forward by Mr. Newman Hall and others, which may be stated as follows:—“ln principle I am in favour of woman suffrage, but owing to the violent actions of the militant suffragists, I have come to the conclusion that no woman ought to have the vote.” The Conciliation Bill would have enfranchised, I believe, more than a million women. I don’t know how many women have committed these violent actions—burning houses or other structures, defacing public buildings, breaking windows, destroying letters, etc. Perhaps there may be three or four hundred, but put the number at 500. Then 999,500 (nine hundred & ninety-nine thousand, 500) other women are to be deprived of the opportunity of voting because of the actions of these 500”.

More letters to the papers followed: one reader commented, ‘the only way to bring these women to their senses is to shame them…put them in pillories’ while another suggested the removal of police protection and the giving of the public a free hand, concluding that ‘I was until some time ago an advocate of votes for women, but recent events have caused me to be of the opinion that the time is not ripe for the same, and will not be for probably a hundred years’. Letters of defence were also published however: ‘Fiat Jutistia’ wrote to the Mail in defence of militant action, suggesting that it would be simpler to refuse to accept the taxes levied on women, ‘how much juster to say ‘we deny your capital representation, we will not accept your taxes. We, and only we who have the franchise, will find money necessary for the welfare and the good conduct of the State’. While Percy Adams of Vernon Road in Edgbaston remarked that ‘the militant women are only copying men in their methods of fighting for their freedom. Sir Edward Carson and the Ulster militants are threatening far worse havoc, with the fire and sword of active rebellion, than anything yet attempted by the WSPU’ and held the press responsible for focusing on militant activities at the expense of ‘constitutional agitation’.

While the reaction in the press was to be expected, incidents of violence against women occurred in the city that have not been discussed elsewhere and demonstrate an extreme misogynistic reaction, with a heavy emphasis on personal humiliation that goes beyond attacks on property. The newspapers reported that on Sunday evening, March 15th, the day of the attack on the cathedral, the WSPU office on John Bright Street had been vandalised: the window and door were covered in a mud-like substance, which turned out to be black paint mixed with acid, and a note was found that read ‘We remember the park outrage. More will follow’ and in Latin ‘The law of revenge. It is right to derive instruction even from an enemy’. Even more disturbingly, on 17th March the Birmingham Gazette published a letter from ‘The Mysterious Fifty’, the self-proclaimed culprits of the attack on the WSPU office, in which they described how else they planned to deal with these women. Referred to as ‘amusing’ by the editor it is anything but, the group stated that ‘we shall make them sorry for what they have done to Birmingham. We have succeeded in making bombs…we shall not be responsible for the safety of any person whom we know to be connected with these outrages and the cost to the damage of our Cathedral will be revenged twenty-fold’. They then describe their ‘programme’ which includes total destruction of WSPU headquarters, personal disfigurement either by acid or cutting off their hair (easy by kidnapping), bomb for bomb, destruction of clothes by acid, binding and gagging after being rendered unconscious by fumes (better than prison), destruction of premises found harbouring them or their literature, tarring and feathering, branding of the face. The letter was signed ‘We’re Satisfied Prison’s Useless’.

The women involved in the campaign for votes for women frequently risked verbal and physical violence, when out demonstrating, on marches, selling copies of suffrage literature, and at meetings. It is important to remember that the WSPU at no point advocated harming people and were more than willing to risk danger to themselves, whether on the street or in prison. By attacking Birmingham Cathedral women risked losing public sympathy for the cause, but I would suggest that by 1914 they may not have cared. By then many of these women had been enduring the trauma of forcible feeding for over 4 years or had witnessed their friends and colleagues undergo the treatment. The outbreak of the war in August means that we’ll never be sure of how far they might have gone – perhaps an innocent victim may have been caught up in the crossfire, perhaps more WSPU members might have died – but the risks they took were seen as acceptable because of the prize that lay ahead: the right to vote.