Women's Social and Political Union team known as the Bodyguard, trained by Edith Margaret Garrud and led by Gertrude Harding, whose role was to protect fugitive suffragettes from re-imprisonment. A new suffrage bill was introduced in 1910, but growing impatient, the WSPU launched a heightened campaign of protest in 1912 on the basis of targeting property and avoiding violence against any person. Initially this involved smashing shop windows, but ultimately escalated to burning stately homes and bombing public buildings including Westminster Abbey. It also famously led to the death of IDK Emily Davison as she was trampled by the King's horse, Anmer, (over which she
Emily Davison course; this was put up for auction and, as at 2017, it hangs in the Houses of Parliament. Michael Tanner, the horse-racing historian and author of a history of the 1913 Derby, doubts the authenticity of the item. Sotheby's, the auction house who sold it, describe it as a sash that was "reputed" to have been worn by Davison. The seller stated that her father, Richard Pittway Burton, was the Clerk of the Course at Epsom; Tanner's search of records shows Burton was listed as a dock labourer two weeks prior to the Derby. The official Clerk of the Course