Emily Davison Emily Davison Emily Wilding Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was a suffragette who fought for votes for women in Britain in the early twentieth century. A member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a militant fighter for her cause, she was arrested on ten occasions, went on hunger strike seven times and was force fed on forty-nine occasions. She died after being hit by King George V's horse Anmer at the 1913 Derby when she walked onto the track during the race. Davison grew up in a middle-class family, and studied at Royal Holloway
Emily Davison having "something of the deliberate brilliance of a military funeral"; 50,000 people lined the route, and June Purvis, Davison's biographer, describes the event as "the last of the great suffragette spectacles". Emmeline Pankhurst planned to be part of the procession, but she was arrested on the morning, ostensibly to be returned to prison under the "Cat and Mouse" Act (1913). The coffin was taken by train to Newcastle upon Tyne with a suffragette guard of honour for the journey; crowds met the train at its scheduled stops. The coffin remained overnight at the city's central station before being taken to