Suffragette suffragettes chaining themselves to railings, setting fire to post box contents, smashing windows and eventually detonating bombs. Some radical techniques used by the suffragettes were learned from Russian exiles from tsarism who had escaped to England. In 1914, at least seven churches were bombed or set on fire across the United Kingdom, including Westminster Abbey, where an explosion aimed at destroying the 700-year-old Coronation Chair, only caused minor damage. One suffragette, Emily Davison, died under the King's horse, Anmer, at The Derby on 4 June 1913. It is debated whether she was trying to pull down the horse, attach a
Emily Davison [Davison's] whole life has been interpreted", and the uncertainty of her motives and intentions that day has affected how she has been judged by history. Carolyn Collette, a literary critic who has studied Davison's writing, identifies the different motives ascribed to Davison, including "uncontrolled impulses" or a search for martyrdom for women's suffrage. Collette also sees a more current trend among historians "to accept what some of her close contemporaries believed: that Davison's actions that day were deliberate" and that she attempted to attach the suffragette colours to the King's horse. Cicely Hale, a suffragette who worked at the WSPU