Women's Sunday

Crowds in Hyde Park on Women's Sunday, 21 June 1908. Annie Kenney, in the centre of the photograph, is about to take up her place chairing Platform 3, one of whose speakers included Dorothy Pethick, the sister of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.

Women's Sunday was the first 'monster meeting' to be organised by the Women's Social and Political Union. Trains were specially chartered to bring in thousands of suffragettes from all over Britain. Frederick Pethick-Lawerence persuaded the authorities to remove a quarter of a mile of park railings to accommodate the seven processions that gathered in Hyde Park from seven different directions. Amongst the brass bands, suffrage singers and banner parades were 20 temporary platforms erected in a circle around the park for 80 speakers to address the crowds.