Suffragette bombings

Frustrated by the lack of action from government, the suffragettes escalated their militancy, becoming increasingly extreme and violent.

In 1913 Christabel Pankhurst, co-founder and organising secretary of the WSPU, wrote: ‘If men use explosives and bombs for their own purpose they call it war, and the throwing of a bomb that destroys other people is then described as a glorious and heroic deed.

'Why should a woman not make use of the same weapons as men?
It is not only war we have declared. We are fighting for a revolution!’

The suffragettes targeted property and infrastructure, not civilians – setting fire to postboxes, breaking telegraph cables, smashing shop windows, attacking artworks and exhibits in museums and galleries, and carrying out arson and bomb attacks on buildings of public significance.

According to former suffragette Mary Leigh, WSPU leader Emmeline Pankhurst (the mother of Christabel): "gave us strict orders… there was not a cat or a canary to be killed: no life."

Despite this, the suffragettes' actions were and are considered by many to have been acts of terrorism.

According to the Suffragette newspaper, more than 300 incidents of arson and bombing were carried out between 1913 and 1914.

Two homemade bombs from the City of London Police Museum are believed to have been amongst several improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used by the suffragettes during their campaign of violence and extremism.

The bomb pictured, as well as a second device now in the Police Museum collection, failed to detonate. They survive today as a striking example of the lengths to which suffragettes were prepared to go for their right to vote.

Emmeline Pankhurst was imprisoned for three years for complicity in the explosion at Lloyd George's house. The day after her imprisonment, this homemade bomb - made from a milk tin - was found outside the Bank of England. Police diffused the bomb before it went off.

This bomb, made from a mustard tin, was left under the Bishop's Chair in St Paul’s Cathedral, in May 1913, but failed to detonate.

The following year, in June 1914, Westminster Abbey was bombed.

Other churches attacked included Trafalgar Square's St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, however, caused the suffragettes to abruptly abandon their militant campaign and channel their energies into supporting the war effort.

According to LSE Women's Library: 'The increasing focus of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the Pankhursts on supporting the War effort... led to the creation of The Women's Party. The political party still engaged with arguments for women's suffrage but was more concerned with patriotic support for the War.'