Memoryscapes of Martyrdom: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and the Death of Emily Wilding Davison in the <i>Suffragette</i> (1913)

ABSTRACT This article examines the reuse of nineteenth-century poetry in the Suffragette (1912–15), the official paper of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) edited by Christabel Pankhurst, as part of the reportage on the death and funeral of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913). Davison was fatally injured when she stepped in front of the King’s horse during a protest at the Epsom Derby on 4 June 1913, and was hailed by the WSPU as a martyr to the cause of women’s suffrage. Previous scholarship has argued that Davison’s martyrdom was grounded in religion, with the WSPU portraying her as a female Christ or modern Joan of Arc. This article presents a more complex picture by drawing attention to the many instances of both secular and religious martyr poetry – often quoted from nineteenth-century poets – published in the Suffragette in the two weeks following Davison’s death. Considering the Suffragette’s coverage of the Derby event and its aftermath as activist memoryscape, it brings recent scholarship in memory studies into conversation with insights from the field of periodical studies. In doing so, the article aims to demonstrate that the image of Davison that the WSPU sought to project into the future was constructed from a wide range of martyr traditions and was particularly intertwined with the memories of martyrdom preserved in poetry by two major nineteenth-century social movements: socialism and abolitionism.