Suffragettes: Deeds not Words
Past display archive
1 July 2014 - 10 May 2015
Room 31
Free
Emmeline Pankhurst's arrest at Buckingham Palace
by Unknown photographer
21 May 1914
NPG x137689
The women who perpetrated the attacks at the Galleries were affiliated to the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Founded in Manchester in1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, the aim of the WSPU was to secure the right to vote for women in the United Kingdom by any means. With the motto ‘Deeds not Words’, it pioneered a campaign of civil disobedience and vandalism. The attacks ceased at the outbreak of the First World War, when the suffragettes agreed a truce in favour of the war effort.
The display includes photographs of Emmeline Pankhurst and Mary Richardson, notorious for attacking the ‘Rokeby Venus’ by Diego Velasquez at the National Gallery. It also includes original documents from the Gallery’s archive, and surveillance photographs showing a number of Suffragettes which were issued to the Gallery by the Criminal Record Bureau in 1914.
Also on display, a recently acquired portrait of Dame Christabel Pankhurst by Ethel Wright
(Room 30)
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Related portraits
- Emmeline Pankhurst addressing a crowd in Trafalgar Square (NPG x131784)
- Dame Christabel Pankhurst (NPG x135535)
- Suffragette March in Hyde Park (NPG x17396)
- Dame Christabel Pankhurst (NPG x32608)
- Procession of Emily Davison's funeral (NPG x45196)
- 'Surveillance Photograph of Militant Suffragettes' (NPG x132846)
- 'Surveillance Photograph of Militant Suffragettes' (NPG x132847)
- Lillian Forrester (née Williamson); Evelyn Manesta (NPG x136417)
- Mary A. Aldham; Ethel Cox (NPG x136418)
- Emmeline Pankhurst's arrest at Buckingham Palace (NPG x137689)
- Mary Raleigh Richardson (NPG x32606)
- Mary Raleigh Richardson (NPG x32607)
Related sitters
- Mary A. Aldham
- Gertrude Mary Ansell
- Jennie Baines
- Annie Bell
- Maud Mary Brindley
- Ethel Cox
- Emily Wilding Davison
- Lillian Forrester (née Williamson)
- Clara Elizabeth Giveen
- Miss Johansen
- Olive Leared (née Hockin)
- Lilian Lenton
- Margaret McFarlane
- Evelyn Manesta
- Kitty Marion (Katherina Maria Schafer)
- Verity Oates
- Dame Christabel Pankhurst
- Emmeline Pankhurst
- Sylvia Pankhurst
- Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
- Miriam Pratt
- Mary Raleigh Richardson
- Francis Harry Rolfe
- Margaret Scott (Margaret Gertrude Schencke)
- Jane Short
- Mary Wyan (Mary Ellen Taylor)