The Suffragette Bombers

by Simon Webb

  The attack on the barracks was the second bomb to explode in Leeds in the space of 24 hours. The night before, an electricity generating station in the Crown Point district of the city was damaged by high explosives. Although no responsibility for these two attacks was claimed by the WSPU, it is hard to know who else could have been to blame. The suffragettes were the only terrorist group operating in Britain at that time.

  In 1873, an enormous glasshouse was opened at the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. It was a fantastic structure, with a 150-foot-wide dome, made up of small panes of glass. This was called the Kibble Palace, after the man responsible for its construction and soon became a landmark in the city. Both Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone were, at different times, installed as rectors of Glasgow University, both events taking place in the Kibble Palace.

  In the early hours of 24 January 1914, the watchman employed to keep an eye on the Kibble Palace at night and protect it from thieves or vandals, was making his rounds of the building. He checked that nobody was in the Botanic Gardens after dark and that nothing was amiss. His work entailed nothing more arduous than chasing the occasional adventurous teenager out of the gardens. This night though, was due to be different. As he patrolled the outside of the glass palace, he spotted something very odd. It was a sputtering length of string. When he bent down to investigate, he found to his horror that this was a fuse, attached to a bomb. Instead of fleeing in panic, the man took out a penknife and calmly severed the fuse, thus rendering the bomb harmless.

  As the night-watchman stood up, he must have been congratulating himself on a narrow escape. At that moment, a second bomb exploded nearby, with devastating force, shattering the sides and roof of the great glasshouse. It was the closest of shaves for the man, who fortunately had his back to the explosion, which showered him with fragments of broken glass. Investigation of the scene in daylight provided a chilling insight into the minds of those responsible for the attack on the Kibble Palace. A woman’s veil was found, together with an empty champagne bottle and the remains of some cakes. Footprints indicated the presence of at least two women.

  Whoever had planted the bombs had sat, eating and drinking, waiting for the best opportunity to strike. They must have seen the watchman on his rounds, knowing perfectly well that somebody was walking around the glasshouse. Setting off two explosions under such circumstances shows that those who lit the fuses did not care at all if this man was injured or even killed by their actions. Later that year, Marion Crawford, a prominent member of the WSPU, was sent to prison for two years for this attack, she was lucky not to have faced a charge of murder.

  Less than a fortnight after the bomb attack in Glasgow, three country houses were attacked in Perthshire, two burned to the ground and the third severely damaged, but not wholly destroyed by the fires which were started. Once again, the suffragettes showed a complete disregard for the lives of others.

  The owner of Aberuchill Castle was not in residence at the time, but a number of domestic staff was living on the premises, in quarters at the top of the house. By great good fortune, the alarm was raised and they were able to escape, but the scenario could have turned out very differently. In modern histories of the suffragettes, this kind of activity is almost invariably dismissed casually as an attack on an ‘empty house’.

  The terrorist attacks of the suffragettes were becoming more and more erratic and irrational. Why anybody would imagine for a moment that blowing up a greenhouse would lead to the extension of the franchise is something of a mystery. Even by the standards of the WSPU though, the next attacks in February 1914 were baffling.

  In 1906, a Carnegie public lending library was opened in Northfield, a suburb of Birmingham. It was hugely popular with local people. At 2.00am on 12 February 1914, the library was broken into and a fire started. Within a few hours, the building was gutted: the roof had fallen in and the library was a smoking ruin. When dawn came, a piece of paper was found attached to the railings at the back of the building. It proclaimed, ‘Give Women the Vote’. Nearby was a parcel, which when opened proved to contain a copy of a book by Emmeline Pankhurst. Inscribed in this was the message: ‘To start your new library’. Much anger was generated locally against the suffragettes by this singularly pointless act of vandalism.

  On the same night that the library at Northfield was burned to the ground, a bomb was planted at the home of Arthur Chamberlain. Moor Green Hall was a mansion near Birmingham and somebody had broken in and left a bomb, which was supposed to be triggered by a burning candle. Fortunately, this primitive timing mechanism failed to set off the explosives.

  The church of St Mary’s in the tiny Scottish village of Whitekirk, is one of the most ancient in Scotland. Dating from the 1100s, it was in medieval times a site of pilgrimage. It seems inconceivable that anyone could wish to damage such a place, but a little over a week after the library at Northfield had been destroyed, a suffragette squad arrived at St Mary’s Church in the middle of the night and burned it down. A photograph taken the day after the fire shows the church a smouldering wreck, with the roof having fallen in and all the windows blown out by the heat. We can only imagine what the residents of the village felt about the loss of their beautiful old church and the feelings aroused against those who had carried out such a vindictive act.

  On the first day of spring, the terrorists turned their attention once more to London. In 1914, the rector of the Church of St John the Evangelist, Westminster was the Venerable Albert Wilberforce, Archdeacon of Westminster and Chaplain to the House of Commons. Perhaps it was his connection with parliament that led to his church being targeted by the suffragettes. If so, then the terrorists were making a grave mistake as the Venerable Wilberforce was an outspoken supporter of women’s suffrage. Half an hour after the end of the evening service at St John’s, on Sunday, 1 March, a bomb exploded in the gallery. Stained glass windows were blown out and a number of pews were destroyed. This was the first of a number of bombs aimed at churches in central London.

  By the beginning of spring 1914, the WSPU had been reduced to the status of a very small militant group, rampaging around the United Kingdom and attacking increasingly peculiar targets, such as greenhouses, libraries and churches. The idea of ‘social purity’, which was becoming an obsession with both Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, could only have the effect of alienating still more potential supporters of the WSPU. The only thing that the group really had going for it was the input of wealthy donors who were paying the wages of the terrorists and so enabling them to continue their activities. The WSPU would struggle on for another six months, but it was really dead on its feet, disliked by many of the general public, viewed with detestation by the main political parties and regarded as a positive nuisance by the moderate suffragists who were making great strides by working patiently with sympathetic members of the Liberal and Labour parties.

  The one thing that the WSPU did have though was money. The spectacular attacks, which attracted so much attention, also prompted various rich women to send more money to Mrs Pankhurst. Overall membership numbers might be dwindling, but those who remained in the organisation were still ready and willing to conduct further terrorist attacks. The fact that their activities were now acknowledged even by other suffragists as harming the cause, made not the slightest difference. The bombings and arson continued.

  Chapter Nine

  Dead End – Saved by the War

  ‘ … through the action of a certain class, the suffrage question is as dead as Queen Anne. ’;

  (Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking after suffragettes attempted to bomb Westminster Abbey in June 1914)

  The evening service at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Sunday, 5 April 1914, was unexceptional. It was later remembered that one of the worshippers had been a fashionably dressed young woman, but there was nothing unusual about her to excite suspicion. After the service, which ended at 9.10 pm, the church, in London’s Trafalgar Square, was closed as usual. At precisely 10
.30 pm, the windows on the south side of St Martin-in-the-Fields were blown out by an explosion, covering passers-by with broken glass. Smoke began billowing out of the shattered windows, showing that the explosion had started a fire.

  When the fire brigade attended the scene and gained access to the church, they found that a considerable amount of damage had been caused to the interior of one of London’s most famous churches. In addition to the broken windows, lights had been broken, woodwork set on fire and even the ceiling had been pockmarked and chipped when the bomb went off.

  The attack on St Martin-in-the-Fields was the opening shot in the final stage of the suffragettes’ terrorist campaign. Two days earlier, three small bombs had exploded at Belmont Church in Glasgow, but this had attracted little attention. An explosion in London was a far surer way of getting people to sit up and take notice.

  On 17 April there were a number of serious fires, at least one of which was triggered by a bomb, a favourite tactic of the suffragettes. The Britannia Pier in Yarmouth, on the east coast of England, had an imposing pavilion and ballroom. This was 140 feet long, with a tower 80 feet high. It was a local landmark. At 4.00 am on 17 April, the two nightwatchmen on the pier heard a loud explosion, which they thought might be a warning maroon from a lighthouse or ship. However, within a few minutes the pavilion was ablaze.

  Strong winds fanned the flames, which quickly reduced the ballroom to ashes. Iron girders twisted and buckled in the heat and by dawn, the pier had been destroyed. With daylight, the beach and gardens near the pier were found to be strewn with suffragette handbills and other literature. A postcard was also found, on which was written, ‘Votes for Women. Mr McKenna has nearly killed Mrs Pankhurst. We can show no mercy until women are enfranchised.’ The assumption was that a bomb had been planted in the concert hall and probably surrounded by cans of oil and other inflammable material.

  The fire at Yarmouth was one of a number that took place that day. In Kingston Upon Thames, a music hall was so severely damaged that the roof caved in; a lino factory in Staines was destroyed; a skating rink and laundry in Penzance were burned down; and 15 horses were killed in a fire at a farm near Kelso. It is impossible to say which of these other fires were attributable to the suffragettes, but many newspapers reported them together with the bomb attack on Yarmouth pier as being all of a piece.

  From time to time, the suffragettes attempted to cause floods by exploding bombs on canals or aqueducts. The explosion on the bank of the Stratford-on-Avon canal near Birmingham in 1913 could have been disastrous, but it was not the worst or potentially most damaging attack of that kind. That took place on the night of Saturday, 2 May 1914. The consequences had this particular bomb gone off, would have been almost unimaginable. The Upper Windleden Reservoir, near to the Yorkshire town of Penistone, contained almost 140 million gallons of water. Below it, was another, smaller reservoir, the Lower Windleden Reservoir. The flow of water from the larger reservoir was controlled by a valve house, through which the water ran along a conduit. A workman checking this conduit on Sunday, 3 May, found a large iron pipe filled with explosives, which had been laid near the foot of the valve tower. It would not have been easy to plant this device as it would have entailed wading through running water for a hundred yards or so.

  The fuse for this bomb had been a wax taper, which had gone out before it reached the charge. What the result would have been if an explosion had actually taken place at that part of the reservoir, was succinctly summed up in the Manchester Guardian:

  Had the bomb exploded and seriously damaged the valve tower, the rush of water would probably have displaced the surrounding masonry, and the whole 138 million gallons of water in the reservoir would have swept down the valley into the smaller Lower Windleden Reservoir. The banks at the lower end of this might then have given way under the pressure, and had this occurred the whole of the contents of the two reservoirs would have been released into the valley below.

  An engineer for the Dewsbury and Heckmondwike Water Board said that whoever planted the charge knew exactly where the greatest damage could be caused with the least force. This was not just a symbolic protest, but a deliberate attempt to flood an entire valley, with all the consequent damage and loss of life that this would result in.

  Another London church was the target for the next bomb attack. The Metropolitan Tabernacle in London’s Elephant and Castle is famous for its association with the preacher, Charles Spurgeon. On the afternoon of Sunday, 10 May a bomb exploded in the gallery of this church, causing some structural damage. A placard was found nearby, which proclaimed, ‘Put your religion into practice and see that women obtain their freedom’. A suffragette called Annie Bell was later charged with this bombing.

  The spate of bombings and arson had alarmed the authorities in some cities so much that they had instituted patrols to check for bombs on railway lines and other public places. Some people considered such precautions pointless, but they proved their worth in Glasgow on 22 May. Half of Glasgow’s water supply was carried into the city from Loch Katrine via a huge aqueduct. One night one of these watchmen was walking along the pillars that supported the aqueduct, checking that all was well. He came across an area of freshly dug earth, which naturally aroused his suspicions. Further investigation showed that two bombs had been buried at the base of one of the columns supporting the aqueduct. The fuses had actually been lit, but thankfully had gone out. Nearby, was a woman’s handbag, two trowels and the latest copy of The Suffragette. The possible consequences of half the water supply to the second largest city in Britain being cut off were truly horrifying. It seemed to those interested in such matters that although the WSPU was declining as a political force, they still had the ability to cause a great deal of harm unless they were stopped.

  Throughout June 1914 the saga of the WSPU and their bombing campaign was moving inexorably towards a wholly unexpected resolution. It appears – from evidence in the newspapers, from the fact that membership figures were declining, and from the angry response from the general public when they tried to hold public meetings – that the suffragettes were deeply unpopular. However, they still attracted financial backers, had plenty of money, as well as access to explosives, and there were still eager volunteers ready to undertake arson attacks and plant bombs. Two examples in early June will give an idea of how the campaign was continuing.

  Early on the morning of Friday, 5 June 1914, a policeman found a metal pipe full of gunpowder in the entrance of Dudhope Castle, a mansion not far from Dundee. A fuse was attached to one end and was wrapped round a candle. This had been lit, burning down part way, but it was then presumably blown out by the wind.

  At about the same time that the bomb was planted at Dudhope Castle, an explosion was heard in the village of Breadsall in Derbyshire. Shortly afterwards, the very old Church of All Saints was seen to be on fire. The fire brigade was summoned from Derby and the villagers did what they could, but the church was entirely gutted by the fire and by morning, the church had burned to the ground. No suffragette leaflets were found after the attack, but a hairpin was discovered near a small window, where it was thought the church might have been broken into. As previously noted, the finding of hairpins in this way was often a hallmark of suffragette attacks. There was a curious sequel to the attack on the church in Breadsall. Two years later a former suffragette was convicted of plotting to murder Lloyd George and evidence was given that she had also boasted of destroying the church.

  All Saints in Breadsall was the second church to be wholly destroyed by fire in the early hours of 1 June 1914. At 3.00 am a fire began which left only the walls standing of the parish church at Wargrave, near Reading in Berkshire. The roof caved in and the bells fell from the tower. No glass was left in any of the windows and all the interior fittings were reduced to ashes. Postcards bearing suffragette messages, such as, ‘To the Government Hirelings and women torturers’ were found in the churchyard.

  Financially, the WSPU had never been in better sh
ape that summer. The group’s income in the year up to February 1914 was the highest it had ever been. The increasingly strange targets of the arsonists and bombers had done nothing to discourage the wealthy backers, who were prepared to donate thousands of pounds to the suffragette cause. Asquith and his Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, were both well aware that the key to suppressing the WSPU and ending their terrorism lay in hitting at those who were encouraging the suffragettes by handing over large sums of money. A plan was accordingly formulated to take action against these shadowy individuals.

  At 5.30 pm on 11 June, the Home Secretary rose in the House of Commons to outline the government’s new strategy for dealing with the suffragette attacks. He began by explaining that although the number of incidents overall was declining, those that did take place were increasingly serious. Mckenna talked of the ‘sinister figures with money bags’ who selected dupes and paid them a pound or two a week to carry out attacks and go on hunger strikes. The authorities now had enough evidence to bring a test case of civil action for damage to property and also criminal prosecutions for inciting violence.

  There now occurred one of those strange coincidences that would not be out of place in a play or film. The Home Secretary was speaking in calm, measured tones about the sensible policies of the Asquith administration and how these were sure to triumph in the long run. He explained that the government was taking, ‘patient and determined action’. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than there came the sound of an explosion. Another bomb had gone off, this time near to the Houses of Parliament. A number of MPs jumped to their feet and hurried from the chamber to investigate.