The 1910s: ‘We have sanitised our history of the suffragettes’ (The Guardian)

Britain, 1910. EM Forster published Howards End; Cora Crippen was murdered by her husband, sparking an international manhunt as he went on the run with his mistress; and the suffragettes felt the wrath of the home secretary, Winston Churchill, on “Black Friday”, as 300 women attempted to enter parliament to argue for their rights. After the ensuing riot, the government desperately attempted to cover up evidence of police brutality and serious physical assaults on the suffragettes, but the damage was done. For many of the women present, the government’s use of extreme force on what had been a peaceful protest was the final straw. Women suddenly entered the public and political worlds in a way they had never done before.

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