Emmeline Pankhurst is well-known as being the leader of the British suffragette movement but her connection and arrest in Plymouth is perhaps less well-known.
Pankhurst was born in 1858. Her later political actions caused her to be arrested on many occasions. She founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1898 and the group became infamous for smashing windows and assaulting policemen in their fight against political parties of the time. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists were sentenced to repeated prison sentences. Her arrest in Plymouth was carried in the Morning Post and read:
'THE MORNING POST DECEMBER 5 1913
MRS PANKHURST IN PRISON
DRIVE FROM PLYMOUTH TO EXETER
Mrs. Pankhurst was arrested on board the White Star steamship Majestic on arrival at Plymouth yesterday about noon from New York, and was subsequently taken to Exeter Gaol by motor car in charge of police officer and of detectives who had come from London. While at dinner on Wednesday evening she was informed of the action that the Government had decided to take, and when the Chief Constable of Plymouth, two officers from Scotland Yard and others instructed for the arrest went on board the Majestic Mrs. Pankhurst was asked to come to the Purser's office to see them. She refused to do so, and the police, going to the promenade deck, made the arrest in the presence of many of the passengers. There was no scene or demonstration. When the Chief Constable of Plymouth asked Mrs. Pankhurst to consider herself under arrest she demanded his authority, and was answered that a warrant, in the circumstances was unnecessary. Mrs. Pankhurst at first declined to move, but, after a short conversation with the police officers, went on board a special tender that they had chartered to take her ashore. At her urgent request she was accompanied by Mrs. Rheta Child-Dorr, an American journalist and personal friend.
The tender on which the police had embarked unnoticed, at a Devonport quay, proceeded on leaving the Majestic, not to the Great Western Docks, Plymouth, the usual place for ocean passengers to land, but steamed up the Hamoaze about three miles to Bull Point, the Government explosives depot for Plymouth Naval Station. There were in waiting two motor-cars. One was entered by Mrs. Pankhurst and her friend, the Chief Constable, and a Scotland Yard officer, and in the other travelled the Plymouth police matron and four police-constables. Mrs. Pankhurst had not been allowed to bring away with her any of her baggage.
On leaving Bull Point, from which the public are at all times rigidly excluded, the cars proceeded across country by way of Tamerton Folliot until the main road from Plymouth to London was reached. Then the route taken was through Yelverton and across Dartmoor, passing Princetown and Moreton Hampstead, and the cars arrived at Exeter at a quarter past three, Mrs. Pankhurst being lodged in the county gaol.
Anticipating that Mrs. Pankhurst would be landed at the Great Western Docks, a large crowd had assembled there. A Suffragist bank played, and Mrs. Flora Drummond and a bodyguard of about twenty Suffragists, with motor-cars waiting, were at the Ocean Quay, Devonport, to receive Mrs. Pankhurst in case she should be landed there. At both places considerable irritation was shown when it was realised that the enthusiasts had been outwitted by the police, but there was no hostile demonstration. Miss Grew, addressing the crowd at the Great Western Docks, said the plan which had been adopted was proof that a miserably weak Government dared not face the Plymouth public and arrest Mrs. Pankhurst ashore.'
Emmeline Pankurst's fight led to the Representation of the People Act in 1918 and, for the first time, women were allowed to vote.
Pankhurst died in 1928 and was commemorated two years later when a statue was unveiled in London's Victoria Tower Gardens.
