4 June 1913, Epsom Downs. As the horses round Tattenham Corner, Emily Wilding Davison slips under the rail and reaches for the bridle of the King's horse. She dies four days later. Whether she meant to die, or only to fix a suffragette scarf to the horse, nobody can say. The newsreel cameras caught it.
Why then
Women have petitioned for the vote for half a century; New Zealand granted it in 1893, Finland in 1906. In Britain Parliament keeps talking it out. The Pankhursts' Women's Social and Political Union decides politeness has failed: windows, arson, hunger strikes, and the force-feeding the state answers with. Davison was force-fed forty-nine times.
What they wanted
The suffragettes demand the vote now and will break the law for it. The suffragists, Millicent Fawcett's larger, law-abiding movement, want it as much and fear the militants are losing it. Asquith's government passes the 'Cat and Mouse Act' to release hunger strikers and rearrest them once they recover.
What changed
In 1914 the WSPU calls off its campaign for the war. Women over thirty win the vote in Britain in 1918, American women in 1920, British women on equal terms in 1928. France waits until 1944.
Still argued
Did militancy win the vote or delay it, and did women's war work matter more than either? Historians still divide, and the answer differs country by country.