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Deeds, Not Words: The Suffragettes and Early

Terrorism in the City of London

Rebecca Walker

To cite this article: Rebecca Walker (2020) Deeds, Not Words: The Suffragettes
and Early Terrorism in the City of London, The London Journal, 45:1, 53-64, DOI:
10.1080/03058034.2019.1687222

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03058034.2019.1687222

Published online: 19 Nov 2019.

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the london journal, Vol. 45 No. 1, March 2020, 53–64

Deeds, Not Words: The Suffragettes and

Early Terrorism in the City of London
Rebecca Walker
Independent Scholar

The City of London still provides us with a very visible, physical representation
of policing’s response to the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign of the 1990s:
the chicanes, police boxes and CCTV cameras at its entry points that collec-
tively form its protective ‘Ring of Steel’. Terrorism though had announced
its arrival in the City some 20 years before the bombs at St Mary Axe and
Bishopsgate, with the detonation of an IRA car bomb outside the Old Bailey
in 1973 — or so living memory would have us believe. Two seemingly innoc-
uous artefacts in the City of London Police Museum — a milk-can and a
Keen’s mustard tin — help give the lie to this perception and provide us
with tangible evidence of an earlier, often overlooked bombing campaign.
These two everyday household items once contained ‘infernal machines’ —
or bombs — that were planted at iconic locations in the City in 1913, but
which failed to explode. All the facts point to the would-be bombers being sup-
porters of the Suffragette movement. This article examines the story and sig-
nificance of the milk-can and mustard tin bombs and the way in which those
fighting for women’s suffrage made use of such explosive devices to further
their cause. It will explore the similarities and differences between their
actions and other terror campaigns that targeted the capital and the
‘establishment’.

keywords Suffragettes, WSPU, Bomb Construction, Anarchists, Fenians, IRA

Mention terrorist activity in the City of London and your first thought will probably
be of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Most memorably, perhaps, the bomb they
planted at the Baltic Exchange in St Mary Axe in 1992 or the huge lorry bomb
that exploded in Bishopsgate the following year. While physical reminders of the
IRA’s mainland bombing campaign — the police boxes and CCTV cameras standing
at vehicle entry points — are still visible in the Square Mile, the City of London
Police Museum holds a reminder that highlights the human cost of such campaigns:
a police officer’s cork helmet, one side shattered by the impact from a high velocity
fragment launched when an IRA car bomb detonated outside the Old Bailey in
1973.1

© The London Journal Trust 2019 DOI 10.1080/03058034.2019.1687222

54 REBECCA WALKER

While the helmet clearly demonstrates the destructive power of explosives, a

neighbouring display case contains an important reminder that, some sixty years
before the Old Bailey bomb, another organisation, also seeking political change,
had planted explosive devices in the City of London to publicise their cause. The
case holds two items, a metal milk-can and a Keen’s Genuine Imperial mustard tin
(see Figures 1 and 2). The labelling informs us that, ‘These two seemingly harmless
objects were actually bombs, made by Suffragettes’. Both the milk-can and mustard
tin were planted at iconic City locations: their failure to detonate has fortunately left
us with what appear to be the only physical remains of suffragette bombs still in
existence.
Rather than getting ensnared in the now substantial — and largely unsettled —
historiography of suffragette militancy, this essay explores the relatively neglected
topic of bomb making during the suffragette campaign.2 By excavating the material
remains of two explosive devices, I will approach the suffragettes’ more extreme
militancy from a new perspective — one that focuses upon the physical construction
of their devices and what they can teach us about bomb making in the early

figure 1 Milk-can bomb, held at the City of London Police Museum. © Rebecca Walker
 DEEDS, NOT WORDS 55

figure 2 Mustard tin bomb, held at the City of London Police Museum. © Rebecca Walker

twentieth century. Bombs undoubtedly form a small part of the suffragette story, but
a forensic investigation into the functioning of these devices offers crucial insights
into the narrative of London’s terrorism. In this, the essay seeks to counter historians
such as David Mitchell who locate the suffragette violence in future tactics adopted
by Ulrike Meinhof.3 It is in London, and not Berlin, that the suffragette campaign
anticipates future political violence in striking ways. The suffragette bombs were
by no means restricted to the capital, but, by placing the milk-can and mustard
tin bombs in the context of this broader campaign, I will highlight how a series of
56 REBECCA WALKER

small, often overlooked, attacks in London foreground some of the key ways that
terrorism has come to operate in this city.
For these reasons, this essay does not seek to determine if, or how, suffragette vio-
lence corresponds with what we now understand as terrorism. As multiple historians
have noted, the suffragettes remained excluded from the formal political mechan-
isms of the time and thus could not ‘use normal means to advocate their views’.4
Their turn to bombing was exceptional and it happened under a unique set of cir-
cumstances that cannot be applied to other campaigns. What the suffragettes do
share with past and future terrorism, however, are the techniques and mechanisms
by which such violence can be performed. Echoes of the Fenian campaign can be
traced in their devices, while their tactics would also provide a template for more
contemporary attacks on the capital. Determining these links is, however, far
from an easy task: many of the records and investigations relating to the suffragette
bombs have simply disappeared. What follows, then, is a species of archival archae-
ology — a piecing together of fragmentary evidence that unearths the intricate oper-
ations that undergird the suffragette bombs. While this work does not reinforce Fern
Riddell’s controversial assertion that these bombs were concomitant with modern
terrorist action,5 the essay does give further — and more specific — evidence as
to how these devices were ‘truly dangerous’.6
‘Suffragettes’ of course, was the popular name for members of the Women’s
Social and Political Union (WSPU). Founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst
and her daughters, the Union’s aim was to gain ‘votes for women’. Its chosen
motto of ‘deeds, not words’ was an early indicator of the direct action that suffra-
gettes would later show themselves willing to take. It was, for Edwardians, prob-
ably also reminiscent of the ‘propaganda by deed’ strategy pursued at the time by
another group challenging the establishment: the anarchist movement. Since the
1880s, anarchists had undertaken a worldwide terror campaign that had seen
murders of establishment figures and the frequent use of explosive devices, includ-
ing two failed bomb attacks in England. One of these vividly illustrated the
dangers inherent in any bombing campaign: in 1895, a would-be bomber was
blown to pieces in London when the device he was carrying detonated
prematurely.7
While the WSPU’s early ‘deeds’ were largely uncontroversial, from 1905 its activi-
ties became increasingly militant and its members increasingly willing to break the
law, inflicting damage upon not just property, but people. WSPU supporters repeat-
edly raided Parliament, physically assaulted politicians and smashed windows at
‘establishment’ premises. By 1912, suffragette activities were also impacting upon
the nation’s businesses, infrastructure and the public. A Special Branch officer,
giving an account under oath of a suffragette meeting, stated that Mrs Pankhurst
and other speakers encouraged damage to both public and private property ‘so as
to create a condition of things, either in London or in the country generally, as
shall render the life of the ordinary peaceable citizen unbearable’.8 In London,
hammer-wielding suffragettes shattered West End shop windows, and railway
signals were roped together endangering train journeys. Country-wide, telegraph
and telephone wires were cut while sports’ pavilions, churches, pillar boxes, farm
buildings and even haystacks were set alight. Disrupting the smooth functioning
 DEEDS, NOT WORDS 57

of urban and rural life, the aim was to pressurise the Government into giving women
equal voting rights.
While such activities gained widespread — although not necessarily positive —
publicity, they were also inexpensive, required no particular expertise to undertake
and could be implemented with readily available materials by a small team or indi-
vidual.9 One such individual was Emily Wilding Davison who mounted several suc-
cessful arson attacks in the City of London using little more than paraffin-soaked
fabric and matches.10 The adoption of tactics more readily associated with terrorist
campaigns — the planting of viable explosive devices — signalled an even more sig-
nificant shift for the WSPU, albeit one that follows a discernible pattern in its
broader campaign: when antagonised — by government delays, police raids on
Union offices and arrests of its members for example — suffragette activity would
usually escalate in both frequency and degree.
The explosive devices initially used were extremely rudimentary, requiring no par-
ticular technical know-how to construct, but were nonetheless effective. In February
1913, two suffragette bombs were planted in a house owned by David Lloyd
George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Although only one, containing a 5 lb
charge of gunpowder, detonated, considerable damage resulted: ‘The ceiling of the
room in which the explosion occurred was entirely blown away, a partition wall
was almost demolished, the outer wall was bulged outwards’.11 Such damage was
achieved simply by placing a lit candle in a saucer full of paraffin-soaked wood shav-
ings that was then connected to the explosive charge by a petrol-soaked rag. The
candle burnt down, setting fire to the shavings which ignited the rag. That rag
initiated the gunpowder.
There is an inherent risk in using explosives, one that on this occasion, was exacer-
bated by the device’s construction: by using a candle as a timer the actual time of
detonation could not be guaranteed with any certainty. Workmen had arrived
on-site shortly after the explosion. That such a device could have killed or injured
is beyond doubt: in 1999 a bomb also containing a 5lb charge of gunpowder
exploded in central London, killing three people and injuring seventy.12 While the
suffragettes stated publicly they had no intention to cause death or bodily harm,
there is no evidence they gave warnings of any imminent explosions and their
actual ‘deeds’ would sometimes demonstrate a recklessness — even indifference —
as to whether such harm could result. In April 1913, the suffragettes placed a
bomb with a lit fuse in a compartment of a weekday 5.10 pm train from Kingston
to Waterloo13; in January 1914 an overnight watchman, having extinguished one
suffragette device placed at Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens, narrowly escaped being
caught in the blast from a second which shattered the glass in the conservatory14,
postal workers, meanwhile, were injured by their exposure to the noxious sub-
stances the suffragettes placed in pillar boxes.15 Such recklessness did not escape
the notice of the authorities. In 1912, four suffragettes were arrested for setting
fire to, and causing explosions at, the Theatre Royal, Dublin. The incidents unfolded
while the audience was still present and the suffragettes were subsequently charged
with offences likely to endanger life.16
The months following the explosion at Lloyd George’s house saw the suffragettes
continue a UK-wide campaign of civil disobedience, criminal damage and arson
58 REBECCA WALKER

attacks, while simultaneously making increasing use of explosive devices. Many

bombs were still of basic construction, and premises arguably less likely to be occu-
pied were still the main targets, but by 1913, the suffragettes were actively targeting
the Square Mile: buildings, including the Bishopsgate Institute and the Guildhall
Library were subject to what today is called ‘hostile reconnaissance’.17 Railway
stations including Cannon Street and Fenchurch Street appeared on a list of
locations allocated WSPU code names. A bomb, accompanied by a note reading
‘votes for women’ was planted in the waiting room at ‘Zinc’, or Liverpool Street
Station, and used a method many regard as a later twentieth-century IRA invention:
this 1913 suffragette device had nuts and bolts packed around it.18 It was, in fact, a
method used in several suffragette bombs, including the one later planted at St
Paul’s. While the suffragettes would argue such packaging was intended only to
maximise damage to property, it would also maximise injury to anyone in proximity.
In April 1913, militant suffragettes planted a milk-can bomb outside the Bank of
England, opposite the Stock Exchange. Both were iconic locations situated in an
area also bordered by the Mansion House and the Royal Exchange. Indeed, the
Bank of England sits in a location that has long been attractive to those seeking
to influence Government and public opinion.19 In 1881, the nearby Mansion
House had been the target of one of the first modern terrorist bombs: a device con-
taining 15 lb of gunpowder, planted by Fenians during the so-called Dynamite Wars.
Anarchist plotters had targeted the Royal Exchange in the 1890s, although they
were arrested before they could act: one of them commissioned a specially designed
pipe from a City ironmonger, who, suspicious of the order, alerted police.20 The suf-
fragettes did not repeat this mistake: instead they adapted ordinary household items
such as the milk-can and mustard tin, hairpins, even bicycle bells for their bomb-
making activities.21 Not only were these items women could plausibly possess if
questioned, most were associated with the norms of female domesticity to which
they were expected to conform, but which the suffragettes had now re-purposed
for use in their bombing campaign against a patriarchal society.
The milk-can bomb highlights some significant changes in this campaign. This
device was not placed in a seemingly uninhabited location but was discovered on
a Monday afternoon adjacent to the Bank of England’s entrance in Bartholomew
Lane. It was ‘ … . one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city during the hours of
9 am and 5 pm, being just opposite one of the principal entrances to the Stock
Exchange’.22 When a police officer examined the milk-can, it began to smoke (indi-
cating the bomb may imminently explode) whereupon the officer reportedly carried
it to a nearby water source and immersed it.23 This device contained one pound of
gunpowder, admittedly unlikely to have caused significant damage to the Bank’s
stone edifice, but still capable of causing serious injury, even death to someone
close-by.24
Furthermore, this bomb was not initiated by candles or petrol-soaked rags, but by
a more advanced method. Upon expert examination, it was discovered that ‘the gun-
powder was connected with an electrical firing device’.25 Press reports elaborated
further, describing the device as ‘scientifically constructed’ with a firing system com-
prising an electric battery, some wire and a small watch.26 This demonstrates a sig-
nificant advance in suffragette bomb-making capabilities: such a firing system
 DEEDS, NOT WORDS 59

enables a device to be initiated at a time of its maker’s choosing.27 The Bank of

England bomb also demonstrated that the suffragettes were now able to deploy
ready-made, portable bombs confined within an unremarkable household con-
tainer — such as a milk-can — that any woman seemingly busy about her domestic
chores could carry or place in any public street or building without attracting atten-
tion. No longer was the WSPU restricted to locations that provided the organisation
with the privacy and time to construct bombs in situ: now many more targets were
potentially within reach.
The method of construction used in the milk-can bomb proved not to be unique.
The first public report of a suffragette device incorporating a clockwork mechanism
and battery had come a few days earlier, following an overnight explosion at Oxted
Railway Station.28 Meanwhile, in May 1913, a quiet ticking emanating from the
Quire of St Paul’s Cathedral led to the discovery of the mustard tin bomb.29 In
many ways, this device was even more advanced than those at Oxted and the
Bank of England. Major Cooper-Key from HM Inspectorate of Explosives examined
it and, writing to the Cathedral’s Canon Newbolt, emphasised the time, care and
materials that had been invested in this bomb’s construction. Evidently the bomb-
maker had had both the requisite knowledge and a location in which to build the
device safe from the risk of discovery. Its wires had been carefully insulated in
glass tubes which had then been connected ‘by a “bridge” of … . platinum wire’
so fine ‘as to be easily rendered incandescent by the current from the small
battery’.30 The timer had been set for midnight, probably in the hope any resulting
fire would catch hold before being discovered. While the Canon evidently believed
the device was a hoax — and certainly the suffragettes planted such devices —
Cooper-Key disagreed.31 The device was viable and should have exploded, but
the person placing it would have found it ‘impossible to tell by merely turning
the switch whether it was on or off without taking the lid off the box and so inter-
fering with the igniting machinery. A mistake might therefore easily have
occurred’.32
Within two days of the discovery at St Paul’s, the City of London Police’s Chief
Office re-issued its instructions on dealing with ‘Explosive or Infernal Machines’.
Together with advice on their safe removal and de-fusing, specific mention is
made of clockwork and electrical devices: ‘the wire connecting the clock with the
battery should be cut’.33 These instructions, particularly referencing time-delay
devices, reflect the authorities’ acknowledgement of suffragette advances in their
bomb-making capability. And it was a capability with which they continually
experimented. By 1914, while still planting rudimentary devices incorporating
candles, the suffragettes placed a bomb at Westminster Abbey which used sulphuric
acid as both a timer and initiator. This device was most probably planted by a
member of a group that had left the Abbey only moments before the explosion
took place. HM Inspector of Explosives’ subsequent report highlighted both the
unpredictability and real dangers of such use of acid, stating that the explosion
may have occurred much sooner than the perpetrator expected. Its force had also
launched the large and ‘heavy steel hexagonal nuts’ packed around the bomb,
some distance from the seat of the explosion into adjacent aisles.34 At the time of
detonation, the Abbey was busy with visitors. It is therefore hard to dispute the
60 REBECCA WALKER

claim made by journalists at the time that this bomb was yet another that posed a
‘risk to human life’.35
While many of the component parts required to manufacture a bomb, such as
watches, batteries and containers were easily obtainable domestic items available
for purchase without arousing suspicion, an explosive main charge is also needed.
The most common one used by the suffragettes was gunpowder which, at the
time could be acquired quite easily and without restriction. While gunpowder has
a relatively low explosive power, it can be accentuated under compression. The suf-
fragettes were evidently aware of this potential: the St Paul’s bomb had a strap
drawn tightly over its lid, and straps were discovered amongst the remains of
other suffragette devices that detonated.36 However, larger quantities of low explo-
sive are required to achieve the same damage as a much smaller quantity of high
explosive, such as nitroglycerine.37 Consequently, the suffragette desire to
improve their bomb-making extended beyond fashioning more portable, time-delay
devices.38 Although the WSPU was not above falsely claiming the St Paul’s bomb
contained nitroglycerine, there is evidence that the organisation did indeed
acquire and use high explosive. However, commercially made high explosive was
strictly controlled and securing large amounts was difficult. Even Fenians, initially
successful at smuggling their favoured main charge, dynamite, into Britain in the
early 1880s, had later resorted to manufacturing their own nitroglycerine. It
appears the suffragettes followed suit. Certainly experts concluded that the
explosion at Westminster Abbey ‘was caused by a small quantity of fairly violent
explosive, stronger than gunpowder probably … . possibly home-made’.39 A
device planted at Penistone Reservoir in May 1914, contained a similar home-made
explosive mixture and some five months before, a bomb with a high explosive
charge damaged a wall of Holloway Prison.40 While the Fenians had the expertise
and supporting infrastructure to establish their own nitroglycerine factory,41 the suf-
fragettes probably relied upon, and were constrained by, the smaller amounts of high
explosive produced by one of their supporters, analytical chemist Edwy Clayton, in
his laboratory at Holborn Viaduct.42
Of course, there were those who doubted the WSPU was responsible for planting
such bombs. A letter to the press in May 1913 exclaimed: ‘ … . how do you know the
suffragettes placed a bomb in St Paul’s? Has it been proved? I am very sceptical
about these bombs which are always conveniently discovered before they go
off’.43 Others demonstrated not just scepticism, but an outright sexism that illus-
trates something of the patriarchal attitudes the suffragettes were fighting against:

It is not thought to be credible that the bomb found in the Cathedral could have
been put together by women, or by women unaided by a person or persons
practised in the construction of these abominable contrivances.44

Evidence of suffragette involvement would, however, frequently accompany the

devices: a page from ‘The Suffragette’ newspaper, bearing a message stating that
the WSPU would never be suppressed, was wrapped around the mustard tin
bomb. Similarly the milk-can bomb, in common with several other suffragette
devices, incorporated hair pins.
 DEEDS, NOT WORDS 61

The Bank of England, St Paul’s and Oxted Railway Station bombs demonstrate
that the suffragettes acquired the ability, or access to someone with the ability, to
assemble sophisticated and viable time-delay explosive devices. While similar, but
even more elaborately constructed, bombs had been used previously during the
Dynamite Wars, instruction in such bomb-making had been available to Fenians
at an American-based ‘School of Dynamite’ established for that specific
purpose.45 Detail about Fenian bomb-making activities was publicly available,
but there is no proof the suffragettes took inspiration from their campaign, nor is
there evidence supporting contemporary speculation that the suffragettes were in
league with anarchists.46 However, what can be demonstrated is that the suffra-
gettes’ expertise was, at least to some degree, due to Edwy Clayton. In 1913 he
was convicted of conspiring with members of the WSPU to commit damage to prop-
erty.47 Amongst the evidence was a letter written by Clayton indicating he was
experimenting with making explosives for the suffragettes.
The outbreak of World War 1 saw the end of WSPU militancy, the aim of achiev-
ing votes for women still unrealised. Like others before them, the suffragettes had
made use of bombs to highlight their cause: ‘Suffragette militance has adopted the
methods of the Nihilist, the Anarchist and the Fenian’, wrote the Dundee Courier
in 1913.48 But lacking the global network the anarchists enjoyed and the infrastruc-
ture that enabled the Fenians to smuggle dynamite into Britain, the WSPU campaign
had been forced to innovate. Their often rudimentary, but nonetheless viable,
devices demonstrate how the suffragettes not only harnessed the specialist knowl-
edge of their supporters, but also took domestic items readily to hand — candles,
sawdust, fabric, milk-cans, mustard tins, hairpins, bicycle bells — and mobilised
them in support of their cause. Through their campaigns of civil disobedience, crim-
inal damage and arson, they also pioneered the use of new tactics with which to
attack and disrupt London. Although inexpensive and requiring no particular exper-
tise, these tools and this strategy was capable of securing widespread publicity.
Such tactics apparently did not go unnoticed by others seeking political reform. In
a short campaign between 1939 and 1940, the IRA would also undertake incendiary
attacks on pillar boxes and plant explosive devices. Supporters of this campaign had
previously been active in the British mainland only six years after the WSPU cam-
paign had ended. At this time they had focused on committing large-scale arson
on shops, farms and haystacks, vandalising telegraph and telephone wires and sabo-
taging the transport infrastructure. The similarities with WSPU activities are self-
evident, although the IRA’s proficiency was apparently questionable. As the Metro-
politan Police noted of the IRA attacks: ‘They don’t even succeed in doing any sub-
stantial damage. The suffragettes were far better’.49

Notes
1 The City of London Police Museum is at the
Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, City of
London. The officer, PC Malcolm Hine, survived,
but suffered the after-effects of his injuries for the
rest of his life. He died in early 2019.
2 For a brief summary of these debates see K.
Cowman, ‘What was Suffragette Miltancy’, in
P. Marrkola, I. Sulkunen, and S. Nevala-Nurmi
(eds.), Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship:
International Perspectives on Parliamentary
62 REBECCA WALKER
Reforms (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2009), 299–322.
3 D. Mitchell, Queen Christabel (London:
MacDonald and James, 1977), 322.
4 M. Hogenboom, ‘Were extreme suffragettes
regarded as terrorists?’ BBC News 11
February 2012 <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
magazine-16945901> [accessed 24 May 2019].
5 For an explanation of the controversies see June
Purvis’s review of Fern Riddell’s book: J. Purvis,
‘Suffragettes’, Times Literary Supplement, 29
June 2018, 31.
6 F. Riddell, Death in Ten Minutes (London:
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2018), 298.
7 In 1894, anarchists plotting to bomb the City of
London’s Royal Exchange were arrested before
they could implement their plan. The target in
1895 was believed to be the Royal
Observatory: I. Jones, London, Bombed,
Blitzed and Blown Up (Barnsley: Frontline
Books, 2016), 51–52.
8 The National Archives, Information of Chief
Inspector James McBrien laid before Bow Street
Police Court, 29 April 1913, Crime 1/140/1.
9 Such acts of arson and criminal damage were not
universally condoned even within the WSPU: in
October 1912, two long-standing supporters
of the suffragette cause, Mr and Mrs
Pethick-Lawrence, were expelled from the
Union for voicing their objections to such activi-
ties: Riddell, Death in Ten Minutes, 152.
10 Papers of E.W. Davison, London School of
Economics, 7EWD/A/5/1 TWL5.5 Reel 1, 60.
11 The National Archives, Her Majesty’s Inspectors
of Explosives Annual Report 1913, EF 5/10, 41.
12 The bomb, packed with nails, was planted at the
Admiral Duncan pub in Soho.
13 A porter joining the train during its journey
became aware of the bomb in his compartment
shortly before it was due to explode. The device
reportedly contained live bullets, ‘pieces of
jagged metal and scraps of lead’, Globe, 10
April 1913, 2.
14 S. Webb, The Suffragette Bombers (Barnsley: Pen
& Sword History, 2014), 137.
15 Evidence heard during a trial of members of the
WSPU at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court in May
1913 included details of 3 postmen so injured
while performing their duties.
16 The charges read out in court before the trial
included ‘causing by means of a certain explosive
unknown an explosion of a nature likely to
endanger life and conspiring with other persons
to cause an explosion in the United Kingdom
likely to endanger life’: Webb, The Suffragette
Bombers, 60.
17 Hostile reconnaissance is defined by the UK’s
Centre for the Protection of the Critical
National Infrastructure (CPNI) as ‘purposeful
observation with the intention of collecting infor-
mation to inform the planning of a hostile act
against a specific target’.
18 During the Northern Irish Troubles this method
of bomb preparation was dubbed ‘Belfast
Confetti’.
19 Among the first to target this location were the
Gordon Rioters, who in 1781 attempted to
storm the Bank of England. More recently in
2009, the area was a rallying point for those pro-
testing against the G20 summit.
20 There is some evidence that the plotters actually
intended to target the nearby Stock Exchange
and confused the locations. The IRA would
make a similar error in 1992 when, following a
telephoned warning that a bomb was at the
Stock Exchange, their device exploded outside
the Baltic Exchange.
21 Hairpins were reportedly incorporated within
the milk-can bomb and the bombs planted at
David Lloyd George’s House, while HM
Inspector of Explosives believed a device that
exploded at Westminster Abbey in June 1914
was packaged in a large cycle bell and part of a
hand bell.
22 Falkirk Herald, 16 April 1913, 4.
23 Mary Richardson, a suffragette detailed to bomb
a Birmingham railway station, later recounted
how she became aware that the explosive
device was close to detonation by the increas-
ingly loud ticking and spluttering noises it made
(M. Richardson, Laugh, A Defiance (London:
G Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953), 142–44).
24 In March 1914, a bomb containing only half the
gunpowder contained in the milk-can bomb
exploded at the Church of St John the
Evangelist, Smith Square, Westminster. The
blast damaged one of the pews and caused
bulging and cracking to the glass in a nearby
window.
25 The National Archives, Her Majesty’s Inspectors
of Explosives Annual Report 1913, EF 5/10, 41.
Only a summary of the report exists, so it is

unknown if any forensic examination to deter-
mine who was responsible for the construction
or placement of the device was undertaken.
26 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 15 April 1913, 7.
27 While Diane Atkinson in Rise Up Women! The
Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes (London:
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 391 claims the
device was timed to explode at 11 pm, contem-
porary reports, including one in ‘The
Suffragette’ (18 April 1913, 453) state the
bomb was timed to explode at 11 o’clock: this
could mean either 11 pm or 11 am, when the
area would have been very busy.
28 Another, similarly constructed device would be
discovered at Haslemere Railway Station in
July 1913
29 The WSPU regarded the Church of England as an
opponent of the suffrage movement.
Consequently many churches country-wide
were the target of suffragette protests, arson
and bomb attacks.
30 Letter from Major Cooper-Key, HM Chief
Inspector of Explosives to Canon Newbolt,
dated 9 May 1913, Newbolt Scrapbook
Volume VIII, 87–88, St Paul’s Cathedral
Archive.
31 In their Annual Report of 1913, Her Majesty’s
Inspectors of Explosives reported that during
the year, suffragette ‘hoaxes in the form of
“bombs” containing coal, alarm-clocks, small
Leclanche cells, etc., have been frequent’ (The
National Archives, Her Majesty’s Inspectors of
Explosives Annual Report 1913, EF 5/10, 41).
One such hoax was discovered in Bouverie
Street in the City, the same day as the mustard
tin bomb was discovered in St Paul’s.
32 Letter from Major Cooper-Key, HM Chief
Inspector of Explosives to Canon Newbolt
dated 9 May 1913, Newbolt Scrapbook
Volume VIII, 87–88, St Paul’s Cathedral
Archive.
33 Memorandum from J Stark, Chief Clerk, Chief
Office of the City of London Police, 15 May
1913, uncatalogued papers, City of London
Police Museum.
34 The National Archives, Her Majesty’s Inspectors
of Explosives report, ‘Explosion at Westminster
Abbey’, June 1914, EF 5/10.
35 The Daily Telegraph, 14 June 1914.
36 Including amongst the debris of explosions at St
John’s Church, Smith Square, Westminster in
DEEDS, NOT WORDS 63
March 1914 and St Martin in the Fields
Church, April 1914.
37 Low explosive contains an explosive mixture
that deflagrates — or burns rapidly — producing
relatively low pressures. High explosives
however, detonate and so are considerably
more powerful.
38 In May 1913, the suffragettes took this portabil-
ity one step further, sending a letter bomb to the
magistrate hearing charges against the WSPU
leadership at Bow Street Police Court.
39 The National Archives, Her Majesty’s Inspectors
of Explosives report, ‘Explosion at Westminster
Abbey’, June 1914, EF 5/10.
40 The National Archives, Her Majesty’s
Inspectors of Explosives Annual Report 1913,
EF 5/10, 4.
41 The Fenian nitroglycerine factory was discovered
by police in the back of a Birmingham stationer’s
shop in April 1883.
42 Edwy Clayton was an active member of the
Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage and the
Men’s Political Union for Women’s
Enfranchisement: both his wife and daughter
were WSPU members.
43 Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 17 May
1913.
44 Northampton Chronicle and Echo, 8 May
1913.
45 The Brooklyn Dynamite School was established
by New York Fenians in 1882. One of its stu-
dents, Thomas Mooney, took part in the 1881
failed attack on the Mansion House.
46 Starting in January 1894, The Strand magazine
ran a series of articles on ‘Crimes and
Criminals’. The first in the series was entitled
‘Dynamite and Dynamiters’ which examined
the work of HM Inspector of Explosives and pro-
vided considerable detail about, and several
photographs illustrating, the construction of
explosive devices.
47 Although more militant suffragette activities
would clearly meet today’s legal definition of ‘ter-
rorism’ (Terrorism Act 2000, Part 1, Sections 1–
4) such legislation did not exist at the time.
Instead the suffragettes and their supporters
were most often charged with offences under
the Malicious Damage Act 1861.
48 Dundee Courier, 20 February 1913, 4
49 The National Archives, Minute, 20 June 1921,
MEPO 3/489.
64 REBECCA WALKER

Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to Hannah Cleal and her colleagues at the Bank of England
Archive and Victoria Iglikowski-Broad at The National Archives for their assistance
in identifying holdings potentially containing information on the suffragette
bombing campaign, and to the staff at the Women’s Library Archive, London
School of Economics for facilitating my access to the papers of Emily Wilding
Davison. I would also like to thank Dr George Legg, King’s College London for
giving me the opportunity to contribute this paper and for his ready support
during its preparation.

Note on contributor
Rebecca Walker graduated in English Language and English Literature from Oxford
University in 1985. She became a police officer with Sussex Police in 1993, transfer-
ring to the City of London Police 11 years later where she is the force’s lead Police
Search Advisor. A member of the Project Board overseeing City Police Museum’s
move to the Guildhall Library in 2016, Rebecca also delivers walks, talks and
tours on a range of subjects, including the history of policing in the Square Mile.