A REAL RUDE SUFFRAGETTE
KING IS GIVEN SHOCK BY REAL RUDE SUFFRAGETTE
London. —The King and Queen held court at Buckingham Palace, and In spite of all precautions a militant suffragette gained access to their presence and caused an Interruption to the presentations. As she was passing the King the suffragette dropped on her knees and shouted: "Your majesty, for God's sake do not use force." The woman was attired in court dress, and her action caused profound astonishment. She continued to admonish the King, but her words were inaudible, as the conductor of the band in the gallery, quick to observe the incident, signaled to the band to play louder, and the woman's voice was drowned. She was removed from the room and handed over to the police. Miss Mary Blomfield, daughter of Lady Sarah Louisa Blomfield, widow of Sir Arthur Blomfield, was the woman who created the sensational scene. Miss Blomfield alone was concerned in the incident, although her sister, who also attended the court, was requested to leave the palace after the occurrence, despite the fact that she took no part in the demonstration. She left without protest. Derby, England—The historic church of Breadsall, dating back to Norman times and containing many priceless relics, was destroyed by fire. Suffragettes are suspected by the authorities, as explosions similar to those caused by the bombs usually employed by the arson squad were heard before the fire
QUEEN MARY OF TECK'S ATTITUDE
The social issue on which Queen Mary’s silence was most vexing to half her subjects (and most vexing to later historians) was the growing strength of the women’s suffrage movement. The queen had no sympathy for ‘those horrid suffragettes’ and looked with Olympian disdain on their most theatrical gestures to arouse public support and awaken royal empathy. When Emily Wilding Davidson threw herself under the hooves of the king’s Derby horse in 1912, Queen Mary was concerned about the jockey. When Mary Blomfield fell to her knees before her at Buckingham Palace in 1914 and begged Queen Mary to stop the force-feeding of suffragettes who’d gone on hunger strikes in prison, the Queen stepped over her without so much as a change in her facial expression. Political agitation such as the suffragettes advocated was anathema to Queen Mary; if her husband was the last of the Edwardians, she was one final breath of the Victorian era, and like Queen Victoria, she considered anyone who agitated against the social givens as someone agitating against society itself. Activists for universal suffrage would have liked nothing better than to secure the sympathy of the foremost woman in the realm, but as the Queen sometimes remarked in her correspondence (negligent Windsor punctuation and all), “Life is not obliging is it.”
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