| Main Performers | (Mrs Henry) Millicent Fawcett,
Lady Frances Balfour,
Lady Henry Somerset,
Dr Anna Shaw (of Philadelphia),
Mrs Despard (President of the Women's Freedom League),
Mrs Hodgett (President of the Co-Operative Guild) - speakers
Marie Brema - vocal |
| Set List | 'Hark, Hark! What Sound Assails the Air' (Marie Brema) |
| Performance Notes | This meeting followed a march organised by the NUWSS from Embankment to the Albert Hall. The Union urged women who loved homemaking to march in support of their 'homeless sisters' and their families. The Great Procession was attended by all non-militant suffrage organisations and the militant Women's Freedom League. The pageant saw 13,000 suffragettes gathered on the Embankment march to the Royal Albert Hall. The women carried decorative banners, detailed and colourful works of art, bearing emblems and the names of campaigners and famous female figures and achievements. The purpose of the pageant was to showcase a spectacle of female solidarity.
At the Royal Albert Hall, the meeting was addressed by Mrs Fawcett. The aim was to place pressure of the new Prime Minister, Asquith to support the passage of women's suffrage bill through parliament. This bill was introduced into the Commons in February 1908 by the Liberal MP for North Kensington, H.Y.Stanger. Although it passed its second reading it was subsequently blocked by the government.
The Times reported the following Monday that, "the speeches made in the Albert Hall at the end of the long walk were distinguished for their dignity and reserve, and were in marked contrast to the childish and vexatious methods adopted by the more excitable advocates of the same cause."
(The Times, 15 June 1908)
Attendees of the meeting seated on the stage included Mr Stranger MP, Mr Philip Snowden MP, Mrs Snowden, Dr Sophie Bryant, Lady Steel, Mrs Alfred Lyttelton, Mr Cameron Corbett MP, Miss Palliser, Miss Beatrice Harroden, Miss Gertrude Kingston, Miss Davies, Miss Elizabeth Robins, and Mrs How-Martyn.
"In the meantime the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, in conjunction with a number of other organisations, had decided to organise a women's procession, and on June 13th, a week and a day before the Hyde Park demonstration, some 13,000 Suffragists assembled on the Embankment and marched to the Albert Hall where a meeting was held. It was a striking pageant with its many gorgeous banners, richly embroidered and fashioned of velvets, silks and every kind of beautiful material and the small bannerettes showing as innumerable patches of brilliant and lovely colours, each one varying both in shape and hue. Seventy of the large banners had been prepared by the Artists' League for Women's Suffrage. Some were blazoned with the figures of women great in history, amongst them, Boadicea, Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth; others bore emblems commemorating women's heroic deeds, or reforming achievements, - Elizabeth Fry, Lydia Becker and Mary Wollstonecraft, being amongst those recalled. Walking in the procession were many of Lydia Becker's comrades and contemporaries, including the ages Miss Emily Davies, Dr Garrett Anderson, and her sister Mrs Fawcett, the president of the National Union of Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). After these came a contingent of international Suffragists; Australians, Americans with their Stars and Stripes headed by Dr Anna Shaw, and representatives from Hungary, Russia, South Africa, and other countries, each with their national flags and colours. The professional women were led by Mrs Ayrton and other scientists and a great band of medical women in their, splendid robes of crimson and black, with hoods of purple, red and blue. Other graduates followed and the representatives of Newnham and Girton were in Great force."
(Sylvia Pankhurst)
"They marched as if they meant business. They looked as if they wanted votes, and meant to have them, whoever said "No", and on their faces was a smiling consciousness of triumph which disarmed all the potential hostility of the rowdy section of the crowd. The women made London their own. They gathered in their thousands on the Embankment. Motor-cars, brakes and cabs drove up every moment laden with women who wanted to demonstrate."
(The Observer)'
(Photograph of procession and handbill in the Museum of London collection - ID No. IN1275, ID No. 58.82/658) |
| Related Archival Material | Handbill (RAHE/6/1908/1),
Ticket (RAHE/8/5/1908/3),
Souvenir Printed Hankerchief (RAHE/8/3/22),
Illustration from The Sphere (RAHE/9/1908/6) |