The Women's Social and Political Union was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom founded in 1903. Known from 1906 as
Annie Kenney (left) and Christabel Pankhurst, c. 1908
62 Nelson Street, where the WSPU was formed
WSPU leaders Flora Drummond, Christabel Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Emmeline Pankhurst, Charlotte Despard, with two others, 1906–1907
WSPU meeting, c. 1908. Emmeline Pankhurst stands (left) by the table on the platform.
Suffragettes in Great Britain and Ireland orchestrated a bombing and arson campaign between the years 1912 and 1914. The campaign was instigated by the Women's Social and Political Union, and was a pa
Women's Social and Political Union
…to force arrests, broke windows in prominent buildings, set fire to or introduced chemicals into postboxes thus injuring several postal workers, and committed a series of arsons that killed at least five people and injured at least 24. When imprisoned, the group's members engaged in hunger strikes and were subject to force-feeding…
Two suffragette bombs, which were defused before they could detonate, on display at the City of London Police Museum in 2019
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst
This letter box in Newport, Wales, was one of many that were booby trapped by suffragettes in 1913.
In April 1913 a bomb was planted in the public street outside the Bank of England.