Posted on February 9, 2020
On this date in 1907, more than three thousand British women - women from all classes in what was then a very class-divided and class-conscious society - got together in Hyde Park, in London, and marched to one of the largest streets downtown. It was raining heavily, and so all of the fine ladies and all of the servants and all of the women in between became spattered with mud.
This was the largest public demonstration supporting women being able to vote that had occurred in England - and maybe anywhere - up to that date! People called it the Mud March because of all that spattered mud I mentioned - and I gather that the press and therefore the public paid more attention to the suffrage movement in a week than it had for the previous half century!
Unfortunately, the marchers didn't influence the legislators - not this time, anyway! - because when a bill for women's suffrage was introduced to Parliament, the following month, it was debated but never even voted on.
But all that press coverage and all that public awareness had caused a sea change in the suffrage movement. The next year (1908) a women's suffrage rally in Hyde Park attracted about half a MILLION people! Wow!
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| The stained glass windows in Parliament's St. Stephen's Hall replaced windows damaged during World War II; they tell the history of voting rights in Britain. Here's the pane that acknowledges the Mud March: |
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