Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - A Deadly Day at the Races: What Radical Protest Can and Cannot Do

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

After years of campaigning for votes for women, the Suffragettes emerge at the turn of the 20th Century. Their motto, 'Deeds Not Words', heralds the start of more radical actions, including fire bombing, civil disobedience and hunger strikes. Emily Davison is a passionate rebel, but she pushes at the limits of what her allies find acceptable. History remembers Emily for her final act, but have we got everything about the story right? WARNING: This episode discusses death by suicide. If you are suffering emotional distress or having suicidal thoughts, support is available - for example, from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US, or the Samaritans in the UK on 116 123 Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ Become a Cautionary Club member on Patreon for bonus Cautionary Tales episodes, behind-the-scenes chats, newsletters, and more. To join Pushkin+ visit pushkin.fm⁠ or the show page on Apple.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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before we start, this cautionary tale discusses death by suicide. If you're suffering emotional distress or you're having suicidal thoughts, support is available. For example, from the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline in the US. Jockey Herbert Jones canter as his horse to the start of the Epson Derby. The year is 1913. On Derby Day, Epsom, and feels like the centre of the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have descended on this undulating stretch of countryside, 15 miles from London. Some watch from the open-topped buses that brought them here.

Others line the running rails a dozen deep. The grandstands are packed. His Majesty the King looks on from under a black top hat. The King owns the horse that Herbert Jones is. riding. He's wearing the distinctive royal silks, purple and crimson with a gold braid. Jones knows what it's like to win a derby for the king. He's won two. He also knows that he's not likely to win a third today. His horse, Anma, is an outsider, 50 to one. Still, the odds aren't always accurate. Outsiders win sometimes. You never know.

Horses line up behind the starting tape, each half a ton of twitching muscle, not always easy for their seven stone riders to control. The course is a mile and a half. It'll take about two and a half minutes at roughly 35 miles an hour. Newsreel cameras are in position to capture the key moments, the start, the finish, and the turn for home, the famous Tattonham Corner, runners will thunder down hill as they sweep to the left. The starter pulls his lever.

The tape flies up. They're off. Jones urges Anma on, but it soon becomes clear that this time the odds are accurate. Anmer struggles to keep up. As the leaders tear down the hill towards Tattam Corner, Jones has dropped to third from last. Still, never give up. Jones keeps pushing hard. The horse in front of him jinks to one side,

and suddenly Jones sees why. A woman standing on the racetrack right in front of him. What on earth is she doing? As we'll hear, that is still hotly debated today. But Jones has no time to wander. His horse slams into the woman and clatters to the ground. Jones goes flying headlong towards the turf. Then his world goes dark.

I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. In 2022, hundreds of thousands of Formula One fans have gathered at Silverstone to watch the British Grand Prix. Tens of millions globally are watching on TV. Unseen by the cameras, five spectators climb a safety barrier. They can hear. from the roar of accelerating engines that the race has just started. They can't yet see the cars.

There are a few corners distant, but it shouldn't be long before they come into view, racing at well over 100 miles an hour. The five spectators drop down the other side of the barrier onto a grass verge and run towards the tarmac of the track itself. Is this not very dangerous? Not at all, one. will later telecourt.

I concede that it might have looked dangerous to someone who doesn't know about this stuff. You see, he says, they'd carefully studied previous Formula One races at Silverstone. The part of the track that we went on had a much lower proportion of crashes than the other parts of the track. The drivers will see them in time to avoid them,

or so they expect. The officials will immediately call a red flag, which tells the drivers, There's a danger on track that needs to be cleared. Stop racing, slow down, and drive carefully back to the pits. The live TV footage will show the protesters wearing their orange t-shirts with the slogan, Just Stop Oil. They'll have drawn attention to their cause of fighting climate change.

At least, that's the plan. Still, though, they're putting a lot of faith. in other people's reaction times, are they sure it's not dangerous? The protester shrugs. Those drivers are the best drivers in the world. But even the best drivers crash sometimes. Why would you run onto a racetrack in front of fast-moving cars?

Perhaps because you think it will help a cause you passionately believe in. And, perhaps, because some other people who stage disruptive protests are seen as heroes. Like the woman on Epsom Racecourse in 1913. Here, for example, is the blurb from a book for children about her. Emily was angry because women didn't have the right to vote. She and her fellow suffragettes had patiently put their argument to the government, but they were ignored. Now, it was time for direct action. Emily Wilding Davison was born in 1872.

Her father was a successful businessman, and Emily got a good education, a governess, a preparatory school in London, a year in Switzerland studying French. Then she won a place at a new college for girls, but midway through. her course. Her father died, and it turned out he hadn't been quite as successful a businessman as he had appeared. He left his family next to nothing. That was a shock, as Emily explained to a friend. Mama has to pay 20 pounds a term for me. I do not know whether I can stay on after this term. Mama is very anxious to keep me at college from my exam if it is possible. It was not possible.

Emily had to drop out and find work. Her tutors gave her glowing references. It is a matter of great regret to me that she is unable to finish her course. She is a most hard-working student. She has immense perseverance. Perseverance indeed. Emily got a job as a governess, but studied in the evenings with notes borrowed from.

her former classmates. She saved up enough to take her exam in English language and literature and aced it, first-class honours. Not that the university would actually award her a degree, what with her being a girl, still impressive. But what could a woman do in the 1890s, with evidence that she would have got a first-class degree if she were a man? Career options were limited. She could continue to work as a governess? Emily found it frustratingly isolating, stuck in some big old house in the provinces,

with only a wealthy family's little children to talk to. She missed the buzz of city life as she wrote in poems. Oh, London, how I feel thy magic spell now I have left thee. And amid the woods, sit lonely. There was one particular buzz that Emily craved to be part of the movement for women's suffrage. The idea was in the air. Women in New Zealand got the vote in 1893.

In Australia, 1902. In Finland, 1906. In Britain, suffragists had been making the capital. for decades, through petitions and meetings and speeches. But opposition was fierce. Some of that opposition was predictable. If everyone had the vote, female voters would outnumber males. Men of England, said one poster, resent this attempted tyranny.

But a surprising number of opponents were women themselves. Women of England, said the manifest. of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. We appeal to your common sense. Women are debarred by nature and circumstances from the political knowledge of men. Hundreds of women signed An appeal against female suffrage.

Which warned... The whole nation would suffer if women got the vote. Due to their natural quickness of temper. It was men's work to debate weighty matters of finance or war. Women had other opportunities for public usefulness, such as the care of the sick and the education of children. That was their true dignity and special mission.

It sounds ridiculous now. But the patient arguments of the suffragists didn't seem to be working. The heavyweight politician, David Lloyd George, for example, said he favoured votes for women, but when he got into power, did nothing. Some women decided it was time for direct action. They formed a new organisation, the WSPU,

the women's social and political union. Their slogan, deeds, not words. They disrupted meetings and chained themselves to railings in Downing Street where the Prime Minister lived. Newspapers coined a term for these radical suffragists. The suffragettes. It was meant as an insult, a dismissive diminutive. They adopted it with pride. Emily quit her job as a governess, moved to London and got employed as an office.

at the WSPU, she disrupted a speech by David Lloyd George. I was busy haranguing the crowd when the police came up and arrested me. Emily was put in prison, a dark cell, alone. She sang hymns defiantly and scrawled on the wall her personal credo. Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God. she also refused to eat a tactic the suffragettes had discovered for getting out of jail early they figured the government would let them go

rather than risk a death from starvation Emily described her prison experience in a letter I fasted 124 hours and was then released I lost one and a half stone and much flesh I felt very weak at first but I'm pulling up rapidly now. She signed off. Your loving and rebellious friend, Emily.

No sooner had she got her strength back than Emily was rebelling again, throwing rocks at the windows of David Lloyd George's car. This time in prison, she discovered the government had a new approach to hunger strikes. A doctor came into her cell and said, I'm going to feed you by force.

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percent of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, until this. Pull that. Turn this. It's just... I can do it my eyes close. I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devon. And on our new show, no such thing. We get to the

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Wait, what? Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At Silverstone, spectators notice the five just-stop oil protesters scaling the safety barrier and running towards the. track. Phone footage captures how the crowd react. Wankers, yells one voice, Dickards, adds another, run them over. Perhaps it's not surprising that a motor sport crowd is hostile to a message about stopping oil. But just stop oil protesters made themselves

unpopular with other people too. They blocked roads, tied themselves to goalposts during a soccer match and threw soup over Vincent Van Gogh's sunflowers. In opinion polls, 82% of Brits say climate change is an important issue. Yet fully 68% said their opinion of just stop oil was unfavourable, which makes you wonder. Are disruptive protests helping the cause or hindering? Have some jargon for this question. Are radical flank effects, positive or negative? In 2024, the Journal of Global Environmental Psychology published an article,

The Radical Flank, Curse or Blessing of a Social Movement. Decades of literature, say the authors, provide mixed results. In some cases, disruptive protest seems to have helped a cause. In others, it seems to have backfired. The researchers weren't about to leave it at that, so they began to dig deeper. I'm going to feed you by force. A doctor said to Emily Davison,

Emily described what followed. While they held me flat, the doctor with a steel gag prized open my mouth to its widest extent. Then a wardress poured liquid down my throat. What it was, I cannot say, but it was foul to the last degree. As I would not swallow the stuff and jerked it out with my tongue, the doctor pinched my nose and somehow gripped my tongue with the gag. The torture was barbaric.

It got worse. Rubber tubes rammed down the throat, or even up the nostrils to pour the liquid in. Emily smashed the windows in her cell to protest. They moved her to another cell, which had two beds. The door opened inwards, she observed. As soon as it was closed... Quick as thought, I put the beds down quietly lengthwise,

one touching the other. There was still a gap of a foot to the wall, which she filled with an upturned stool. The wedge was not absolutely firm, so I jammed in my two sleppers and a hairbrush. She sat on the spot where the two beds met to weigh them down. My blockade was complete. The wardens discovered they couldn't open the door.

They could break the door down, heavy iron frame and all, but they'd rather not. As the prison governor later explained, the breaking of a cell door is a serious and expensive. massive matter. So they tried another tactic. A ladder appeared at the window. I looked round and saw the nozzle of a hosepipe.

They got the water trained full on me. I had to hold on like grim death. The power of the water seemed terrific, and it was as cold as ice. Still, Emily didn't budge. They'd have to break the door down after all. It was clear to me that if the door fell, it would kill me on the spot. Strange to say, I had no fear.

The door gave, I watched it fascinated. As it lurched, however, hands seized it. A male warder rushed in and seized me saying, You ought to be horsewipped for this. Emily got out of prison to find that the hosepipe incident had been widely reported, even raised in Parliament. She got sympathy. Whatever you thought of women's suffrage, this wasn't on. She sued the prison and won, though the judge awarded only nominal damages, saying that Emily had already got something she wanted, a good story to write

about in the WSPU's newspaper. Emily set about getting herself sent back to prison, with a new tactic, setting fire to mailboxes. I walked down Fleet Street. I calmly stopped at the big open-mouthed receptacle for London letters. I took out of my pocket a packet of grease-proof paper tied with cotton. Inside was some linen well-soaked in kerosene. To this I calmly applied a match. I let the packet, now well alight, go down the receptacle.

I then walked on and turned into the first cafe I came to to get lunch. Back in prison, another hunger strike, and more force-feeding. As the tube passed down behind the throat, a feeling of suffocation and sickness followed. I naturally commenced a cough, choke and wretch. I was glad to be sick, which offered. happened and the rejected fluid went into the doctor's hands to his disgust and my satisfaction was all this really enough though getting sent to prison for throwing rocks setting fire to mailboxes even planting bombs as some militant suffragettes had started to do and then stoically

enduring the barbarity of tubes shoved down the throat Or would it take a more grand and shocking gesture to get politicians to take women seriously? Did the suffragette cause need a martyr? Emily began to wander. The idea in my mind was, One big tragedy may save many others. It wouldn't be easy for Emily to martyr herself in prison.

There were nets to stop prisoners from jumping to their deaths. I realised that my best means of carrying out my purpose was the iron staircase. I walked upstairs and threw myself from the top. She had tried to miss the netting and land on the staircase. If I had been successful, I should undoubtedly have been killed, as it was a clear drop of 30 to 40 feet. But I caught on the edge of... the netting.

There was still a 10-foot drop from the edge of the netting to the iron staircase. It might be enough. I realised that there was only one chance left to hurl myself for the greatest force I could summon from the netting onto the staircase. I threw myself forward on my head. When I recovered consciousness, voices were buzzing around me. Someone said, fetch the doctor. They lifted me as gently as possible, but the agony was intense.

This was all getting too intense for the leaders of the WSPU. Deeds, not words, they'd said. But disrupting politicians' speeches was one thing. Planting bombs and setting fire to mail was quite another. They refused to publish Emily's account of her martyrdom bid in their newspaper, and they ended her employment as a WSPU officer. Emily was becoming an embarrassment. At the railway station, in Aberdeen, Scotland in late 1912,

a Baptist minister had just waved off his wife on a train when he was approached by a woman. I thought she was an ordinary passenger, he later recalled, giving testimony to a court, but without any explanation, she cried, you traitor, you traitor! There came quite a rain of blows, and she attacked him with the dog wear. The police detained the woman, but she wasn't finished yet, the minister recalled. To my astonishment, she landed me a very clever quick blow on the left jaw with her clenched fist. The woman turned out to be Emily Davison.

Why had Emily attacked a Scottish Baptist minister with a dog whip? The Aberdeen Daily Journal explained. The Reverend Gentleman bears a distinct, if not altogether, a striking facial resemblance to Mr David Lloyd George. Lloyd George was still in government and still disappointing the suffragettes. by failing to act on their cause. He'd been expected in Aberdeen that day. His look-alike had chosen a bad time to see off his wife.

Emily was jailed again. She had just turned 40. The stints in prison were starting to take their toll, along with the unemployment, after she had been sacked by the WSPU. This last four days' hunger strike in Aberdeen and found out my weakness. I have had some rheumatism in my neck and back

where I fell on that iron staircase. At present I have no settled work. I wish I could hear of some. Emily applied for jobs and tried to get her writing published. She wrote about sacrifice, comparing militant protesters to Jesus Christ. The surrender of life itself.

is the supreme consummation of sacrifice. To lay down life for friends, that is glorious, selfless, inspiring. For generations yet unborn, that is the last consummate sacrifice of the militant. On the first Tuesday of June 1913, Emily went to the opening day. day of the WSP's summer fate, a social occasion with flower decorations and stalls serving strawberries and cream. I'm going to the derby tomorrow, she told a friend. The friend was surprised.

Emily wasn't a regular racegoer. Why are you going to the derby? Ah, said Emily, look in the evening papers, and you will see. cautionary tales will be back in a moment. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Podcasting can help your business. Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-8-4-I-Hart. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control and they're saying like okay pull this until this pull that turn this it's just i can do my eyes close i'm manny i'm noah this is devon and on our new show no such thing we get to the bottom of questions like these join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise and then as we try

the whole thing out for real wait what oh that's the run right i'm looking to at this thing, see? Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The crowd at Tattnham Corner are wondering what just happened. Anmer skids along the turf, then gets shakily to his feet. Herbert Jones is out cold. As the other 14 runners race onto the finish,

spectators rush forward to help. Someone grabs hold of Anma's reins. An ambulance arrives, and the crew take Jones off on a stretcher. Then there's the woman Anma hit, also unconscious on the grass. A policeman calls out, Does anyone know this woman?

No one does. But someone says, I have a car. I can take her to hospital. Another says, I'm a nurse. I'll go with you. Herbert Jones, at length, wakes up. Confused about why he's on a stretcher

and what happened in the race. Someone starts to explain. A woman... Oh yes, he says. My horse hit her. I remember falling towards the ground. I must have had a bang. At the hospital, Emily remains unconscious.

She's been identified now from a name tag found in her jacket. Also in her jacket, a suffragette flag neatly folded. The king and queen are informed. A most regrettable and scandalous proceeding. The king writes in his diary, Poor Jones, writes the queen, knocked about by that horrid woman. As Emily anticipated, she's all over the newspapers.

They call her mad, wild, demented. A notorious militant, says the Daily Mail. The hottest of all suffragette hot bloods. Deep in the hearts of every onlooker, reports the Daily Telegraph, was a feeling of fierce resentment with the miserable one. women. Letters addressed to Emily start to arrive at Epsom Hospital. You should thank your God, says one anonymous missive, that he has spared you the sin of murder. Another says simply, you idiot.

In their article, the radical flank, curse or blessing of a social movement, researchers describe an experiment. They told their subjects about a fictional protest on an environmental issue and asked if they supported the protesters. Some subjects got a description of protesters using only moderate tactics, such as organizing petitions. Some got a description of only radical tactics, such as vandalising property.

More people supported moderate than radical protest. Other subjects got a description of two contrasting protest groups, a main moderate group and a smaller radical one, the radical flank. The contrast made people less likely to support the radical protesters, but more likely to support the moderates. So the experiment has found two effects, one that reduced support for the cause overall, another that increased it. No wonder the literature is mixed on whether disruptive protests help or hinder.

It's hard to know when one effect outweighs the other. But the experiments suggest something counterintuitive. When someone makes a disruptive protest, it's because they think it will help a cause they passionately believe in. And it might, but not in the way they might hope. Instead of being seen as heroes, they'll be hated. But they'll also make moderate protest groups look more reasonable, groups that make the same arguments but use less annoying tactics. As the crowd at Silverstone shout abuse at the just-stop-oil protesters,

elsewhere on the track, the race begins. Even the best drivers crash sometimes. And this time, they crash before they even reach the first corner. One car clips another and clatters into a third, which flips upside down, skims off the track and smashes into a tyre wall. A massive accident. Debris is everywhere. They'll have to stop the race to clear the track. The race officials call a red flag. By the time the drivers get to the protesters part of the track,

They've already stopped racing and slowed right down. They don't need to react quickly to avoid the protesters. They just steer around them. The TV coverage isn't showing the cars driving slowly back towards the pits. It's showing repeats of that spectacular first-corner crash. Nobody watching at home has any idea that the protest has happened. This never was dangerous, the protestion. as later insist to a court, the drivers would have stopped in time anyway.

The judge is not impressed. None of you were qualified enough or experienced enough properly to assess the risk to you and others. You were, in my view, kidding yourselves. Another letter arrives at Emily Davison's bedside. I cannot believe that you could have done. done such a dreadful act, it says, I can only hope and pray that God will mercifully restore you to life and health. With all my love from your sorrowful mother. Emily never gets to read the

letter. After four days in a coma, she dies. After Emily had thrown herself onto the prison's iron staircase. The WSPU refused to publish her account in their newspaper. They ostracized her, embarrassed by how extreme she'd become. Now that she'd actually died, well, perhaps she'd been right that a martyr might be useful. The same newspaper's front page depicted Emily as an angel, under the words, in honour. And in loving, reverent memory of Emily Wilding Davison. She died for women. They arranged for Emily's coffin to parade through London

and appealed for mourners to wear white and carry lilies or black with a bunch of purple irises. thousands of women followed the coffin singing hymns onward christian soldiers fight the good fight with all your might this marvellous woman said the funeral programme offered up her life as a petition to the king a fellow suffragette explained

miss davison went out with the express purpose of stopping the king's horse to challenge the very head of this country. That's the story about Emily that's come down to this day, as in the blurb of the book for children. She and her fellow suffragettes had patiently put their argument to the government,

but they were ignored. At the Derby race course, as the king's horse came pounding towards her, Emily was prepared to make the biggest sacrifice of all. But is the story right? We get some things right about Emily Davison. She had incredible courage,

repeatedly getting herself imprisoned, knowing she'd face the horror of being force-fed. And she was right, of course, about the cause of votes for women. But are we right to assume that her courage helped her cause, The mixed literature on radical flank effects suggests that it's hard to be certain. Here's something else we might get wrong about Emily. Did she really intend to sacrifice herself? I mentioned that in Emily's jacket, police found a neatly folded suffragette flag.

They also found a return train ticket to London and an entrance pass for that evening at the summer fate. Emily had promised to visit her sister, to help with her newborn niece. None of this suggests she expected to die at Epsom. What was Emily trying to achieve? As her biographer Lucy Fisher writes, that question still sparks markedly divisive debate today. She hadn't explained her plans to anyone.

The newsreel footage shows that she ducks under the running rail and onto the course when half the runners have already passed. Two horses narrowly avoid her. Then Anmer knocks her down. Eyewitnesses thought that from her viewpoint on the inside of the bend, she couldn't have seen well enough

to target one specific horse. Others who've studied the newsreel footage disagree. Just before Anma hits her, She reaches up her hand. Was she trying to grab his reins? If so, her risk assessment was as questionable as that of just stop oil. She should have known how hard it would be to stop half a ton of horse at 35 miles an hour. Perhaps she, just like the Silverstone protesters, was kidding herself.

The horse racing author Michael Tanner posits another theory. Maybe Emily intended to run onto the course before the runners got there and unfurl her flag for the newsreel cameras. Maybe, not being a regular racegoer, she underestimated how quickly the horses would arrive and flash past. She ducked under the rails. The leaders had gone by already. What next?

She had only a moment to decide. It took 15 years after Emily's death for all British women to get the vote. In the children's book version of Emily's sacrifice, that needed direct action after patient arguments were ignored. In truth, we can't know if the militant suffragettes sped up the advent of women's suffrage or delayed it. although we do know that women in other countries got the vote at roughly the same time through those patient arguments alone. Moderate groups in Britain too persisted with their patient arguments. The London Society for Women's Suffrage, for example,

explained why they weren't attending Emily's funeral. We deplore her actions. They harm our cause by alienating. many people who would consider it right to give the vote to women, but wrong to endanger the lives of others. In favour of votes for women, against bringing down racehorses, a balanced, reasonable, moderate position.

Sometimes radicals help by making moderates look good. This episode relied on Lucy Fisher's biography, Emily Wilding Davison, The Marta Suffragette, and The Suffragette Darby by Michael Tanner. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at Tim Harford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills, and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music

are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Ben Nadaf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Guthridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembra, Sarah Jop, Nasea Munro, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright.

The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Retta Cohn, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardor Studios in London by Noria Bar and Lucy Rowe. Do you want to support the stories we tell on Cautionary Tales? If so, you can join my new Cautionary Club at patreon.com slash cautionary club for exclusive bonus episodes, newsletters,

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