File:Black Friday, attacked suffragette on the ground.jpg
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Summary
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A suffragette, believed to be Ada Wright, lies on the ground with gloved hands over her face near the entrance to the House of Commons, London, during the Black Friday protests of 18 November 1910. The photograph was taken by Victor Consolé, a news agency photographer, and published the following day, including by The Daily Mirror and The Guardian. The Daily Mirror identified the woman as Ada Wright, according to Michael Hiley, Seeing through photographs, Gordon Fraser, 1983, p. 28. The suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford (2003) wrote: "The front page of the Daily Mirror of 19 November shows Ada Wright lying on the ground, a tiny cowering figure. The chief commissioner of police expressed the opinion that he thought from the smiling expression of a boy seen in the background, and from the fact that there was not a dense crowd around the police, that the woman had simply sunk to the ground exhausted with struggling with the police. The picture in the 25 November issue of Votes for Women shows that the police are holding back a large crowd, a man who had come to Ada Wright's aid has been seized by the police, and another policeman is bending over her, apparently about to grasp her by her upheld arm. Ada Wright's predicament produced the iconic image of 'Black Friday'. She reported that the government suppressed copies of the Daily Mirror and ordered negatives of the photographs to be destroyed. The WSPU made full use of its moral advantage and used a photograph of the incident in Leaflet 75—'Plain Facts about Suffrage Deputations'."[1] Other sources identifying the woman as Ada Wright include the suffragette Georgiana Solomon in a letter to Home Secretary Winston Churchill on 17 December 1910;[2] Sylvia Pankhurst in her book The Suffragette Movement (1931);[3] Ada Wright herself in an interview published in 1973;[4] suffrage researcher Caroline Morrell;[5] and the historians Diane Atkinson,[6] and Katherine Connelly. [1]. The National Archives catalogue description page identifies the woman as "possibly" Ernestine Mills: 'Photograph [of] lady lying on ground, policeman looking at her, other figures near'. [Suffragette movement. Black Friday demonstration, 18 November 1910. Possibly Mrs Ernestine Mills prone and Dr Herbert Mills in top hat]. [2]
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| Date | |
| Source | Front page of The Daily Mirror, 19 November 1910: "Violent scenes at Westminster, where many suffragettes were arrested while trying to force their way into the House of Commons." Page 7 of The Guardian. |
| Author |
Victor Consolé (probably 1886–1941), variously written as Victor Consul and Victor Console, of London News Agency Photos Ltd. See Michael Hiley, Seeing through photographs, Gordon Fraser, 1983, p. 27, and The London Gazette. There is a photograph of a Victor Console, photographer, dated November 1936, in Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, p. 136. The copyright holder was registered as London News Agency Photos Ltd, 46 Fleet Street, London, E.C. [3] According to Nicholas Hiley ("The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids", History Today, 43, 1 August 1993): "The subversive power of press photography was even more strikingly demonstrated in 1910, when more than 300 suffragettes marched on Westminster. The police showed such brutality in turning them back that the day became known as 'Black Friday'. In the road outside Canon Row police station, recalled on eye-witness, the police picked out a suffragette named Ada Wright.
"At this point a bystander stepped forward to remonstrate with the two policemen, and as Ada Wright lay on the ground with this man shielding her from further violence, a number of press photographers, including Victor Consolé of London News Agency Photos, recorded the whole scene. Consolé's photograph was quickly printed and submitted to the Daily Mirror, where the art editor immediately recognised its visual potential. "Consolé's photograph was chosen for the front cover of the next day's Daily Mirror, and the art editor also submitted a print to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for his comments on the incident. The Commissioner attempted to convince the paper's representative that, since one of the onlookers was smiling, it seemed unlikely that Ada Wright "had simply sunk to the ground exhausted with struggling against the police", but privately he was more worried by so controversial an image, and later that evening an attempt was made to prevent its publication. "Nor only did the Daily Mirror receive an official instruction to suppress the whole edition, but when it was discovered that production was underway, thanks to the paper's early deadline, a desperate attempt was made to buy up all the copies that had so far beem produced. This astonishing manoeuvre failed completely, and the inclusion of Consolé's photograph in all 750,000 copies of the Daily Mirror that were circulated the next day helped to turn criticism away from the suffragettes and toward the Home Secretary Winston Churchill." Hiley's caption for the image is: "Putting the boot in: Victor Consolé's Daily Mirror photograph of a suffragette's encounter with the police on 'Black Friday', which caused a furore." |
| Other versions | File:Black Friday, London, 18 November 1910, suffragette attacked.jpg, File:The Daily Mirror, 19 November 1910, front page (cleaned).png |
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This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929. |
| This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights. | |
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| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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| current | 18:49, 23 January 2015 | | 986 × 1,236 (188 KB) | Rich Farmbrough | User created page with UploadWizard |
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