Dr Ethel Smyth

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m01ff4r
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lselibrary/22302363043/in/album-72157660822880401/
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999)

Family information: Father was a major-general in the Royal Artillery.

Additional Information: Ethel was a well-established musical composer when she joined the WSPU in 1910. She had not thought much about women's suffrage until she heard Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, WSPU leader, speak. She then offered her musical services to the WSPU for the next two years. Ethel composed the tune 'The March of the Women' in 1911, which proved popular with the WSPU and the law-abiding NUWSS alike and was played by bands and sung by women on suffrage marches and processions. It was described as 'at once a hymn and a call to battle'. Ethel became good friends with WSPU leader Emmeline Pankhurst and enjoyed travelling with her to Paris 'in disguise' to avoid police when visiting her daughter Christabel Pankhurst there. In 1912, Ethel took part in a window-smashing campaign, saying that she had thrown a stone at Sir Lewis Harcourt's window because she was angry about an insulting remark he made, that he didn't 'object to women having the vote if they were all as intelligent and well balanced as my wife'. She was sentenced to two months in prison. She was later suspected of attempting to burn down his house but no charges were brought. After two years' service to the cause as promised, Ethel returned to her music career and remained good friends with Emmeline Pankhurst until 1914. At that point, the two women's differing views over Emmeline's daughter Christabel Pankhurst's 'excessively patriotic' reaction to the declaration of the First World War drove a wedge between them.

Other Suffrage Activities: Ethel trained as a radiographer (someone who takes x-rays) during the First World War and was attached to a division of the French army.