My mother’s aunt, Kathleen Brown, was a suffragette. She was imprisoned for throwing stones in Whitehall, and then received a hero’s welcome when she returned to her home city of Newcastle. She and her friends commandeered a horse-drawn fire engine in Tottenham Court Road and drove it to Parliament Square. She pursued Winston Churchill in a dinghy down the River Thames, and on another occasion climbed on to his carriage.
These actions could have had harmful effects on the general public. Perhaps a house burned down or a cat remained stuck in a tree while that fire engine was otherwise engaged. More famous suffragette protests included the slashing of Velásquez’s Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, Mary Malony’s use of a hand bell to drown out Churchill’s speeches and Emily Davison’s fatal throwing of herself under the king’s horse at the Derby.
