page_title: Mud March (suffragists)
section_title: 9 February
hierarchical_section_title: Mud March (suffragists) / March / 9 February
caption_attribution_description: English: Mud March, 9 February 1907. Caption in The Illustrated London News, "Distinguished leaders of the suffragettes: Lady Frances Balfour, Lady Stachey and Mrs Henry Fawcett leading the procession"
context_page_description: The United Procession of Women, or Mud March as it became known, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, in which more than three thousand women marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in support of women's suffrage. Women from all classes participated in what was the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen up to that date. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather, when incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-spattered.
  The proponents of women's suffrage were divided between those who favoured constitutional methods and those who supported direct action. In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst formed the Women's Social and Political Union. Known as the suffragettes, the WSPU held demonstrations, heckled politicians, and from 1905 saw several of its members imprisoned, gaining press attention and increased support from women. To maintain that momentum and create support for a new suffrage bill in the House of Commons, the NUWSS and other groups organised the Mud March to coincide with the opening of Parliament.
context_section_description: On the morning of 9 February, large numbers of women converged on the march's starting point, the statue of Achilles near Hyde Park Corner. Between three and four thousand women were assembled, from all ages and strata of society, in appalling weather with incessant rain; "mud, mud, mud" was the dominant feature of the day, wrote Fawcett. The marchers included Lady Frances Balfour, sister-in-law of Arthur Balfour, the former Conservative prime minister; Rosalind Howard, the Countess of Carlisle, of the Women's Liberal Federation; the poet and trade unionist Eva Gore-Booth; and the veteran campaigner Emily Davies. The march's aristocratic representation was matched by numbers of professional women – doctors, schoolmistresses, artists – and large contingents of working women from northern and other provincial cities, marching under banners that proclaimed their varied trades: bank-and-bobbin winders, cigar makers, clay-pipe finishers, power-loom weavers, shirt makers.
  Although the WSPU was not officially represented, many of its members attended, including Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Annie Kenney, Anne Cobden-Sanderson, Nellie Martel, Edith How-Martyn, Flora Drummond, Charlotte Despard and Gertrude Ansell. According to the historian Diane Atkinson, "belonging to both organisations, going to each others' events and wearing both badges was quite usual".
  By around 2:30 pm the march had formed a line that stretched far down Rotten Row. It set off in the drenching rain, with a brass band leading and Lady Frances Balfour, Millicent Fawcett and Lady Jane Strachey at the head of the column. The procession was followed by a phalanx of carriages and motor cars, many of which carried flags bearing the letters "WS", red and white banners and bouquets of red and white flowers.  Around 7,000 red and white rosettes had been provided for the marchers by the manufacturing company of Maud Arncliffe-Sennett, an actor and leader among the London Society for Women's Suffrage and the Actresses Franchise League. 
  Despite the weather, thousands thronged the pavements to enjoy the novel spectacle of "respectable women marching in the streets", according to the historian Harold Smith.
  The Observer's reporter recorded that "there was hardly any of the derisive laughter which had greeted former female demonstrations", although The Morning Post reported "scoffs and jeers of enfranchised males who had posted themselves along the line of the route, and appeared to regard the occasion as suitable for the display of crude and vulgar jests". Katharine Frye, who joined the march at Piccadilly Circus, recorded "not much joking at our expense and no roughness". The Daily Mail—which supported women's suffrage—carried an eyewitness account, "How It Felt", by Constance Smedley of the Lyceum Club. Smedley described a divided reaction from the crowd "that shared by the poorer class of men, namely, bitter resentment at the possibility of women getting any civic privilege they had not got; the other that of amusement at the fact of women wanting any serious thing ... badly enough to face the ordeal of a public demonstration".
  Approaching Trafalgar Square the march divided: representatives from the northern industrial towns broke off for an open-air meeting at Nelson's Column, which had been arranged by the Northern Franchise Demonstration Committee. The main march continued to Exeter Hall, for a meeting chaired by the Liberal politician Walter McLaren, whose wife, Eva McLaren, was one of the scheduled speakers. Keir Hardie, leader of the Labour Party, told the meeting, to hissing from several Liberal women on the platform, that if women won the vote, it would be thanks to the "suffragettes' fighting brigade". He spoke strongly in favour of the meeting's resolution, which was carried, that women be given the vote on the same basis as men, and demanded a bill in the current parliamentary session. At the Trafalgar Square meeting, Eva Gore-Booth referred to the "alienation of the Labour Party through the action of a certain section in the suffrage m
caption: At the head of the march (left to right), Lady Frances Balfour in the light coat, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and Lady Jane Strachey
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