Parliament has commissioned an artist, Mary Branson as its official “Suffragette Artist-in-Residence” to develop a permanent work of art to commemorate the women’s suffrage campaign.
This work will commemorate the protests which led to the 1918 and 1928 Acts of Parliament that gave women the vote.
What’s worth considering though is that while Parliament now has an artist-in-residence, it once had a Suffragette-in-Residence.
Albeit one that Parliament never intended to have.
On the night of 2nd April 1911, Emily Wilding entered Parliament as the public are permitted to, and then managed to hide inside a cupboard inside the chapel that leads off from Westminster Great Hall, and spent the night there.
As that was also the night of the 1911 census, she was able to legally record her address that night as the Crypt of Westminster Hall.
A metal plaque now marks the cupboard where she hid that night.
So Parliament now has an Artist-in-Residence, but once had a Suffragette-in-Residence.
A little over two years after that protest, Emily Wilding died when she stepped out in front of the race horses at the Epsom Derby.
