![]() Museum authorities had been expecting an attack like this. Damage to the painting was estimated at £50. The gallery was immediately closed, remaining so for a number of weeks. I attack this work of art deliberately as a protest against the Government’s criminal injustice in denying women the vote, and also against the Government’s brutal injustice in imprisoning, forcibly feeding, and drugging Suffragist militants, while allowing Ulster militants to go free. It is unclear why she chose this particular painting, but Ryland had a note in her pocket explaining her actions: The museum minutes simply record that ‘the damage was committed by means of a chopper concealed beneath her jacket’. The painting, also known as Master Thornhill, was the work of well-known eighteenth-century artist George Romney. Ryland approached the painting John Bensley Thornhill and took a meat cleaver to it, slashing the canvas three times. It was precisely one year and a day since Emily Wilding Davison died as a result of the injuries she sustained while attempting to tie a WSPU scarf on to the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby. On 9 June at 1.20 in the afternoon, Bertha Ryland, a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) since 1908, walked into Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Reproduced with the permission of the Library of Birmingham). Minute 268 from 10 June 1914 relating to the slashing of ‘Master Thornhill’ by suffragette Bertha Ryland (Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery Committee, 1912-1917, BCC/1/BQ/1/1/1. St Philip’s Cathedral in the city centre was attacked the following month, on 14 March, when painted slogans condemning forcible feeding were daubed throughout the interior. Militancy is not dead, but if you are not you soon will be’. The note left there read, ‘Please post this to Mr McKenna, Home Office, London. On that same night suffragettes planted a bomb at Moor Green Hall in King’s Heath, the (uninhabited) residence of the late Arthur Chamberlain, although it failed to detonate. The culprits left a copy of Christabel Pankhurst’s pamphlet ‘ The Great Scourge and How to End It’ along with a note that read, ‘To start your new library, Give Women the Vote’. Carnegie Library (now Northfield Library) was burned down on 12 February, destroying 1500 books. ![]() There were 27 separate incidents in the city and surrounding areas leading up to July of that year. In 1914, Birmingham saw an escalation in militant suffragette protests, alongside many other cities and towns across the UK.
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