The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

by Martin Williams

‘Black Friday’, 18 November 1910, became infamous in the annals of the WSPU. With hindsight, it was viewed as a watershed in the ongoing fight for the vote. On the one hand, the violence so indiscriminately meted out to peaceful campaigners frightened away those members reluctant to submit themselves to such treatment in future. On the other, conviction hardened that the time for conciliation had passed. The suffragettes would continue to stage rallies and choreographed marches, but from now on they were shadowed by a guerrilla programme of direct action that lurched ever further into the realm of extremism. If Black Ascot – dignified, decorous, well-ordered – had been the elegant epilogue to an era that had drawn to its close with the death of Edward VII, Black Friday presaged the discord and division of the one that was opening. The values, assumptions and hierarchies of the Edwardian age would not vanish overnight, but they found themselves increasingly at odds with the forces that were to define the century now hitting its stride.