The Suffragette Arson Attack
of 1913
On the night of 16 December 1913, St Anne’s became the target of one of the most dramatic episodes in its history.
By 1913, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) had entered an increasingly militant phase of the campaign for women’s suffrage. The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and others, had moved beyond marches, petitions and civil disobedience towards a campaign of deliberate damage to property. Empty houses, railway stations, sporting venues and churches were among the targets.
St Anne’s was attacked while the building was empty.
Inside a WSPU office, May 1913
Women working inside a WSPU office, May 1913. Copies of The Suffragette hang on the wall behind them; the same newspaper reportedly found at St Anne’s after the arson attack later that year.
Credit: The Women’s Library, LSE Library. No known copyright restrictions.
The fire caused serious damage to the interior.
Contemporary and later accounts record the destruction of the pulpit and choir stalls, while the church’s newly installed Henry Willis organ was badly damaged. The organ had been completed only earlier that year, making the attack particularly costly.
Evidence left behind made the political purpose of the fire clear. Copies of the WSPU newspaper The Suffragette were reportedly found inside the church, together with written material setting out demands associated with the campaign for votes for women.
No individual was ever formally identified as responsible for the attack.
Why were churches targetted?
Churches became targets during the militant suffrage campaign partly because of their symbolic importance. The Church of England was closely associated with the political and social establishment, and some suffragettes believed that church leaders had failed to support their demand for political equality.
The strategy was intended to damage property rather than cause loss of life. Attacks were therefore generally carried out when buildings were expected to be empty. Nevertheless, the destruction could be substantial.
St Anne’s was not an isolated case. Churches and other prominent buildings across Britain were attacked during 1913 and 1914 as part of the WSPU’s increasingly confrontational campaign.
Liverpool and the campaign for the vote
The attack also took place against the background of a particularly active suffrage movement in Liverpool.
Women in the city had been campaigning for the parliamentary vote for many years. Organisations such as the Liverpool Women’s Suffrage Society pursued constitutional methods including public meetings, election campaigning and large processions through the city.
The militant WSPU represented a different strand of that movement. By 1913 its tactics included window-breaking, bomb attacks and arson.
The distinction is important: not every woman campaigning for the vote was a suffragette, and not every suffrage organisation supported militant action. Liverpool contained both constitutional campaigners and supporters of the more confrontational WSPU.
Women’s suffrage procession, Liverpool, 1910
Women’s suffrage campaigners outside Liverpool Central Library in 1910. The procession includes banners re-presenting Liverpool and Birkenhead and Wirral.
This illustrates the strength of the suffrage movement on Merseyside in the years before the attack on St Anne’s.
Credit: Courtesy of Lancashire Archives, DDX 1137/5/24. Archive of the Liverpool Federation of University Women, University of Liverpool Library, ref. D799.
A fire that changed St Anne’s
The consequences of the attack extended beyond the night of the fire.
Insurance payments and donations helped fund repairs during 1914, and the damaged organ was subsequently restored. Changes to the chancel and the later provision of an organ chamber formed part of the continuing development of the church in the years that followed.
The attack therefore belongs not only to the history of the women’s suffrage movement, but also to the physical history of St Anne’s itself.
More than a century later, the fire remains one of the most remarkable episodes in St Anne’s history - a moment when this parish church in Aigburth became directly caught up in the national struggle for women’s political equality.