Fine Art and Meat Cleavers

27:17It's really bad. Women are punched and kicked, have their hair pulled. They're groped. They're taking into side streets. There's at least 39 or so examples of sexual violence, and there are horrifying descriptions of this. A report was later conducted into the behavior of the police that day, both in uniform and undercover. One woman later described seeing an officer in plain clothes who kicked a woman, while others laughed and jeered at her. For six hours, this continued. One woman was dragged out of her wheelchair and beaten. A crowd had gathered, mostly men who didn't like the suffragettes.

28:01Reports described how the police forced suffragettes into the middle of the crowd. Around 150 women were physically and sexually assaulted. One woman told a reporter that she had been to seven suffragette demonstrations, but she had never, quote, known the police so violent. A doctor said he would like to know who had told the police to treat the women with, quote, such brutality. The next day, one newspaper reported that the suffragettes had scratched men's cheeks and knocked off helmets, while the police, quote, kept their tempers very well. But when another newspaper published a photograph of a 50-year-old woman who was lying face down in the street after a police officer had punched her, people were shocked.

28:52People said Winston Churchill was responsible for the violence. Churchill wrote that the whole thing was no doubt, quote, a misunderstanding. Black Friday was the trigger. And there was writing, sporadic writing over the next five to six days in and around Westminster. You might imagine that lots of the women who had been badly pummeled or traumatized or shocked or groped, all these things, that that would be it for them. and they wouldn't go back and do any more of that. But they were determined to have their voices heard, and where physically possible, they went back and carried on protesting police behaviour.

29:32Many women were arrested in the weeks following Black Friday, including one who threw a potato at Winston Churchill's front door. One woman hit a policeman in the face and reportedly said, that is for Friday. Mrs Panker said we've got to think of another way of protesting we need to go underground and we need to wage a guerrilla war on this government and they were her exact words so Black Friday is a really important moment because the campaign changes and it goes underground and then it spreads like wildfire it really is like a wildfire spreading around the country Diane Atkinson says that after Black Friday, the suffragette movement changed.

30:20All sorts of new militant tactics are going to be invented and deployed, like putting small phosphorus bombs into mailboxes all around the country, destroying the mail, and generally causing a great deal of disruption. For example, the telephone wires between London and Glasgow were cut, burning with acid onto golfing greens, no golf, attacking buildings, burning down empty houses. Nobody was ever killed. They always wrecked the building before they attacked it. Sports facilities, sports stadia were affected by suffragette militancy. So they're popping up everywhere. Writer Helen Scott notes that the authorities had a hard time keeping up with the suffragettes, who were unpredictable.

31:03because they were often acting independently of one another, and kept coming up with new tactics. She writes that the atmosphere has been called one of, quote, pressurized one-upmanship. And then, in January 1913, London's police chief commissioner gathered directors of museums and galleries to warn them that they might be next. The police had reason to believe that the suffragettes might start attacking works of art. The museum and gallery directors discussed banning women from coming in at all, or making them sign a declaration at the entrance, promising that they wouldn't do anything, or even just closing altogether for a little while.

31:49However, it was decided that these kinds of measures were impractical, so it wasn't practical to close for the duration of however long this might take, because it was appreciated that the campaign for suffrage was not one that was going to be over quickly, so that would be them deciding to close for a very long period, an unknown period of time. Archivist, Bryony Millen. For a lot of my career, I worked at the National Portrait Gallery in London, so I was there for 15 years, all told. Tell me a little bit about the National Portrait Gallery. Sure, so it's a national collection of portraits that's basically supposed to tell the story of British history through figures who have made significant contributions to its history, to its culture and to its society.

32:38And it does that by acquiring and displaying portraits of significant figures, men and women who have made the history of Britain as it's come to be today. Bryony Millen found some documents in the museum's archives from 1913 and 1914 in which museum administrators discussed how they could keep their collections safe from suffragettes. Because of the kind of fear of attack, you begin to see that obviously museums and galleries are having to change the way that they display their works of art in response to this threat. Works of art which they thought would be particularly provocative or potentially had a greater risk of being targets, they were taken off display.

33:18So, for example, there were two large group portraits of the Houses of Parliament which were taken down so that they wouldn't potentially be targeted. Other works of art were moved, so they were kind of placed higher up on the walls so that they were more out of reach of an attack. Because the woman's arm couldn't reach high enough. Exactly. So there's even some remarks in the press saying, you know, that works of art had been rehung at such a high level that only a very tall person would have been able to reach the sort of the main part of the work. Bryony Millen says that galleries and museums at the time looked quite different from what we're used to today.

33:57Today, we kind of expect there to be space for the works of art to breathe. But at this time, the approach to display was far busier. It's visually much more crowded. So you would quite often see works of art, not quite floor to ceiling, but a much larger number of works of art on display on any wall at a particular time. In 1913, the National Portrait Gallery also decided to close off some parts of the museum. And they hired undercover police officers to patrol the galleries, pretending to be museum visitors. But that got expensive. So eventually, the police officers were let go, and two staff members were assigned to pretend to be visitors.

34:42Brian E. Millen found letters between museum directors worrying about women and trying to figure out what to do. There's a kind of dichotomy in how the leadership are representing the level of threat. So when the National Portrait Gallery's director is talking to his superiors, as it were, So when he's interacting via letter with the board of trustees who he answers to, he downplays the level of threat. So he's trying to say sort of, you know, we've taken every sensible precaution. We're in a better position than some of our peers are at. And actually, I think that, you know, we are well placed in terms of responding to this.

35:25But if you look at how he communicates with his assistant keeper, so obviously somebody who is reporting to him, he's perhaps far more candid. So the level of threat that he expresses when discussing kind of with a colleague is greater. The museum director wrote that some other museums were more at risk because of, quote, the entire incompetence of the staff. But he also told his employees that he wanted wired glass installed in the window in his office in case suffragettes would think it was, quote, a favorable spot for the insertion of combustibles.

36:08We'll be right back.

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37:31By March 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst was wanted by the police. She was 55 years old and described as looking frail. When she arrived at a meeting in Scotland, she was smuggled inside in a laundry basket. Then police burst into the room and dragged her out. She was badly hurt and was described as half-fainting when she was thrown into a car. In prison, she went on hunger strike. Suffragettes were worried about her. One morning in March of 1914, a woman named Mary Richardson made her way to London's National Gallery. She came from quite a well-off background. She was largely brought up by her grandparents because her parents died quite young.

38:20She wanted to be an artist, she wanted to be a writer. She really wanted to make an independent life for herself. And she was really somebody who wanted to be the middle of things. Mary Richardson was there to see one painting in particular. It's called The Roke Be Venus. It was painted in the mid-1600s by the Spanish painter Diego Velazquez. It's one of his most famous paintings. The painting shows the goddess Venus lying on a bed naked. She's painted from the back. In front of her, Cupid is holding up a mirror. It's almost as if Venus is looking directly at the viewer through the mirror. Art historians have called the Rokeby Venus one of the most famous nudes in Western art.

39:13In 1905, it was purchased from a wealthy family for 45 ,000 pounds, almost 9 million U.S. dollars today. A newspaper at the time described Venus in the painting as the goddess of youth and health, the embodiment of elastic strength and vitality, the perfection of womanhood. Mary Richardson was 31 and devoted to the suffragette movement. She heard the news about Emmeline Panker's arrest. So what she did, she got up in the morning, she went and bought a meat cleaver, which she hid in the sleeve of her jacket. She walked into the museum and headed straight for the Rokeby Venus. This was, you know, this was March.

39:59London was full of tourists from all around the world. So she'd have walked through the front door. Nobody could imagine that this woman who walked in was going to pose any threat. She knew exactly which room the painting was in. She'd wrecked the building beforehand. She pretended to be an art student and started drawing. The museum had staff and undercover police officers walking around the gallery floor. When the moment seemed right, she got closer to the Rokeby Venus. And she walked up to it and took the meat cleaver out of the Sea of O 'Jap and just hacked at it. The protective glass shattered.

40:37There was a lot of noise. Two German tourists tried to stop Mary Richardson by throwing their guidebook at her. Then she slashed the canvas itself. She slashed the painting at least six or seven times. A museum attendant said that he heard the glass break and tried to run over. He said he went as fast as he could on the, quote, slippery floor. According to the Daily Telegraph, quote,

41:20Mary Richardson was arrested and, quote, went quietly. Before she was escorted out of the room, she turned around and said,

41:41Mary Richardson had also written a statement that she shared with the press. She wrote, quote, I've tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government. If there's an outcry against my deed, remember that such an outcry is a hypocrisy, as long as they allow the destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst and other women. In court, Mary Richardson said she cared more about justice than art. She was sentenced to six months in prison. It's interesting that she chose this picture first. You know, if you look at it, it's a woman staring at a picture of herself in the mirror.

42:24But she seems so calm and complacent and just, you know, perfectly happy to just be looking at herself and not, you know, stirred up in any way. And it's interesting that this would be the choice for her to talk about what women were really feeling. Yeah, you're right. It's a very kind of ambiguous work of art. You know, what is Venus thinking? It's really hard to tell. And Mary Richardson at the time was very clear that she'd targeted this work of art because she felt that really the public should be thinking about the damage that was being done to women in the present day. It's interesting because in later years, you know, she wrote her own autobiography.

43:07And the way that she portrayed the motivation many decades later was slightly different. When she was in her 70s, I think she said that she'd targeted this work of art because she didn't like the way that men gawped at it. So there was an implication that she didn't like naked female forms being subjected to the male gaze. But when she was making statements at the time, the focus was very much on trying to bring attention to the treatment of imprisoned suffragettes. Art historian Linda Need writes that the attack was seen as a battle between two types of femininity. quote, the patriarchal ideal, the Venus, and the deviant, the militant suffragist.

43:46Press reaction was incredibly frenzied. The reaction to the attack was very negative, as one might expect. But also it's interesting because the focus is very much on talking about this work of art as if it were a human body, as if Mary Richardson had physically attacked a person rather than a work of art. So the staff at the National Gallery talk about the attack being on the most important part of the portrait, the naked flesh. Linda Need writes that even though the suffragettes never hurt anyone, the press framed the story as a, quote, sensational murder case. The painting was the perfect, quote, victim.

44:27The press nicknamed Mary Richardson Slasher Mary and The Ripper. The Daily Telegraph described it as probably the most wicked act of vandalism ever committed in this or any country. The other interesting aspect is that there was initially a real focus on the financial damage, so how much the work might be depreciated by the fact that she had actually slashed it in addition to the kind of embarrassment and shock factor of this happening in such a public place. Mary Richardson has been described as, quote, A viewer who would no longer play the game. After her attack on the Rokeby Venus, several other art attacks followed.

45:12It's happening in London. It happened in Manchester. Wherever there are interesting, important buildings and local suffrage activists prepare to do it, then no gallery and museum and historic house that's open to the public is safe. A work called Primavera was attacked, and that was another example of a work of art representing a female nude being attacked. And on the same day, so on the 23rd of May 1914, a portrait study of the then King George V was attacked while it was on display at the Scottish Royal Academy in Edinburgh. So all around the country are getting reports. In Manchester, several paintings were attacked.

45:49There was an attack at the National Gallery again, so that was targeted for a second time. And on that occasion, five old masterworks were attacked. The five paintings were all hanging in the museum's Venetian room. The mummy case at the British Museum was attacked. One suffragette smashed the glass case protecting the mummy. She was arrested. A portrait of Henry James at the Royal Academy on the 12th of May 1914. A portrait of the Duke of Wellington was attacked. And that's an instance where she could only, because of the height at which the work was hung, she could only get the lower portion of the work to do damage to it.

46:32Bryony Millen says museums and art galleries change their tactics. At the British Museum, women could only enter if they had been vouched for by a man. The National Portrait Gallery closed entirely for two weeks. A less expected precaution was that some of the floors of the gallery, the wooden floors, were treated with a turpentine mixture. And I think that this actually is a direct result of the attack on the Roque v. Venus at the National Gallery, because it was said at the time in contemporary press reports that some of the attendant staff had slipped on the highly polished floors when they were trying to chase Mary Richardson down to restrain her.

47:09So I think that in the wake of that attack, the National Portrait Gallery decided that it had to change the floor surface a little bit so it treated it with a turpentine solution so that it was less slippery in the event that staff had to give chase. Briony Millen says the gallery started using a stronger type of glass. marketed as hammerproof. The staff started working longer hours, patrolling the museum. Everybody knows that British people are very focused on their tea. So there were changes to the way that staff worked, and one of the changes that they made is that they had to intensify the way that staff patrolled, and so it meant that afternoon tea was abolished, which I mean, there wasn't anything in the archive in the National Poetry Gallery to show how staff reacted, But I could only imagine that it was quite a controversial decision.

48:01Museums and galleries continued receiving updates from the police, and the police would circulate photos of suffragettes. Bryony Millen says most of the photos were taken in prison exercise yards without the women's consent. There's an incredibly interesting example. If you look in particular at the surveillance photograph which was circulated to museums and galleries of Evelyn Minesta, who was one of the suffragettes who attacked Manchester Art Gallery. If you look at the photograph of Evelyn Manesta, that's been subjected to what I will term, you know, proto-photoshop, as it were. So it's been manipulated.

48:40The undoctored photograph of her, you can see that her head is being held up. So somebody's got their arm around her throat and is making her hold her head up so that she can be photographed. and she's still trying I think to resist the photographic process because she's closing her eyes and kind of screwing her face up but when that photograph was actually cropped and circulated to museums and galleries the arm has been removed and instead there's a scarf which has basically been doctored and placed in the photograph instead of the arm so that's why I sort of say it's a sort of early photoshop because they've tried to manipulate the image to make it less confronting and make it look like she's just wearing an accessory when in reality she had someone's arm around her neck so that that photograph could be taken.

49:28Between March and July of 1914, 14 different artworks were attacked in British museums and art galleries. The National Portrait Gallery had not been attacked. Until July 17th, 1914, when a woman who used the alias Anne Hunt walked into the museum, A staff member noticed her and thought he had also seen her at the museum the day before. His suspicions were initially aroused by her because he remembered seeing her the day before and rather unflatteringly, he thought that she was an American because, in his words, because of the closeness with which she examined the pictures. But then he thought that she couldn't possibly be an American because, to his mind, no American would pay the sixpence entry fee for a second day to come on site at the National Portrait Gallery to view the collection.

50:22So he followed her as far as he could as she progressed through the gallery. But then he had to take up his post, and she continued on. Anne Hunt had served several prison sentences for her activities as a suffragette. One time, she was arrested near the Wimbledon Tennis Club with some wood and matches. But no one at the National Portrait Gallery knew that. So she went into the East Wing, into Room 25, where portraits of men of literature of the 19th century were on display. And in that room, there were two female art students who were engaged in copying works of art that were on display in that room.

51:04Anne Hunt had chosen a portrait of Thomas Carlyle, a British writer and one of the museum's founders. She waited until a member of staff had left the room An art student was standing close to her making sketches She saw Anne Hunt's hand coming over her shoulder with a meat cleaver in it And thinking that she was being attacked physically herself She kind of turned away and then realizing what was happening She tried to prevent Anne Hunt from making further contact So she tried to wrestle with her So a member of staff obviously became aware that something was going on and rushed back into the room and effectively restrained Anne Hunt, that that's how the attack ended.

51:45She had broken the glass and hit the painting at least three times. That was the last attack on a work of art by the suffragettes. The larger militant campaign actually was wound down in the summer of 1914, and that's largely because on the 4th of August 1914, Britain declared war. So we entered into the First World War. And at that stage, the suffragette leadership basically took stock and decided that they would switch their focus. So the militant campaign was wound down and suffragette prisoners were released. And instead, the suffragette leadership changed their focus to getting women involved with the home front and in encouraging men to join up to be part of the armed forces and contribute to the war effort in that way.

52:39When the suffragette Anne Hunt was in court after attacking the portrait of Thomas Carlyle, she gave a speech to defend herself. She made a very inflammatory, shall we say, statement when she was in court. This portrait will be of greater value and interest because it has been honoured by the attention of a militant. So obviously she was being deliberately provocative. But actually, certainly as an archivist, I would say that she had a point because the portrait itself is perhaps of greater historical interest. So the fact that it lived through this period, that it was impacted by the suffragette campaign, means that in a way its story is enriched, that there's a different layer to its history and one that we can know about, interpret and appreciate as the decades have gone on.

53:31Both the Rokeby Venus and the portrait of Thomas Carlyle were restored. Earlier this month, the Rokeby Venus was targeted again, this time by two climate activists protesting new oil and gas projects in the UK. They hit the protective glass covering the painting ten times with small hammers. A spokesperson for the museum said the painting sustained minimal damage. One of the activists said, it's time for deeds, not words. They were both arrested.

54:37Julia Young Harrison fact-checked this episode. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show, and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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