Black Friday is an Americanised term for a day of cheap bargains in the shops. It is a means of selling. The fact that this celebration of consumerism happens in November, the month of remembrance, is particularly galling for anyone wishing to remember the sacrifices made by suffragists and suffragettes and the terrible events of 18th November 1910, also called ‘Black Friday’. Three women died as a result of these events, of whom Mary Clarke was the first.

It was on 18th November that Mary, along with 300 other suffragettes, assembled peacefully to petition Parliament. Over several hours, the women were systematically physically and sexually attacked by London police officers who had been given instructions not to arrest the women, but had clearly been given licence to abuse them. Some police told the women they had been told they could do anything they liked “today”. The women were often subjected to violent attack, but the assaults of Black Friday seem to have been particularly vicious and sustained.

There are several heart-rending accounts of the terrible way women were treated and injured. We don’t know exactly what happened to Mary, just that afterwards she was bed-ridden for three days. She was advised not to get up even then, but she insisted on going back to London to protest about the police’s treatment of the women. There she was arrested and imprisoned for one month, during which time she was forcibly fed. She died of a brain haemorrhage two days after her release from prison. 

Mary’s sister Emmeline Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and other leaders of the WSPU all blamed the events of Black Friday for Mary’s death.

Each year we try to commemorate Black Friday by arranging a display in foyer of the Jubilee Library. This year the display includes the bronze maquette of Mary Clarke along with information about the targeted violence of Black Friday. We do not forget that Mary also experienced domestic abuse as well as state violence. 

We are conscious that the 25th November is the U.N. Designated Day of Action against Violence Against Women and that it begins the U.N. 16 Days of Action against Violence against Women. This year our display is being held in the Jubilee Library from 13th to the 26th November. 

The staff at the Jubilee Library invited us to help mark the United Nation’s annual  International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women which takes place on 25th November. The day launches the UN’s annual 16 days of Activism against Gender-Based Violenceto combat violence against women and girls. This ends on the 10th December, Human Rights Day. The United Nation’s global theme for 2022’s 16 Days of Activism is “UNITE! Activism to end violence against women and girls”.

The library staff have kindly agreed to display our maquette of Mary in the Foyer to the Library and it will remain there from 7th November through to early December. From 25th November, the beautiful hand-embroidered banner of Mary Clarke, which was made for us by Jenny Engledow, will be on display in the library in a prominent position. We hope it will remain there for the full 16 Days of Activism.

We note that November is the month of remembrance. It starts with All Souls Day, on the 2 November, when, traditionally, the Christian church remembers the dead. As the month goes on, we mark Remembrance Sunday, commemorating those who have died

in war and conflict. Then each year on 25 November the United Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women launches the worldwide 16 days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence to combat violence against women and girls.

We in the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal remember all women and girls who have died by violence in recent years and in the past. In particular, we remember the terrible events of “Black Friday” on 18th November 1910, when so many suffragettes were brutalised as they attempted to petition Parliament. We recall that it was almost certainly on that day that Mary Clarke received the head injuries that on Christmas Day 1910 led to her death by brain haemorrhage. Mary was the first of three women to die as a result of injuries that day. We remember them – and others (women and men) who have died in their struggle for freedom and democracy.

Please come if you can.

This Appeal is pledged to remember 18th November, the anniversary of ‘Black Friday’, the notorious day in 1910 when three hundred suffragettes were attacked outside Parliament as they tried to petition Prime Minister Asquith. Three women died as a result of the violence that day, the first of whom was Mary Clarke.

Another key commemorative date for us is the 25th November. This is the U.N.’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women which is part of the U.N. Secretary General’s ambitious campaign, entitled UNiTE by 2030 to End Violence against Women. Launched in 2008, this is a multi-year effort aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls around the world. We recall that Mary experienced abuse in her marriage as well as aggression and violence from political opponents. 

This year we chose to mark it by asking the City Council to wear orange ribbons and hold a minute’s silence for local women whose lives have been lost to violence. The moving minute’s silence took place on 21st October, at a meeting of full Council, but discussion of an all party Notice of Motion on the subject had to be postponed until a meeting of the Tourism, Equalities, Communities and Culture Committee, co-incidentally scheduled for 25th November. 

Our newest Child Ambassadors, sisters Sophie (9) and Lena (6) Goulden Mackerron (who happen to be Mary Clarke’s great great great nieces) represented us at that meeting by asking public questions. Due to COVID they did so remotely. However,  before the meeting began, their fellow Child Ambassador River Isaac (8) attended in person, with her mother Paula,  to hand Mary’s Lamp to Councillors Steph Powell and Martin Osborne, Co-chairs of the Committee. The lamp stayed at Steph Powell’s side while responded to public questions and during the debate.

Sophie addressed the Committee with the following challenge:

“We are child ambassadors for the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal. Mary was brave and gentle and died for women’s rights. Suffragettes at Mary’s funeral were told they should not be sad, but take up her torch and light the darkness. We are taking up Mary’s lamp to  try to make things better. We know you are discussing violence against women later on. We want you to stop girls being bullied or treated disrespectfully, especially at school. Will you make sure that by the time we are grown up, this city will be a safe place for women to live?”

Lena then asked the following short supplementary question: 

“We are pleased you stand up for women’s rights and support the statue for Mary. When you meet the police will you tell them what we have said – and ask them to also support Mary’s statue.”

We are so proud of all our Child Ambassadors.

We are delighted to have received a statement of support for our campaign for a statue for Mary Clarke from Katy Bourne OBE, the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner.  

On 19th February she wrote:

“Despite being the first suffragette to die for her cause, Mary Clarke has been largely forgotten by history. She was a determined woman who was not afraid to fight for women’s rights at a time when they were not only overlooked but also violently suppressed.

“I hope she would be delighted to see that, not only does modern day policing employ female officers and staff across all sectors but, increasingly, we are seeing a welcome growth in the number of women in senior roles, as we now have in Sussex.  I’m pleased to support the campaign to install a statue in her honour in celebration of her message and memory.”  

Katy Bourne, Sussex Police & Crime Commissioner, 19th February 2021.

This is a remarkable statement, both because Mary was three times imprisoned for her beliefs and because her death by brain haemorrhage was attributed to police excesses on ‘Black Friday’, 18th November 1910, when London police violently and sexually attacked 300 women outside Parliament, over a period of six hours, almost certainly on the orders, or with the agreement, of the Liberal Government of the time. Sussex police officers were not involved.

Mary was bed-ridden for three days following Black Friday then returned to London to protest about police conduct. She was advised by a friend not to go, because she was ill and for fear of further violence towards her. She wrote in explanation:  “I had to protest somehow: You would not have me a shirker”. 

Mary was arrested after breaking a window in Cannon Row Police Station, where her sister Emmeline Pankhurst was being held. It was her first illegal act, apparently undertaken as an act of loyalty to other women already under arrest. She told the Constable who arrested her: “I voted that the deputation (to Parliament) should go, and am morally as responsible as they are. If they are guilty of wrongdoing so am I, and I mean to share their punishment.”

She was imprisoned for a month and died two days after her release on Christmas Day 1910.

Mary was loved and respected for her gentleness and calm commitment to non-violence, as well as her good-humour and personal courage in the face of attack. Even her opponents admired her courtesy, quick wit and bravery. She was a survivor of an abusive marriage, which she was forced to flee more than once before finally freeing herself. Thereafter she devoted herself to the suffrage movement, her self-confidence slowly growing.

In the last eighteen months of her life, she led the movement in the south east, working as the paid Organiser for the Women’s Social and Political Union, based and living in Brighton, but campaigning across Sussex and Hampshire. 

Mary would have been amazed and proud to have seen a woman elected as Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner (with another appointed as Chief Constable). No doubt this modest and self-effacing woman would have been stunned to learn that the Commissioner  and at least three of Sussex’s female MPs – Maria Caulfield, Caroline Lucas and Sally-Ann Hart – support the campaign for her statue, in common with Brighton & Hove’s male MPs, the entire City Council and countless local people.

Following months of discussion, research and painstaking work in miniature, our wonderful sculptor Denise Dutton has completed the rough plaster line maquette of Mary. She is now in the process of preparing a resin copy and a mould for the final bronze. 

Denise has faced many challenges. She has had to work from only 5 photographs, some of which are of poor quality and none of which depict Mary’s whole body. In addition to that, we set her the difficult task of depicting someone who was both frail and self-effacing, but at the same time, strong and formidably brave, a shy leader, a ‘martyr’ with a wry sense of humour.

We asked Denise to tell the story of Mary’s life and death, expressing her gentle dignity and calm strength as well as her courage and determination. The agreed design depicts Mary after leaving prison, two days before her death. She gestures towards a lamp at her feet which she has left for others to pick up. Her hand is held low, so that children can hold it and pose for photographs (we suspect many will want to rub the lamp and make wishes). The lamp references the statement by Isabella McKeown, made at Mary’s memorial meeting in the Royal Pavilion. She said “Her they must not mourn in silence. They must take the torch from her and light the darkness…”

Mary wears a suffragette sash and on her left arm carries a last few copies of Votes for Women, the suffragette newspaper she regularly sold in Brighton. The front page of the November 1910 issue depicts the events of ‘Black Friday’, 18th November 1910, when she, like so many other women was injured by police violence. Mary was deeply distressed at the suffering of women that day, many of whom were subjected to sexual abuse.

Mary wears the Hunger Strikers’ medal and walks across the implements used in forcible feeding, which she ignores and which are imbedded in the surface of the plinth. Her clothing, accurate for the period, subtly references Mary’s background as an artist, her love of flowers and her time in prison. The pattern on the skirt includes the ‘prison arrow’ which was used on convicts’ clothes and was carried with pride on suffragette banners.

The low plinth carries Mary’s words “I am glad to pay the price for freedom..”, with the above quotation from Isabella McKeown, as well as Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence’s statement that Mary was the “first woman martyr who has gone to death for this cause.”  Just days after Mary’s death, her grief-stricken sister Emmeline Pankhurst wrote: “She is the first to die. How many must follow…”. Those words will be on the surface of the plinth, curving around the line of the feeding tube embedded in the bronze, bringing the two sisters together.