The New Advocate

This pen drawing entitled "The New Advocate" depicts a skeleton figure carrying a sandwich board marked 'Votes for Women' with the Houses of Parliament in the background. The cartoon represents the death of Emily Wilding Davison and was published on the front page of the Daily Herald, the week following her death on June 11th 1913.

The cartoonist William Dyson (1880-1938) was born in Australia. From 1900, he became a regular contributor to the Sydney Bulletin, with conservative politicians being the main target for his satire. In 1909 Dyson moved to London and worked on the Weekly Dispatch before the Daily Herald. This was a time of great political excitement in Britain with the Liberal government challenging the powers of the House of Lords and with the Women's Social and Political Union using militant methods to win the vote.

Dyson's cartoons created a sensation. He was acclaimed by one critic as the best cartoonist seen in Britain since James Gillray. Sometimes his cartoons were so powerful that the editor decided to let it take over the whole of the front page. The Daily Herald fully supported the actions of the women fighting for the vote. Dyson agreed with this policy and produced a series of cartoons attacking the way the government was treating the suffragettes.

Here, he reinterprets David Wilson's cartoon of the Haunted House of 1907 in an ambivalent, pessimistic image. The skeleton of Emily Davison is depicted as a victim of Westminster. Her spectacular self sacrifice is ignored in the mundane bustle of Westminster sketched in the background.