Great Demonstration. Hyde Park. Women's Social and Political Union. August 19, 1906.

Printed handbill announcing a 'Great Demonstration' to welcome the Suffragettes Annie Kenney, Adelaide Knight and Mrs Sparboro on their release form Holloway Prison (Mrs Sparboro's name is spelt incorrectly on the flyer). Organised by the Women's Social and Political Union,the meeting took place at the symbolic Reformers Tree in Hyde Park on Sunday 19th August 1906 and included speeches from the released prisoners as well as the Suffragette leaders.
The three suffragettes had been arrested on 19th June 1906 along with Teresa Billington during a demonstration outside the Cavendish Square home of Herbert Asquith who, at the time was Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was one of several similar meetings held at Hyde Park that week in August to celebrate the release of the prisoners reflecting the huge significance of this act of militancy, one of the first in London to result in the imprisonment of Suffragettes. Christabel Pankhurst later referred to the significance of the event in her 1959 book Unshackled by remarking 'Militancy had now begun in London. The first prisoners for the vote we in Holloway Gaol'.