Crowds gathering in Hyde Park on Women's Sunday 21st June 1908

Crowds gathering in Hyde Park on Woman's Sunday 21st June 1908. In the distance can be seen the 'From Prison to Citizenship' banner designed by Laurence Housman for the Kensington branch of the Women's Social and Political Union. Woman's Sunday was the first occasion on which this banner was carried in public. Women's Sunday was the first 'monster meeting' to be organised by the Women's Social and Political Union. Specially chartered trains transported thousands of suffragettes from all over Britain to march in seven processions through central London to a rally in Hyde Park. Here 20 temporary platforms were erected in a circle for 80 speakers to address the crowds. The highly choreographed demonstration attracted a crowd of up to 300,000 drawn by the colourful spectacle of the delegates dressed in the suffragette tricolour and carrying over seven hundred embroidered banners. ‘Never’, reported the Daily Chronicle, has so vast a throng gathered in London to witness a parade of political forces’.