Suffragettes in Hyde Park

Suffragettes in Hyde Park on Women's Sunday, 21st June 1908. The Suffragettes are gathered beside Platform 6, one of twenty platforms erected in the park for the rally from which leading Suffragettes delivered speeches. The chair of Platform 6 was Rosamund Massy. Other key speakers on this platform were Elsie Howey and Katherine Douglas Smith. In the image, wearing a mortarboard can be identified the Irish Suffragette Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. Beside her is an 'officer' wearing a 'Banner Captain's' sash indicating the level of organisation that was key to the success of the procession and rally that involved 700 hundred banners.

Christina Broom, trading as Mrs Albert Broom, was a pioneering professional photographer and is considered to be the UK's first woman press photographer. Broom's extensive photographic work spans the activities of the suffrage movement in London, street views, military figures and actions of the Household Division including the First World War period, sporting events and the Royal Family.