The first major, country-wide demonstration for women’s suffrage was the Women’s Sunday at Hyde Park on 21 June 1908. It was organized with military precision, with special trains bringing women from all over the country to participate. Seven processions from various points in London marched to Hyde Park to hear speeches by the Pankhursts and other suffragettes. Between 200,000 and 300,000 people gathered – one of the largest single demonstrations ever up to that time.

Women were encouraged to wear "the colours" – white (for purity), green (hope) and purple (dignity) – and in "as fetching, charming and ladylike a manner as possible." Some went in costume; there was at least one Joan of Arc riding a white horse.

From one of the speakers’ platforms a suffragette described the scene:
"To the boundaries on every side stretched a flood of life, in which the sense of the individual item was lost in that of the mass, as when one regards an ant-heap suddenly opened…In the bright sunshine all the colour with which the scene was crowded had a double value, and it was noticeable that the multitude was not in its total effect black, as is usually the case, but as variegated as an illimitable flower-bed."

Or, as the Yorkshire Daily Post put it: "At least one half of the crowd was composed of the sort of people you would expect to see at a suburban garden party."

Photo courtesy of the Museum of London