ABSTRACT
On October 25th 1909 Emmeline Pankhurst, wearing a purple velvet frock with green lining and a white bodice, a necklace of amethysts, emeralds and pearls and a corsage of violets, white gardenias and green foliage, stepped out on to the stage at Carnegie Hall, New York. Dressed, if not to kill, then certainly to disarm, she wore her suffragette colours as a military and militant emblem. In this elegantly feminine political attire she began the meeting with the words: ‘I am what you might call a hooligan.’ 1 The audience, almost entirely made up of women, erupted in applause: Emmeline Pankhurst had arrived in America.
