Emily Wilding Davison was a militant women's suffrage

Women's suffrage

Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...

 activist who, on 4 June 1913, after a series of actions that were either self-destructive or violent, stepped in front of a horse running in the Epsom Derby

Epsom Derby

The Derby Stakes, popularly known as The Derby, internationally as the Epsom Derby, and under its present sponsor as the Investec Derby, is a Group 1 flat horse race in Great Britain open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies...

, sustaining injuries that resulted in her death four days later.
Davison was born in Blackheath, London

Blackheath, London

Blackheath is a district of South London, England. It is named from the large open public grassland which separates it from Greenwich to the north and Lewisham to the west...

, the daughter of Charles Davison (of Morpeth, Northumberland

Northumberland

Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...

) and Margaret Davison (of Longhorsley, Northumberland), with two sisters and a brother, and many half-siblings (from her father's first second and third marriages) including a half-brother, retired naval captain Henry Jocelyn Davison, who gave evidence at her inquest.

She was a good performer at her primary school.