Davison stepped onto the track at Tattenham Corner during the Epsom Derby and was struck by the King's horse Anmer.
On 4 June 1913, during the running of the Epsom Derby, Emily Davison stepped or ran onto the racecourse at Tattenham Corner as the horses rounded the bend at high speed. She was carrying suffragette colours, and appears in surviving newsreel footage to reach toward the reins of a horse amid the galloping field. She was struck by Anmer, the horse owned by King George V, and knocked violently to the ground, sustaining catastrophic head injuries and a fractured skull.
The event was captured by multiple newsreel cameras, and the footage became one of the most widely viewed and analysed pieces of film from the era. Contemporary and later analysts have debated whether Davison intended to attach a suffragette sash to the King's horse, to disrupt the race, or to commit suicide as an act of ultimate protest; the ambiguity of her intent has fuelled a century of historical and forensic re-examination, including detailed frame-by-frame studies of the film.
Regardless of her precise intention, the incident instantly became a national sensation, thrusting the militant suffrage campaign into the centre of public consciousness in a way that few previous acts of protest had achieved. It has since become perhaps the single most iconic image associated with the British suffragette movement.