In August 1913, British prime minister Herbert Asquith was playing golf in Scotland when two “well-dressed young ladies” ran on to the 17th green, knocked off his hat, and smacked him on the head with a magazine. The women were arrested and “Asquith apparently holed out and continued his round”, writes Joyce Kay, sports historian at the University of Stirling.

The assailants were Suffragettes, campaigners for votes for women, and theirs was one of many attacks on sport. In 1913, the Suffragettes were bombing or burning churches, businesses, stations and schools. “But no one seems to have noted,” writes Kay, that perhaps a sixth of their attacks were on sports venues such as grandstands or pavilions. Lloyds of London even offered golf clubs insurance against Suffragettes, who liked pouring acid or inscribing “Votes for Women” on golf greens. The women were targeting “masculine pleasure-places”, explains Jill Liddington in her book Rebel Girls.