Victor Consolé (probably 1886–1941), variously written as Victor Consul and Victor Console, of London News Agency Photos Ltd. See Michael Hiley, Seeing through photographs, Gordon Fraser, 1983, p. 27, and The London Gazette. There is a photograph of a Victor Console, photographer, dated November 1936, in Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, p. 136.

The copyright holder was registered as London News Agency Photos Ltd, 46 Fleet Street, London, E.C. [3]

According to Nicholas Hiley ("The Candid Camera of the Edwardian Tabloids", History Today, 43, 1 August 1993):

"The subversive power of press photography was even more strikingly demonstrated in 1910, when more than 300 suffragettes marched on Westminster. The police showed such brutality in turning them back that the day became known as 'Black Friday'. In the road outside Canon Row police station, recalled on eye-witness, the police picked out a suffragette named Ada Wright.

'She was treated in the most violent way. They knocked her down two or three times. When she came to, another lady and myself helped her on to her feet, and then two policemen dragged her up and she fell on her back on the ground.'

"At this point a bystander stepped forward to remonstrate with the two policemen, and as Ada Wright lay on the ground with this man shielding her from further violence, a number of press photographers, including Victor Consolé of London News Agency Photos, recorded the whole scene. Consolé's photograph was quickly printed and submitted to the Daily Mirror, where the art editor immediately recognised its visual potential.

"Consolé's photograph was chosen for the front cover of the next day's Daily Mirror, and the art editor also submitted a print to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police for his comments on the incident. The Commissioner attempted to convince the paper's representative that, since one of the onlookers was smiling, it seemed unlikely that Ada Wright "had simply sunk to the ground exhausted with struggling against the police", but privately he was more worried by so controversial an image, and later that evening an attempt was made to prevent its publication.

"Nor only did the Daily Mirror receive an official instruction to suppress the whole edition, but when it was discovered that production was underway, thanks to the paper's early deadline, a desperate attempt was made to buy up all the copies that had so far beem produced. This astonishing manoeuvre failed completely, and the inclusion of Consolé's photograph in all 750,000 copies of the Daily Mirror that were circulated the next day helped to turn criticism away from the suffragettes and toward the Home Secretary Winston Churchill."