Original subtitles

[narrator] In Poland,

an imperial bastion provides the backdrop

for powerful propaganda in the US.

A successful film in the favor of the Germans

could really have changed the course of the war.

[narrator] In New Jersey,

a powder keg of injustice

set to explode.

[Bell] In those conditions, it wouldn't take much

to kick off a riot.

[narrator] And in England,

a haven of privilege harbors radical fugitives.

[Pedrick] It was a common occurrence

to have the police

knocking on the door.

[narrator] Decaying relics...

Ruins of lost worlds...

Sites haunted by the past...

Their secrets waiting...

to be revealed.

[narrator] In central Poland

are the battered remains of a once feared complex.

You've got this big walled facility,

you know, hulking over the river.

Really, what's striking is the variety of styles.

This was clearly something that was worked on over the ages.

[Dr. Nusbacher] You can see casemates designed to protect

gun emplacements and ammunition storage.

We can see all of the signs

that this is military construction.

[Hadley] Inside you have these rows of beds

and it's clear this place could have really held

thousands and thousands of people.

You really are well prepared to guard the entire region.

[narrator] This was once a key battleground

in an era-defining conflict.

And a place you wouldn't expect to find

a pair of outsiders from the US.

[Dr. Nusbacher] Two Americans and their sports car

happened to be pinned right in the middle

of a war between two great powers.

[narrator] Yet their mission

could have dramatically changed the outcome.

[Dr. Nusbacher] It had the potential to bring the United States

into the First World War

on the German side.

[narrator] Elzbieta Wiercinska

knows the secrets of this imposing structure.

[speaking Polish]

[translator in English] This is a very strong building.

Most of the walls are more than five feet thick,

regardless of whether they're inside or outside.

They were completely indestructible.

[narrator] For centuries, this contested region

was controlled by Tsarist Russia.

But in 1914,

when the First World War broke out,

it was on the front line

between the warring Russian and German empires.

This is Modlin Fortress.

A year into the global conflict,

this far-flung stronghold

was thrust into the international spotlight,

thanks to a brash journalist in Chicago,

Wilbur H. Durborough.

[Hadley] He was working for the Newspaper Enterprise Association

and they decided they needed a man on the front

and Durborough leapt at that chance.

[Dr. Nusbacher] He wants the new medium of cinema

to become a tool of documentation.

He is going to create a documentary

about World War I on the Eastern Front.

[narrator] But Durborough wasn't going to cover the war

from the perspective of the Allied forces

of Russia, Britain and France.

He was going to embed with the Germans

who had their own motives for granting him access.

This was a really interesting time

in American history

because the United States was still neutral in World War I.

[Hadley] American entry into the war

on the side of Britain is not guaranteed.

[Dr. Nusbacher] But, English language propaganda

coming from London

all about German war crimes,

some of which are true,

is turning American public opinion

against Germany.

[narrator] The last thing Germany needed

was for the US to join the war

is support of Russia's ally, Great Britain.

[Dr. Nusbacher] The German government wants American journalists

to tell the German side of World War I in America.

[Hadley] A successful propaganda film in favor of the Germans

could really change the course of the war.

[narrator] In March 1915,

Durborough and his camera operator Irving Guy Ries

set sail for Europe.

When they arrived one week later,

the pair drove to Berlin

in Durborough's beloved sports car

that he insisted on taking with him,

complete with stars and stripes.

Before long,

arrangements were made to take the filmmakers

to the Eastern Front of the war.

By July 1915,

German forces are pushing Russians back

and Durborough and Ries are right there with them.

[Wawro] We're getting a real glimpse of everyday life

of German armies in action on the Eastern Front.

[narrator] But as the Germans advanced,

there was one thing in their way...

Modlin Fortress.

[Wawro] This was really one of

the biggest, most impressive,

most modern fortifications of its day.

In theory, it should have been an impregnable fortress.

[narrator] Modlin had been designed

not only to protect the soldiers inside,

but to withstand a drawn out siege.

They built this water tower but they disguised it

using decorative facade

to, kind of, camouflage it from the enemy.

[Elzbieta speaking Polish]

[translator in English] This building was built in 1847.

It was a brilliant piece of work

as the tower still stands here today

and has not been destroyed by any war.

[Hadley] They also built a grain storage facility

in the middle of the river

which was a really cool idea

because this meant the grain was safe

from any invading forces.

[Dr. Nusbacher] So the Russians had provisioned this fortress

to hold out against the Germans for months.

[narrator] A victory at Modlin Fortress

would be a massive military success for Germany.

But officers knew

their troops could be stuck outside

in the trenches indefinitely

while a 90,000 strong Russian garrison

was secure inside the fortress.

No one could have predicted what happened next.

[Dr. Nusbacher] We must always remember

nothing is ever impregnable.

[narrator] In 1915,

German troops had the mighty Modlin Fortress surrounded.

But the Russian soldiers holed up inside

showed no sign of surrender.

[Hadley] A long siege was the last thing

that the Germans wanted.

They wanted to make their way to Russia

as quickly as they could.

[narrator] The stalemate was also bad news

for the two US filmmakers embedded with the German army.

So Durborough and Ries

faced the prospect

of filming hundreds of German soldiers

sitting still,

staring at hundreds of Russian soldiers.

The siege of a fortress is going to be terrible film.

[narrator] German high command had hoped

that compelling coverage

of their sophisticated maneuvers

would help their overall objective

to convince the US

to stay out of the war altogether.

As the siege wore on,

their hopes were fading fast.

[Hadley] And then the Germans had

the most amazing stroke of good fortune.

If you saw this in a movie,

you would think it had gone too far.

A Russian officer was kind of touring

the outworks,

and he's captured by a German patrol.

Amazingly, he had detailed plans

of the fort,

with annotations marking where the weakest spots were.

I mean, you cannot make this up.

[narrator] On August 10th, 1914,

the assault on Modlin Fortress begins.

If the Germans had tried to bombard

the whole fortress,

they'd have gotten nowhere.

Because the Germans can focus,

they are able to blast a way in.

[Hadley] The Germans pound the two weakest parts of the fort,

reducing them to rubble,

and then they launch an all-out assault.

[narrator] Thousands of German infantry breached

its innermost defenses.

In just ten days...

Modlin had fallen.

[Elzbieta speaking Polish]

[translator in English] 85,000 soldiers were taken prisoner,

including about 14 generals,

130 canons and large reserves of food.

[Wawro] It's a huge loss for the Russians

and it's, sort of, like, spells the end of their plan

to use this place

as a kind of hurdle,

slowing up the advance of the German army into Russia.

[narrator] The defeat was a coup for the Germans.

And the American filmmakers

decided to take some creative license

to cement the victory.

[Wawro] They were instructed, "You can't film

the German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II."

And they say, "Oh, the hell with that. We're Americans,"

and they film him.

Having taken the bizarre initiative

of plunging themselves into a war zone,

these two fellows are able to get back

to America with their film

and their car

and they're heroes.

[narrator] On the Firing Line with the Germans

premiered in Milwaukee in November 1915.

While it received good reviews,

many people thought

it was a piece of propaganda

that lacked objectivity.

For a number of reasons,

but chiefly because of German submarine attacks

on American shipping that was crossing the Atlantic,

this confluence of factors

leads to Americans to join the war against Germany

despite the efforts

to make the Germans look like a heroic party on the Eastern Front.

[narrator] When Germany was finally defeated,

Modlin Fortress became part

of newly independent Poland.

It remained key to the nation's defenses

until it finally shut down in 1995.

Wilbur H. Durborough's film lay forgotten

until 2016,

when it was restored by the Library of Congress.

[Wawro] This is a really foundational piece

of war documentary,

because, you know, today we take for granted

that we're going to see

all kinds of video footage of combat.

But it really begins over 100 years ago

in World War I.

[narrator] In the suburban streets

or Newark, New Jersey

hide the decaying remains

that for some became a symbol of rebellion.

We're just a half hour from downtown Manhattan.

It's a pretty typical street

with office buildings and a hospital across the way.

But you'll notice one block

is a little bit more disheveled

than all of the others.

You can barely see in through the overgrown trees

spilling out into the street.

Just through the foliage you can spot the walls

of an imposing building.

[narrator] The construction within is falling apart.

But evidence of its original function still lingers.

[Alicia] You can see different wings and sections

and the foundations of a few structures.

[Michele] There's holes in the roof, rusty metal bars,

and vegetation is working its way through the windows.

[Bell] Despite all this decay,

you can still make out what this building once was.

And it's the long corridors

and the barred doors, they're a dead giveaway.

[narrator] During a decade of change,

the violent struggles taking place

outside this jail would permeate its walls.

New inmates were pouring in

and the jail was full to the brim.

[Alicia] One of those new inmates

within the course of one generation,

his family's narrative arc

would go from solitary confinement...

to the mayor's office.

[Myles] As a young person, I grew up

four or five blocks from here in downtown Newark,

and I was really interested in abandoned structures,

particularly that speak to moments

in... in American history.

[narrator] Myles Zhang is an urban historian and artist

with a lifelong passion for this building.

[Myles] When you think about why this needs to be preserved,

it's the story that this building

allows us to tell.

And it's a story of the common people

that are held behind bars.

[narrator] This is the old Essex County Jail.

It opened in 1836,

a period when the population of Newark

was rapidly expanding.

[Myles] It cost about $70,000 at the time

and that was the largest municipal expanse

which makes this the oldest building in Essex County.

It was designed to be state-of-the-art

by the famed architect John Haviland.

[Myles] He's kind of known as the father

or the inventor of the form of the modern prison.

[narrator] In later years,

two additional wings and a hospital

were added to his design.

But as the population of Newark grew,

the jail would become disproportionately overcrowded.

Over the course of the 20th century,

over six million African Americans

would leave the South

for the North and the West to escape the harsh reality

of Jim Crow laws and segregation.

[narrator] But in Newark,

the predominantly white population wasn't welcoming.

And police arrests

among the African American newcomers was high.

[Myles] By the 1930s,

I believe Newark was about 20% or so Black.

But the prison population is 70% Black.

And so, you see increasing incarceration

of Black men.

[Michele] With more and more African Americans coming North,

by 1967,

Newark had become one of America's

first majority Black cities.

[narrator] Although the population

was now mostly African American,

Newark's law enforcers remained overwhelmingly white.

This imbalance would soon reach a tipping point

and the old Essex County Jail

would be caught in the crosshairs.

[narrator] In the late 1960s,

pressure was rising

in Newark's old Essex County Jail.

[Bell] Decades of overcrowding

had led to poor, poor conditions.

And it was about to get much worse.

[Alicia] Tensions between law enforcement

and the Black community of Newark were rising.

During the long, hot summer of 1967,

over 150 urban rebellions

broke out all over the country.

And in July, Newark reached a boiling point.

During a traffic stop,

a Black cab driver was arrested

and brutally beaten,

sparking a week of protest and violence.

In total,

26 people were killed by the National Guard

and 1400 were arrested

in what became known as the Newark Rebellion.

Many of those people

were taken to the Essex County Jail.

[narrator] Activist Fredrica Bey

is a Newark resident who remembers the rebellion.

Two of her siblings were also incarcerated

at old Essex County Jail.

[Fredrica] The tombs...

it was called in Newark.

Of course, tombs is for dead people.

And my brothers and the people

who, you know, were confined here,

I mean, were in the tombs,

you know, while they are living.

And to think about it...

it makes me angry.

[narrator] On the first night of the Newark Rebellion,

controversial writer Amiri Baraka

was also thrown in the jail.

An influential poet,

Black activist and native of Newark,

Baraka has attracted criticism

for including anti-Semitic elements in his work.

To many,

he was one of the greatest Black writers

of his generation.

But to some,

his writings reflected violence, misogyny and homophobia.

[narrator] Baraka had been pulled over by police,

fiercely beaten

and charged with carrying a weapon.

Amiri Baraka got his head bashed in

by the Newark police.

He shed blood...

and was locked up in this place.

And he did it...

while he was advocating for us, for Black folk.

To be willing to give your life

for your people,

I honor him.

[Bell] He was placed in solitary confinement

when he entered the jail

and detailed his experience years later

in his autobiography.

[narrator] He recounted watching from his cell window,

"The police shoot down people in the streets outside."

Once he left this jail,

he never stopped campaigning for the residents of Newark.

[Fredrica] That was a volatile time.

The Newark Rebellions, I remember that

it definitely changed things.

The rebellions did.

I remember

I got my first real job

after the Rebellion.

Things opened up.

[narrator] But Newark's lawmakers

still hadn't addressed

the injustices inside the jail.

There's really severe overcrowding

in the Essex County Jail.

A jail designed for 200 or 300 people

at that point had over 500 people confined here...

in some of the cells right here.

Cells barely four feet wide,

uh, six feet deep,

would have two people confined here

in rooms without electricity.

So people are locked in their cells

in this narrow corridor here

24 hours a day for weeks on end.

[Bell] In those conditions, it wouldn't take much

to kick off a riot.

And in 1968, the violence

spilled over into Essex County Jail.

[Myles] Several of the inmates in the west ward,

when it's time for them to go back into their cells at the end of the day,

they said, "We're not going back.

We're gonna spend this time outside."

And so they set fire to the place.

Over the course of two hours, the inmates clashed with the wardens,

breaking furniture and setting fires.

They burned a hole in the roof and Newark Fire Department was called in.

[Alicia] In the aftermath of the riot,

over 100 inmates were transferred to other locations

in order to try to ease the tensions.

[narrator] Finally, the city was forced to deal

with the jail's overcrowding problem.

It built a large, modern facility on the outskirts of town

and in 1971, the original jail closed down.

Today, the old Essex County Jail

stands as a powerful reminder

of Newark's struggle with injustice.

Some of the activists that fought for change and were incarcerated here,

still inspire hope.

Baraka's career would go on to span some 52 years.

[Bell] Baraka's influence on Newark lasted generations.

Almost 50 years after he was locked up in Essex County Jail,

his son, Ras Baraka, was elected mayor of the city.

[narrator] Baraka went on to serve the people of Newark for multiple terms.

In Namibia,

the desiccated remains of a settlement

sink into the sand.

It's a foreboding landscape, where the Namib Desert clashes with the Atlantic Ocean.

You can just about notice a train track,

and just a few miles down the line,

a lone station in the middle of nowhere.

[Martin] Why would anybody have any reason to run

a small-gauge railroad through this area.

[narrator] Not far from the line,

a series of ramshackled remains may yield the answer.

It's the last place in the world you'd expect to see a town.

But there are signs of a settlement.

It's a collection of houses, some of which are residential,

that have been taken over by the sand

to such an extent that there are sand drifts

in the inner hallways of these buildings.

But there's also rusted machinery littering the ground.

There was clearly some kind of industrial operation going on here.

But what could a barren place like this offer?

When people come to a desolate place like this,

there's usually a very good reason for them to be here.

A discovery in these dunes, changed this region, forever.

[narrator] Today, this site sits in an area

called Das Sperrgebiet,

the forbidden zone.

Local historian, Heinz Manns

has special permission to access this restricted area.

This railroad was built by the German government,

for the German army

to move their armament to the interior of the country.

And to do business with the interior,

to do trade with the local people

of Namibia at the time.

[narrator] The railroad was completed in 1906.

And ran from the coast into the heart of Namibia,

which the Germans called South-West Africa

and had controlled since 1883.

The Germans established this colony in an attempt

to counter the British

who had established the South Africa colony.

[narrator] In 1907,

a young railway surveyor from Germany

decided to come to this desolate outpost,

hoping the arid climate would help to cure his asthma.

[Heinz] So, August Stauch worked for the railroad

and he had a team of workers under him,

clearing the railroad track of dune sand.

He was the station master, you can call it.

[Sascha] He came here for health reasons.

But soon, he found himself on a quest for something far more lucrative.

[Heinz] There were supposed to have been diamond finds in the area,

but nothing was ever confirmed.

[Sascha] He just couldn't let go of that idea

that somewhere, hidden in these sands,

were precious gemstones.

[narrator] Stauch was scorned by geologists,

who had already scoured the area.

But he remained determined.

He instructed his workers to keep an eye out

for gemstones in the sands.

[Heinz] Well, Zacharias Lewala, he was one of the workers

clearing the railroad track.

He came to August in the morning

and said,

"Mr. Stauch, look, I found a pretty stone."

Stauch took it and scratched the glass of his watch.

It left a deep cut.

It confirmed what he had long suspected.

That there were diamonds in the sands of Namibia.

Stauch also had them tested at a government laboratory.

They all came back, confirmed as genuine,

and the diamond rush was on.

Between June and December 1908,

40,000 carats worth of diamonds were found.

And prospectors were buying up land as fast as they could.

[narrator] By 1912,

the industry had grown so quickly,

a town was built to support the flourishing trade.

It was called Pomona.

Over the next few years,

prospectors pulled almost five million carats from the sand,

worth almost $20 billion in today's money.

Pomona was the richest area in diamond mining.

There were teachers here, there was a doctor here, two hospitals,

340 permanent employees,

that included wives, children, everything.

Pomona was complete with a mess hall, a school,

and even a bowling alley

to make the German employees feel more at home.

To get the right people to work here,

to get the expertise,

you have to look after the people.

This was a very well-thought-out mining town.

Not unlike the mining towns that you'll see in the American West.

But not everyone who came to Pomona found such comforts.

[Heinz] This is part of the laborers' quarters.

The workers, the three-year contractors.

Each one had his own little cubicle.

Like, they'd pop their stuff on the top there,

their personal belongings.

This is where they lived, three years.

[narrator] 800 local laborers did the manual work.

The brutal task of searching for diamonds in the sand.

These rickety sheds and rusting machinery

were designed to assist the process.

[Heinz] These are the classifiers.

These were used to sift at the diamond gravel.

These machines, they were hand operated.

The first process worked was

the material shaking in the water,

so the heavy stuff goes to the bottom.

Diamond is a heavy material all around.

That's what they were looking for.

[narrator] It was painstaking work.

For those who carried it out under the desert sun,

it exacted a punishing toll.

The Germans overseeing the operation

treated the local laborers with distrust.

For the mine owners, there was the constant paranoia

of workers smuggling out diamonds with them.

And they went to extreme lengths to prevent this.

They were checking you inside and out

to see whether or not you were stealing the diamonds.

[Sascha] Some suspect they forced the workers to take laxatives,

to make sure even if they swallowed the diamonds, they couldn't hold on to them.

[narrator] By 1914,

Germany was in control of a third

of the world's diamond supply.

August Stauch, the man who started it all,

had become rich beyond his wildest dreams.

Germany's great diamond rush, however, would soon grind to a halt.

[narrator] In early 1914,

Pomona was one of the wealthiest towns in Africa.

But global events would soon conspire to change that.

On the night of August 4th, 1914,

the radio station at Lüderitz received a report

that Germany and Great Britain were now at war.

During the war, they were allowed to mine

minimal scale just to sustain themselves,

but the companies didn't operate really.

[narrator] Within the year, Britain's South African colonial troops

invaded Namibia,

forcing the Germans to abandon the town.

They took everything they could

and they also destroyed a lot of stuff.

The same with the railway line

so it didn't fall into the enemies' hands.

[narrator] By the end of the war,

the defeated Germans had lost control of Namibia and the mine.

In 1919,

the German-born industrialist, Ernest Oppenheimer

took control of Pomona.

Operations continued until deposits ran out in the 1930s,

when Pomona was left deserted.

Pomona turned into a ghost town

because, with the disappearance of the people,

the desert reclaimed what belonged to it before.

[narrator] Meanwhile, the man who started Namibia's diamond rush

met no kinder fate.

[Heinz] August Stauch was a millionaire overnight.

But he did a lot of wrong investments.

He died a poor man.

He had no money.

[narrator] After being uninhabited for so long,

the region has some of the highest biodiversity in Namibia,

with unique desert plants, reptiles, and herds of antelope.

Since 2009, it has been preserved as a national park.

To the northwest of London, England,

a ghostly manor house gives little hint of its radical past.

[Meigs] It's a beautiful sandstone building

that stands at the end of a quarter-mile long, tree-lined driveway.

[Pedrick] The brickwork is crumbling,

but you can still see that this place must have been a real sanctuary.

[narrator] Inside, there are trappings of privilege and wealth.

We've got these fine plasterwork ceilings,

opulent wood-carvings,

stone-framed windows.

[Meigs] This might seem like a place that would be a home for upper class aristocrats

who would resist any kind of social change.

[narrator] But this mainstay of the establishment

was once pivotal to a vicious struggle for civil rights.

It was a real hotbed for one of the most important battles of its day.

It was a common occurrence to have the police knocking on the door.

[narrator] Amanda Pitcairn

has a deep family connection

to this sprawling estate.

[Amanda] This house was owned by my great grandparents.

When I was growing up, I heard lots and lots of stories about this place.

[narrator] This dilapidated mansion

was once home to Agnes and Henry Harben.

[Meigs] Harben was very wealthy

'cause he'd inherited a fortune from his grandfather

who'd built up the Prudential insurance company.

[narrator] At the time, in the homes of the elite,

strict rules of etiquette were still being followed.

[Amanda] This is the room that was, pretty much, a male preserve.

Men would sit and drink potions and smoke cigars

and tell bad jokes until they got very drunk.

[narrator] This is Newland Park,

a 550-acre estate and 50-room house

with rigidly manicured gardens.

But despite appearances, Henry Harben was far from conventional.

He made friends with all sorts of radical people,

regardless of their social background.

[Meigs] Henry and Agnes Harben turned their home into a kind of salon,

where people with new ideas, people interested in social change

could gather and discuss the kind of world they wanted to see in the future.

[narrator] The first decade of the 20th century

was a time of social reform.

This was a period of great liberalizing

in social norms

and embrace of a more egalitarian approach to life.

[Pedrick] So, in the 1900s, Henry and Agnes became involved

in one of the biggest issues of the day.

All women, regardless of social class, were still barred from voting.

[Meigs] It's almost hard to remember today,

but the world's great democracies we think of

like Britain, like the US,

they weren't actually all that democratic.

[narrator] In both Britain and America,

women had been fighting for the right to vote

since the mid-19th century.

But after decades of kind of getting nowhere with politicians,

a new, all-female group would emerge

and kind of take Britain by storm.

And a dramatic escalation of events

would turn Newland Park from a place to just meet...

into a place to hide from the law.

[narrator] At Newland Park,

near London, England,

Henry and Agnes Harben supported the suffragist movement

and welcomed like-minded people to their home.

They frequently played host to Emmeline Pankhurst,

an ardent campaigner for a woman's right to vote.

Emmeline Pankhurst was this very dramatic leader of the movement,

a real magnet for press attention.

[narrator] Emmeline had been an activist for decades.

But her increasing frustration with peaceful tactics

had forced her to form a more radical action group.

[Jaega] This was a very different type of organization,

fed up of broken promises given from men in power,

only women could join.

They began a campaign of direct action

with the motto "Deeds, not words."

In an attempt to belittle them,

a journalist labeled them "suffragettes"

as opposed to suffragists

which they sort of embraced and kind of took as a badge of honor.

Agnes was a member of the suffragette movement

and totally committed to it.

Henry funded it, of course, to great extent.

[narrator] From Newland Park,

Henry Harben used his inherited assets

to bankroll the nationwide movement.

But as women's rights continued to be denied,

the suffragettes became increasingly militant.

Emmeline Pankhurst proclaimed that it was her duty

to break the law in order to bring attention to their plight.

[Pedrick] Women started smashing windows,

setting postboxes on fire.

They even chased after Winston Churchill with a horsewhip.

[Meigs] And then it escalated, and the fight got very intense and ugly.

Bombs were sent to the homes of government officials.

In their minds, their actions were completely justified.

[Jaega] In response, many hundreds of women were arrested and imprisoned.

In protest, the women began a campaign of hunger strikes.

So the government began a policy of force-feeding the women.

A warden would restrain a woman,

take a rubber tube, put it down her nostrils, into her throat,

sometimes directly into her stomach.

If one of these women were to die of starvation from a hunger strike,

it would be a political disaster for the country.

[Pedrick] So, hunger strikers would be kept until they were extremely weak,

and then they'd be released,

um, long enough to recover

and then they would get picked up again

and serve out the rest of their sentence.

Emmeline Pankhurst herself was constantly arrested and released

as many as 12 times in the space of 12 months.

[narrator] Once released,

many suffragettes escape to the home of Henry and Agnes.

[Pedrick] Newland Park became a place

for the malnourished women to hide out and recover.

[narrator] For the suffragettes fresh out of prison,

coming here was like stepping into another world.

The suffragettes were from a different class, basically.

And they would not have been used to

um, the sort of lifestyle that was led here.

This is a testament to my great grandmother

who would have done her utmost to make them feel welcome.

[narrator] But Newland Park was only 25 miles from London.

And rumors of Harben's involvement in the movement

led police right to their doorstep.

A well-timed tip-off

allowed Agnes and Henry to conceal the fugitives.

This is where, in the cellars, is where they hid.

Emmeline Pankhurst and more, uh, suffragettes.

Well, it feels so much like a...

like a cell, actually,

that they must have felt

they were sort of back into jail.

[narrator] Thanks to their hideout at Newland Park,

the suffragettes were spared a return to prison.

A year later, the outbreak of the First World War

transforms society's view of women

and confirmed their place in a changing world.

Male politicians could no longer claim that women were unfit to vote.

If they could work in munitions factories

and drive ambulances,

why couldn't they walk into a voting booth?

[narrator] In 1918,

the government finally conceded

and the process of allowing women to vote began.

But life at Newland Park wasn't so successful.

Agnes and Henry separated

and their home changed hands several times...

until it fell into disrepair.

Today, developers are turning this valuable real estate

into a complex of luxury homes.

It'll feature Harben Drive

and a central statue of Emmeline Pankhurst,

ensuring the importance of this site

in a vital social movement

will not be forgotten.