In the mid-nineteenth century, women’s suffrage was hardly known. Some years later, the fight for votes for women began in earnest. One of the most prominent women in the struggle for enfranchisement was Emmeline Pankhurst, born Emmeline Goulden on 14th July 1858.
Emmeline Pankhurst’s Early Years and Marriage
The daughter of a radical father who campaigned against slavery and the Corn Laws, and a passionate feminist mother who took her young daughter to women’s suffrage meetings in the early 1870s, it seemed inevitable that Emmeline Goulden would become a leading suffragette in the women’s right to vote movement.
Although she received a conventional education, Emmeline inherited her mother’s political passion as well as having a charismatic and courageous personality. Marriage to the older radical barrister, Richard Marsden Pankhurst, in 1879, encouraged her enthusiasm for women’s rights. For her husband was the author of the first women’s suffrage bill in Britain and instigator of the married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882.
Concerns for Women’s Rights
In addition to political concerns for women’s rights, Emmeline Pankhurst saw the miserable conditions of women forced to take refuge in the local workhouse. She became a Poor Law Guardian in 1895, strengthening her resolve to fight for the right of women to be heard.
As members of the Independent Labour Party, Emmeline and her husband were both active socialists and after she was widowed in 1898, Emmeline continued her political involvement with women’s organisations.
Forming the Women’s Social and Political Union
By October 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst became frustrated at the lack of success in the Manchester branch of the National Union of Suffrage Societies. With the help of her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, she formed the Women’s Social and Political Union in Manchester. Their revolutionary motto was ‘Deeds not Words’ and its aim was to recruit working class women into fighting for the right to vote.
It was because of the suffragists’ determination to remain in the public eye that events took a more militant direction in 1905. As the media began to lose interest in their struggle, members of the WSPU stepped up their publicity campaign to attract attention.
Militant Action of the Women’s Suffrage
When government minister Sir Edward Grey was speaking at a meeting in London, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney began shouting, “Will you give votes to women?”, until they were evicted by police. The women kicked and spat so much that they were finally charged with assault and fined. When they refused to pay the fine, the women were put in prison. Thus began the cycle of violence, imprisonment and hunger strikes that were to continue for many years.
It was during this time that the women of the WSPU became known as Suffragettes. In the autumn of 1906, the WSPU moved their offices to London in order to lobby Parliament and newspapers more effectively. Over the next few years, the suffragettes increased their militant campaigns, breaking government windows and throwing stones at the Prime Minister’s house, culminating in the large WSPU demonstration in London in 1908.
Cat and Mouse Act or Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act
When the women tried to enter the House of Commons, the violent clashes with police ended in twenty four arrests, including that of Emmeline Pankhurst. This resulted in a stay of three months in prison. When one suffragette, Marion Dunlop, refused to eat and was eventually released others soon followed.
The government then introduced the prisoner’s Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act. This allowed the women to starve until they became ill, then to be released from prison before being brought back in to continue their sentence. It soon became known as the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’. Now in her 50s, Emmeline Pankhurst survived ten hunger strikes over an eighteenth month period.
Problems for Women’s Suffrage
By the summer of 1913, there was an escalation of violence. As well as damaging the house being built for David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, there were failed attempts at burning down the houses of two women opposed to the vote. An element of feminism was also concerned for changes in men’s attitudes. The WSPU adopted the slogan of ‘Votes for Women and Purity for Men.’
Because of the increasing violence, many break-away women’s groups began forming. When war broke out in 1914, there was wide-spread hostility to the women’s movement. Over 1,000 British suffragettes had been imprisoned by this time, with most of the leaders in prison, ill health, or in exile.
Votes for Women
When they received a £2000 grant from the government, the WSPU organised a demonstration in London, attended by 30,000 people, where they carried banners declaring: ‘We demand the Right to Serve’ and ‘For men must Fight and Women must Work’. At their meeting Emmeline Pankhurst called for the right for women to work in industries traditionally dominated by men.
By 1918, women over 30 finally won the right to vote although it was not until 1928 that women over twenty one had the same rights, and equality with men. A right that should never be taken for granted.
Sources:
Juliet Gardiner and Neil Wenborn, Eds., The History Today Companion to British History, Collins and Brown: London, 1995
Lyn Pykett, Engendering Fictions: The English Novel in the Early Twentieth Century, Edward Arnold: London, 1995
David Crystal, Ed., The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia (2nd Edition), Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1998
Rosemary Gemmell - Professional freelance writer of published short stories and articles in the UK, US and online. Author of historical romance and ...
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