Emmeline Pankhurst

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Emmeline Pankhurst (July 4, 1858 – June 14, 1928) was one of the founders of the British suffragette movement. It is the name of "Mrs Pankhurst", more than any other, which is associated with the struggle for the enfranchisement of women in the period immediately preceding World War I.

She was born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, England to abolitionist Robert Goulden and feminist Sophia Crane, and married Richard Marsden Pankhurst, a barrister, in Salford in 1879.^[1] Richard Pankhurst was already a supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882.^[2]

Contents 1 Foundation of suffrage organisations 2 Writings (selection) 3 Secondary literature 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Foundation of suffrage organisations

In 1889, Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, but her campaign was interrupted by her husband's death in 1898.^[3] In 1903 she founded the better-known Women's Social and Political Union, an organization most famous for its militancy which began in 1905.^[4] Its members included Annie Kenney, Emily Wilding Davison who was killed by the King's horse in the 1913 Epsom Derby as the result of a suffragette protest, and the composer Dame Ethel Mary Smyth.^[5][6][7] Pankhurst was joined in the movement by her daughters, Christabel Pankhurst and Sylvia Pankhurst, both of whom would make a substantial contribution to the campaign in different ways.^[8] Her other daughter, Adela Pankhurst emigrated to Australia where she was politically active in first the Communist Party of Australia and then the fascist Australia First Movement.^[9] At one point, Pankhurst lived in an apartment that was located at 159 Knightsbridge, London. The address still exists, but is now operating as The Knightsbridge Green Hotel.

Pankhurst's tactics for drawing attention to the movement led to her being imprisoned several times but, because of her high profile, she did not at first endure the same privations as many of the imprisoned working-class suffragettes. However, she did experience force-feeding after going on hunger strike on various occasions. Her approach to the campaign did not endear her to everyone, and there were splits within the movement as a result. Her autobiography, My Own Story, was published in 1914.

In 1914, World War I broke out, and Pankhurst felt that nothing should interfere with her country's efforts to win. All attempts to gain votes for women were put on hold, and her efforts were instead directed to urging women to take over men's jobs, so that the men could go and fight in the war. With support from David Lloyd George, she organised a parade of 30,000 women, using £2,000 funding from the government, to encourage employers to let women take over men's jobs in industry. On September 8, 1914, Christabel re-appeared at the London Opera House, after her long exile, to utter a declaration on "The German Peril". Pankhurst toured the country, making recruiting speeches. Her supporters handed white feathers to every young man they encountered wearing civilian dress, and bobbed up at Hyde Park meetings with placards: "Intern Them All".

Enlistment of the unenlisted was of the highest priority. As Sylvia Pankhurst pointed out in her chronicle, The Suffragette Movement, her mother and sister rallied their followers in an effort to reroute the militant momentum which they had so successfully orchestrated in the struggle for suffrage:

Characteristically, Mrs. Pankhurst threw all her energies and all her influence into the effort, which now, designated itself pro-war and pro-conscription. Although not all of the members of the suffrage movement backed the war, Mrs. Pankhurst’s influence swayed many to follow her lead. Giving its energies wholly to the prosecution of the War, it rushed to a furious extreme, its Chauvinism unexampled amongst all the other women’s societies.^[10]

The British government started to implement voting rights for women, across the then United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in March 1918. While the Representation of the People Act 1918 only gave voting rights to women over 30, and that with a property qualification, while all men over 21 were enfranchised, the Suffragettes nevertheless saw it as a great victory. In November 1918, women over 21 were given the right to become Members of Parliament — meaning women could be MPs and not be allowed to vote. In 1928, women finally achieved equal voting rights to men in the UK.

Pankhurst died at the age of 69, ten years after seeing her most ardently pursued goal come to fruition.

[edit] Writings (selection)

• The Powers and Duties of Poor Law Guardians in Times of Exceptional Distress, 1895.
• The Present Position of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in: The Case for Women’s Suffrage, hg.v. B. Villiers, 1907.
• The Importance of the Vote, 1908.
• Suffrages Speeches from the Dock, 1912.
• My own Story (1914), Reissued by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1985.

[edit] Secondary literature

• Piers Brendon, Eminent Edwardians (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980) ISBN 0-395-29195-X
• Linda Hoy, Profiles: Emmeline Pankhurst, 1985
• Martin Pugh, The Pankhursts, Penguin 2002
• Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals, Reissued in 1984 by Chatto & Windus
• June Purvis Emmeline Pankhurst: a biography Routledge, 2002

[edit] See also

• Pankhurst Centre in Manchester
• History of feminism
• Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Rollyson, Carl, "A Conservative Revolutionary: Emmeline Pankhurst", Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2003.
• Marriage to Dr Richard Pankhurst, 1879