Pankhurst, Emmeline ( née GOULDEN)


born July 14, 1858
died June 14, 1928

Emily Pankhurst

Together with her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, Emmeline Pankhurst played a major role in the suffragette movement which secured the vote for British women. Born into a wealthy Manchester cotton family, she married local lawyer and reknowned radical Richard Marsden Pankhurst in 1879.

Together with her husband (who was the author of the first woman suffrage bill in Great Britain (late 1860s) and of the Married Women's Property acts (1870, 1882), Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, which in 1894 secured the right for married women to vote in local elections (but not to the House of Commons).

In 1903, together with her daughters and others, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which provided a clarion call to action and made women's suffrage a force to be reckoned with. In 1905, after being thrown out of a Liberal Party meeting for demanding 'Will the Liberal Party give women the vote?', Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were arrested for assaulting a policeman and obstruction. Having refused to pay their fines, they were sent to prison becoming Britain's first (of an eventual 1800) women political prisoners.

From 1906 Emmeline Pankhurst directed WSPU activities from London and the sequence of events in the suffrage cause began. These included lobbying of Parliament (she regarded the Liberal government as the main obstacle, campaigning against the party's candidates at elections and interrupting meetings of Cabinet ministers), torchlight processions, rallies and demonstrations. In 1908-09, Mrs. Pankhurst was jailed three times, once for issuing a leaflet calling on the people to "rush the House of Commons."

Campaigning in Trafalgar Square

Campaigning in Trafalgar Square, 1908

By 1912, the WSPU had become increasingly militant, mainly in the form of arson and attacks on property. Mrs. Pankhurst herself was again imprisoned for three years for an attempt to blow up the Prime Minister's house for which she claimed responsibility. During her sentence, she went on hunger strike 12 times within a single year; each time she was released under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act of 1913 (the "Cat and Mouse Act") until she began to regain her health and was then reimprisoned again.

Emily Pankhurst being carried off

Being carried off after demonstrating outside Buckingham Palace, 1914

During World War I (1914-1918) the suffrage campaign was called off and all suffragist prisoners were released. During the war, Mrs. Pankhurst visited the United States, Canada, and Russia to encourage the industrial mobilization of women and to lecture on woman suffrage.

In 1926, after returning to England from living in the United States, she was adopted as a Conservative candidate in the East End of London. Sadly, her health failed before she could be elected and she died of medical complications from which she had suffered since her hunger strikes. She did however live to see the introduction of the Representation of the People Act of 1928 which was passed shortly before her death and established voting equality for men and women.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pankhurst, Emmeline (1914) My Own Story

Pankhurst, Sylvia (1935, reissued 1969) The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst

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Last modified on June 14, 1995