1900s-1920s
UK pressure group

1. Introduction
2. Stories
3. Biographical summary
4. See also
5. Further reading
6. References

1. Introduction

The suffragette movement, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, was a militant offshoot of the moderate suffragist movement, led by Millicent Garrett Fawcett. The suffragists were more numerous but the suffragettes made more dramatic headlines. The Liberal government was divided about seeking to change the electoral roll at a time of constitutional crisis, with some, including Churchill, being concerned that it could jeopardise the Liberals’ anti-poverty and Irish home rule initiatives. Suffragettes disrupted some of Churchill’s speeches and Theresa Garnett attacked him with a whip in Bristol. Campaigning was interrupted by World War I, after which many women gained the right to the vote, which was extended to all in 1928.

2. Stories

• The development of political participation was a slow process through the 1800s and early 1900s.
• Chaining themselves to railings was one of the suffragettes’ methods but it was not common.
• In the 1911 census, Emily Davison’s residence was listed as ‘Found hiding in Crypt of Westminster Hall’ in the Houses of Parliament.
• The Pankhurst family was dedicated to suffragette activism but split over contrasting attitudes to politics and war.
• In 1911, Churchill proposed a referendum to resolve the issue of female suffrage.
• Prime Minister H.H. Asquith was heavily bruised by suffragettes and Churchill was attacked with a whip.
• Suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s husband initially proposed to her elder sister Elizabeth, who turned him down to focus on her career.

The development of political participation was a slow process through the 1800s and early 1900s.

In the early 1800s, only about 10 percent of men could vote, mainly aristocratic property owners, and no women. Suffrage (the right to vote) was only one issue in relation to political participation: other issues included lack of or distorted representation, financial barriers to being a member of parliament, coercion, and corruption. ‘Chartists’ (supporters of the People’s Charter of 1838) campaigned for universal adult male suffrage, secret ballots, no property qualification to be an MP, pay for MPs, equally sized constituencies and annual elections. Although the Chartists were suppressed, some reforms took place and by 1900 nearly 60 percent of adult males could vote but with a property restriction and still no women. Only men could be MPs.

The National Society for Women’s Suffrage (‘NSWS’) was formed in 1867 by scientist Lydia Becker. Millicent Garrett (later Millicent Garrett Fawcett) joined the same year, becoming the head of its successor, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (‘NUWSS’), in 1897. Its members were generally known as ‘suffragists’.

Emmeline Pankhurst became disillusioned with slow political progress and formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (‘WSPU’) in 1903, with the motto ‘Deeds not Words’. Pankhurst’s branch was described in 1906 as ‘suffragettes’ by Daily Mail journalist Charles E. Hands and the WSPU adopted the nickname.* Their methods became increasingly violent, stopping short of loss of life, but sometimes only just.** Their aim was suffrage on the same basis as men, which excluded much of the working class at the time.

There has been much debate about the relative effectiveness of the two groups. The militants gained more publicity but their use of violence caused a backlash. World War I was a turning point with considerable societal change including high female employment in traditionally male jobs. The Representation of the People Act 1918, supported by Churchill, gave the vote to all men over 21 and to about two thirds of women (those over 30, with a property restriction). Nine months later, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 enabled women to stand for election as MPs. Voting was extended to all women over 21 in 1928.

* The ‘-ette’ suffix indicates a diminutive, feminine and/or imitation form of a word; Charles E. Hands used the term ‘suffragette’ in a derogatory way. It was avoided by suffrage campaigners in many other countries, notably the USA, to avoid its possible pejorative use. Few UK ‘suffragettes’ had qualms about adopting the term. Other groups have also embraced initially disparaging descriptions, such as ‘Tories’, originally used to refer to anti-Cromwell Irish outlaws, and ‘Whigs’, originally used to describe anti-Catholic Scottish cattle-drovers.

** Simon Webb claims that ‘History has been kind to the suffragettes’,¹ considering the level of violence that they used (see below).

Chaining themselves to railings was one of the suffragettes’ methods but it was not common.

The suffragettes initially restricted themselves to peaceful methods such as public speeches, demonstrations with placards and distribution of publications. However, facing lack of change, they became more confrontational. Law and order breaches led to arrests, trials and publicity. High-profile prisoners were paraded by the WSPU on release.

Politicians’ public speeches were disrupted and Flora Drummond hired a boat on the River Thames to berate MPs on the terrace of the Houses of Parliament (she was known as ‘the General’ for her penchant for wearing a military-style uniform). Leaflets were dropped from balconies onto theatre and cinema audiences and restaurant meals were interrupted with speeches. Muriel Matters hired a small dirigible airship to drop leaflets on Westminster but was pushed off course by the weather.*

Stone-throwing became part of the protests. Emmeline Pankhurst practised by aiming at trees before becoming proficient at breaking windows. Suffragettes’ targets included politicians’ houses and shops, sometimes using hammers instead of stones.

Arson and bombing were added to the methods, targeting government properties, churches, aristocratic males’ sports facilities (particularly golf clubs) and private homes, including a new house being built for David Lloyd George. The Suffragette newspaper reported over 300 such incidents in 1913 to 1914. Another development was the slashing of artworks at public galleries. Physical assaults included the use of whips on Asquith and Churchill and a thrown hatchet which narrowly missed Asquith but injured another MP. Self-defence was taught by martial arts expert Edith Garrud, which became known as ‘suffrajitsu’.

Jailed suffragettes started using hunger strikes in protest at not being classed as political prisoners and therefore being kept in poorer conditions. As home secretary, Churchill amended the legislation but Emmeline Pankhurst encouraged hunger strikes to continue. Authorities responded with force-feeding and the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ of 1913 which allowed temporary release for recovery of health, then re-arrest.

The main episode involving chains and railings was outside 10 Downing Street in 1908 as a diversion while Flora Drummond gained entrance to disrupt a cabinet meeting but she was intercepted and ejected. Another Downing Street incident involved a new postal regulation in 1909 that allowed delivery of humans. Two suffragettes were posted by the WSPU to Prime Minister Asquith but delivery was refused at the front door.

* Muriel Matters belonged to the Women’s Freedom League which split from the WSPU in 1907 because of objections to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst’s non-democratic rule of the WSPU. The Women’s Freedom League used non-violent direct action such as non-payment of taxes.

In the 1911 census, Emily Davison’s residence was listed as ‘Found hiding in Crypt of Westminster Hall’ in the Houses of Parliament.

Emily Davison would become well known in 1913 for stepping into the path of King George V’s racehorse during the Derby at Epsom Downs and dying from her injuries. Prior to that she was known to the Metropolitan Police for hiding three times in the Houses of Parliament, once to try and evade being listed in a census* (a slogan was ‘If women don’t count, neither shall they be counted’) and twice to try and enter the Commons chamber to ask a question. She was found each time and arrested but not charged. On census night she was discovered in a cleaning cupboard, after which an official entered her name on a census form, as did her landlady, so she was registered twice.

She was also known for throwing objects through parliament windows and was added to the ‘Index Expungatoris‘, a list of people banned from the site. She commenced the practice of setting fire to the contents of letter boxes. Although admired for her determination, she tended to act alone without the approval of the WSPU, causing some friction.

Her actions at the Derby have been subject to much speculation. She had previously tried to commit suicide in prison to protest against force feeding, throwing herself off a staircase but getting caught in some netting. There have been suggestions about another suicide attempt or misjudging the timing of the passing riders, but it seems that she was trying to place a suffragette banner on the king’s horse, regardless of the danger.

After being struck, she fell into a coma and died four days later. A funeral procession in London was conducted by around 6000 women. Underneath her name on the family gravestone in Morpeth, north-east England, is the WSPU motto ‘Deeds not Words’.

The horse Anmer was uninjured despite a half-somersault. The jockey Herbert Jones sustained a cracked rib and mild concussion. He laid a wreath at Emmeline Pankhurst’s funeral fifteen years later with the words ‘To do honour to the memory of Mrs Pankhurst and Miss Emily Davidson’.²

* It is sometimes said that Davison was trying to ensure that her address was given as the Houses of Parliament, a symbolic adoption of its power, but this is doubtful, considering her attempt to hide and the overall objective of boycotting the 1911 census. Many women stayed up all night at special events and spoiled their census forms by writing ‘No vote, no census’.

The Pankhurst family was dedicated to suffragette activism but split over contrasting attitudes to politics and war.

Emmeline is the best known in the family, commemorated with a statue at Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament (not to be confused with that of Millicent Garrett Fawcett in Parliament Square). It is part of a memorial that includes a bronze plaque of her eldest daughter Christabel who ran the WSPU while her mother travelled the country giving speeches.

Emmeline and Christabel became strong supporters of the World War I effort, including suspending the suffragette campaign and promoting female participation in the workplace. They advocated conscription for both males and females, but only the former was introduced, in 1916. They ended their opposition to party political affiliation by accepting Liberal government funding to help counter union resistance to female employment.

Later, both Christabel and Emmeline sought election as Conservative MPs, without success. Christabel was made a dame for public and social services in 1936. She emigrated to the USA where she became active in Seventh Day Adventism.

Less well known are Emmeline’s younger daughters Sylvia and Adela, left-wing in the 1910s and anti-war throughout their lives. Sylvia used her artistic talents to promote the WSPU, including designing some of its awards. She was frequently arrested and undertook hunger strikes but was ejected from the WSPU for aligning herself with socialism. The split with her mother was reinforced when Sylvia refused to marry the unnamed father of her child. After developing an interest in Ethiopia through Italian contacts, she moved there until her death in 1960, when she was given a state funeral by Emperor Haile Selassie for her anti-colonial advocacy.

Adela became attracted to socialism in her teens. She was jailed on various occasions but disliked the WSPU’s increasing militancy. Viewing her as divisive, her mother gave her £20 (equivalent to £2,300 today) and a one-way ticket to Australia, where she became right wing but still anti-war and was detained during World War II for promoting peace with Japan. She never returned to the UK but was reconciled with her mother by correspondence shortly before her mother’s death.

In 1911, Churchill proposed a referendum to resolve the issue of female suffrage.

For party politicians, a key concern about extending the suffrage in the early 1900s was which party would benefit the most. The Liberal government, including Churchill, was facing considerable Conservative opposition to their radical social programme (see Budget Protest League) and to their intention to provide an element of home rule in Ireland. Some Liberal campaigners felt that fighting poverty and poor working conditions were more of an issue than suffrage. Others, however, saw the extension of suffrage as a necessary part of overall progress.

In a letter to Asquith in 1911, Churchill raised three queries: whether the majority of women wanted to vote;* whether the timing was right for electoral roll change; and whether the country had been properly consulted. Proceeding without a clear mandate would divide the Liberals at a critical time, he said. He proposed a referendum, partly in the belief that it would support the status quo.

Some of Churchill’s public speeches were interrupted by suffragettes, particularly during election campaigning in Manchester North West in 1908. The suffragettes claimed to have made a significant contribution to his defeat. Later that year in a Dundee by-election, Mary Molony rang a large bell every time Churchill tried to speak.

Churchill was home secretary on ‘Black Friday’ in 1910 when police arrested 115 suffragettes during a protest outside parliament. He insisted that all charges be dropped and made a complaint to the Metropolitan Police commissioner about the police’s behaviour, no doubt partly for political self-protection. Christabel Pankhurst was quoted in the Times as saying that Churchill had ordered the police assaults. He considered suing for libel but did not proceed.

Churchill was initially unwelcoming towards female MPs, reportedly saying to Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in the House of Commons*: ‘I find a woman’s intrusion into the House of Commons as embarrassing as if she burst into my bathroom when I had nothing to defend myself, not even a sponge’. She is said to have responded, ‘Winston, you’re not handsome enough to have worries of that kind’.³

* This is not as pejorative as it sounds today. There is still uncertainty about whether the majority of women wanted to vote in the early 1900s. See, for example, Julia Bush, Women Against the Vote: Female Anti-Suffragism in Britain (OUP Oxford, 2007).

** The first female elected as an MP was Irish revolutionary Constance Markiewicz in 1918, but she did not take her seat, in keeping with Sinn Féin party policy.

Prime Minister H.H. Asquith was heavily bruised by suffragettes and Churchill was attacked with a whip.

Asquith was against extending the vote and became a leading suffragette target. During the course of a single day in 1909, he was assaulted upon leaving church in the morning, again in the afternoon on a golf course, and had stones thrown through his dining room window in the evening. Churchill’s wife Clementine wrote to him that Asquith was ‘black & blue from the repeated pummellings of the 3 suffragettes’.⁴

Two months later Churchill was attacked with a whip across the head at Temple Meads railway station in Bristol by Theresa Garnett, who shouted ‘Take that, you brute’.⁵ She was arrested for breach of the peace and jailed for a month. She went on hunger strike, tried to set fire to her cell, passed out from hunger and served the rest of her sentence in hospital. The whip ended up in the Suffragette Museum, formed in 1947, now part of the London Museum.*

In August 1913 Asquith was playing golf in Scotland with his daughter Violet (later Violet Bonham Carter) when he was attacked by two women on the seventeenth green. Violet pulled one woman off him, then the other, then the first again, and so on until detectives arrived.

Shortly afterwards, also in Scotland, a suffragette lay down in front of Asquith’s car to stop it so that three others could launch an attack. Clementine passed on Violet’s description to Winston, reporting that red pepper (similar to the contents of today’s pepper spray) had been thrown through the window and that ‘One of the women slashed Mr Asquith 4 times with a crop over the head, before she was seized – Luckily his face was saved (like yours at Bristol) by the brim of his stiff hat.’⁶

The same year, Harold Laski, a 20-year-old suffragette supporter, tried to explode a bomb at Oxted railway station in Surrey, six miles from Churchill’s country home Chartwell. Laski’s attempt caused only minor damage and he escaped detection. He became a prominent Marxist academic and activist, and chairman of the Labour Party in 1945-46, before being disavowed by his own party after accusations by Churchill and others of being a supporter of violence.

* The Suffragette Museum was created in 1947, becoming part of the London Museum in 1952. Theresa Garnett was photographed there in 1947 with the whip she used on Churchill: Hulton Archive, ‘Whip Hand’, Getty Images, 1947.

Suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s husband initially proposed to her elder sister Elizabeth, who turned him down to focus on her career.

In 1865, Elizabeth Garrett wrote to her parents to say that she had had a marriage proposal from the eminent Henry Fawcett, but that she had turned him down because of her work. She was the first UK-qualified woman to be registered as a UK medical practitioner and later became the first female mayor in England, in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Having established her medical practice, she married businessman James Anderson in 1871.

When she declined Henry Fawcett, Elizabeth told her parents that it was despite knowing that there were ‘few lives I should have liked better than being eyes & hands to a Cambridge Professor & an M.P.’⁷ This referred to Fawcett’s blindness from a shooting accident when he was 25 years old, hit by some stray shot when his father fired at some partridges.

Fawcett dismissed any sense of disadvantage from the injury. Having already qualified as a barrister, he became a professor of political economy, entered politics as a Liberal MP and rose to become postmaster general in the 1880s, a government cabinet position. Meanwhile he also promoted female suffrage.

Soon after being rejected by Elizabeth, Fawcett was at a party and heard Millicent talking about Abraham Lincoln. They were introduced, became close friends and were married two years later. They held meetings about women’s education in their house in Cambridge which eventually led to Millicent’s foundation of Newnham College in 1880 with the support of philosophy professor Henry Sidgwick.

Their daughter, Philippa, studied mathematics at Newnham, although women were not awarded Cambridge degrees until 1948. In 1890, she achieved a final year exam result above that of the Senior Wrangler, the top Cambridge mathematics student. Her father had gained seventh place (‘seventh wrangler’) in 1856 but did not live to celebrate his daughter’s achievement, having died of pleurisy six years earlier at age 51.

After her husband’s death, Millicent worked energetically for various causes until her death 45 years later. They included the protection of children, female education and ‘equal citizenship’, incorporating equal pay and enhanced professional opportunities for women. In 2018, she became the twelfth person and first woman to be commemorated with a statue in Parliament Square, London.*

* Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s statue displays the phrase ‘COURAGE CALLS TO COURAGE EVERYWHERE’, taken from one of her speeches in 1920, referring to Emily Davison. The statue’s plinth displays the names and pictures of 59 people who supported the women’s suffrage movement (55 women, including Emily Davison, and four men).

3. Biographical summary

Occupation	Suffragette activist
Country	UK
Career	Executive committee, Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage (1880). Member of the Fabian Society, Women’s Liberal Association, Women’s Franchise League, Independent Labour Party. Registrar, Chorlton, Manchester. Founder, Women’s Social and Political Union (1903). Suspension of militancy (1914). Promotion of female employment and conscription (1914-18). Unsuccessful bid to become a Conservative MP (1928).
Born	1858 in Moss Side, Hulme, Lancashire, England (16 years older than Churchill)
Father	Robert Goulden (1831-1892)​, businessman
Mother	Sophia Craine (1837-1910), radical intellectual
Siblings	Third of 11 children: first son died in infancy, Walter, Emmeline, Edmund, Mary, Herbert, Effie, Robert, Ada Sophia, Alfred Harold, Eva Gertrude
Education	École Normale de Neuilly, Paris
Spouse	Richard Pankhurst (1834-1898), m. 1879 until his death; barrister, activist
Relationships
Children	1. Christabel (1880-1958), suffragette, co-founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU); emigrated to USA 2. Sylvia (1882-1960), suffragette; emigrated to Ethiopia 3. Francis Henry ‘Frank’ (1884-1888), died of diphtheria, aged four 4. Adela (1885-1961), suffragette; emigrated to Australia; co-founder of Communist Party of Australia then right-wing Australia First Movement 5. Henry Francis ‘Harry’ (1889-1910), died from polio, aged 20
Died	1928 in Hampstead, London, aged 69 (37 years before Churchill)
Buried	Brompton Cemetery, London, UK
Nickname
Height
Time magazine	– (First published in 1923)

4. See also

Early 1900s context

• Bonham Carter, Violet
• Budget Protest League
• Lloyd George, David
• UK strikers

Churchill controversies

• Excessive force
• Women’s political participation

5. Further reading

UK suffrage and political representation

• Chase, Malcolm, Chartism: A New History (Manchester University Press, 2013)
• Johnston, Neil, ‘The History of the Parliamentary Franchise’, UK Parliament, 2013
• Smith, Harold L., The British Women’s Suffrage Campaign 1866-1928 (Taylor & Francis, 2014)
• Van Wingerden, Sophia A., The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain, 1866-1928 (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016)

Individual suffragettes

• Anand, Anita, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary (Bloomsbury USA, 2016) (Sophia Duleep Singh)
• Fisher, Lucy, Emily Wilding Davison: The Martyr Suffragette (Biteback Publishing, 2018)
• Jenkins, Lyndsey, Lady Constance Lytton: Aristocrat, Suffragette, Martyr (Biteback Publishing, 2015)
• Pugh, Martin, The Pankhursts: The History of One Radical Family (Random House, 2013)
• Riddell, Fern, Death in Ten Minutes: The Forgotten Life of Radical Suffragette Kitty Marion (Hodder & Stoughton, 2018)

Individual suffragists

• Goldman, Lawrence, The Blind Victorian: Henry Fawcett and British Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• Holmes, Jennifer, A Working Woman: The Remarkable Life of Ray Strachey (Matador, 2019)
• Wainwright, Robert, Miss Muriel Matters: The Fearless Suffragist Who Fought for Equality (Atlantic Books, 2017)

Churchill and women’s suffrage

• Langworth, Richard M., ‘Churchill, Women’s Suffrage, and “Black Friday,” November 1910’, The Churchill Project – Hillsdale College, 2018
• Langworth, Richard M., ‘Votes for Women’, in Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said (McFarland, 2017), pp. 25–30

Miscellaneous

• Bush, Julia, Women Against the Vote: Female Anti-Suffragism in Britain (OUP Oxford, 2007)
• BBC, ‘Late Night Line-Up – The Suffragettes’, BBC iPlayer, 1968 (includes Violet Bonham Carter)
• Hughes, Annette, ‘The Oxted Railway Station Suffragette Bomb, 1913‘, Exploring Surrey’s Past, undated
• Powell, David, The Edwardian Crisis: Britain 1901–14 (Macmillan Education, Limited, 1996) (also relevant to the Budget Protest League, de Valera and UK strikers)

6. References

1. Simon Webb, The Suffragette Bombers: Britain’s Forgotten Terrorists (Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2014). (p. xi)

2. Paula Bartley, Emmeline Pankhurst (Taylor & Francis, 2012), p. 229.

3. Chris Wrigley, Winston Churchill: A Biographical Companion (ABC-CLIO, 2002), p. 28.

4. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 27.

5. Guardian Archive, ‘Winston Churchill Struck with a Dog Whip’, Guardian, 2019.

6. Churchill and Churchill, pp. 81–82.

7. Lawrence Goldman, The Blind Victorian: Henry Fawcett and British Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 71.