August marks the th anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Amendment. With her daughters, Pankhurst led a militant campaign to win British women the right to vote. Her supporters in the WPSU organized protests, smashed windows, burned buildings, and staged hunger strikes to fight for their cause.
In the fall of , Pankhurst was on the run from a three-year prison sentence, and on her way to the United States. Under U. By prevailing standards, both of these exclusions applied to Pankhurst. As the leader of the largest woman suffrage organization in the United States, Shaw worried that Pankhurst would distract attention and financial support away from the domestic suffrage cause.
Different feminist groups declared that excluding Parkhurst would confirm how easily disenfranchised women were ignored by the federal government. At the same time, other Americans were openly hostile to Pankhurst.
When Pankhurst reached Ellis Island on October 18, she was interrogated by immigration inspectors. She later worked to promote the Married Women's Property Bill, which was drafted in by her husband. In , Richard Pankhurst ran unsuccessfully as an independent for a seat in Parliament. Disappointed by his loss, Richard Pankhurst was nonetheless encouraged by an invitation from the Liberal Party to run again in —this time in London. The Pankhursts moved to London, where Richard lost his bid to secure a seat in Parliament.
Determined to earn money for her family—and to free her husband to pursue his political ambitions—Pankhurst opened a shop selling fancy home furnishings in the Hempstead section of London. Ultimately, the business failed because it was located in a poor part of London, where there was little demand for such items.
Pankhurst closed the shop in Later that year, the family suffered the loss of 4-year-old Frank, who died of diphtheria. Although the League's main purpose was to gain the vote for women, Richard Pankhurst tried to take on too many other causes, alienating the League's members.
The WFL disbanded in Having failed to achieve their political goals in London and troubled by money woes, the Pankhursts returned to Manchester in Joining the newly formed Labor Party in , the Pankhursts worked with the Party to help feed the multitudes of poor and unemployed people in Manchester. Pankhurst was named to the board of "poor law guardians," whose job it was to supervise the local workhouse—an institute for destitute people.
Pankhurst was shocked by conditions in the workhouse, where inhabitants were fed and clothed inadequately and young children were forced to scrub floors. Pankhurst helped to improve conditions immensely; within five years, she had even established a school in the workhouse. In , Pankhurst suffered another devastating loss when her husband of 19 years died suddenly of a perforated ulcer. Widowed at only 40 years old, Pankhurst learned that her husband had left his family deeply in debt.
She was forced to sell furniture to pay off debts and accepted a paying position in Manchester as registrar of births, marriages, and deaths. As a registrar in a working-class district, Pankhurst encountered many women who struggled financially.
Her exposure to these women—as well as her experience at the workhouse—reinforced her sense that women were victimized by unfair laws. In Pankhurst's time, women were at the mercy of laws which favored men. If a woman died, her husband would receive a pension; a widow, however, might not receive the same benefit. Although progress had been made by the passage of the Married Women's Property Act which granted women the right to inherit property and to keep the money they earned , those women without an income might very well find themselves living at the workhouse.
Pankhurst committed herself to securing the vote for women because she knew their needs would never be met until they gained a voice in the law-making process. The organization, whose simple motto was "Votes for Women," accepted only women as members and actively sought out those from the working class.
The new organization held weekly meetings at Pankhurst's home and membership grew steadily. The group adopted white, green, and purple as its official colors, symbolizing purity, hope, and dignity. Dubbed by the press "suffragettes" meant as an insulting play on the word "suffragists" , the women proudly embraced the term and called their organization's newspaper Suffragette. The following spring, Pankhurst attended the Labor Party's conference, bringing with her a copy of the women's suffrage bill written years earlier by her late husband.
She was assured by the Labor Party that her bill would be up for discussion during its May session. When that long-anticipated day came, Pankhurst and other members of the WSPU crowded the House of Commons , expecting that their bill would come up for debate.
To their great disappointment, members of Parliament MPs staged a "talk out," during which they intentionally prolonged their discussion on other topics, leaving no time for the women's suffrage bill. The group of angry women formed a protest outside, condemning the Tory government for its refusal to address the issue of women's voting rights.
In —a general election year—the women of WSPU found ample opportunities to make themselves heard. During a Liberal Party rally held in Manchester on October 13, , Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenny repeatedly posed the question to speakers: "Will the liberal government give votes to women?
This created an uproar, leading to the pair being forced outside, where they held a protest. Both were arrested; refusing to pay their fines, they were sent to jail for a week. These were the first of what would amount to nearly 1, arrests of suffragists in the coming years.
This highly publicized incident brought more attention to the cause of women's suffrage than any previous event; it also brought a surge of new members. Emboldened by its growing numbers and infuriated by the government's refusal to address the issue of women's voting rights, the WSPU developed a new tactic—heckling politicians during speeches.
The days of the early suffrage societies—polite, ladylike letter-writing groups—had given way to a new kind of activism. Nearly women took part in the rally and in the ensuing march to the House of Commons, where small groups of women were allowed in to speak to their MPs after initially being locked out. Not a single member of Parliament would agree to work for women's suffrage, but Pankhurst considered the event a success.
An unprecedented number of women had come together to stand for their beliefs and had shown that they would fight for the right to vote. Pankhurst, shy as a child, evolved into a powerful and compelling public speaker. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so.
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