Emmeline Pankhurst (; née Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland in 1918, partially due to her role in the White Feather Campaign. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of women for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Born in the Moss Side district of Manchester to politically active parents, Pankhurst was 14 when she was introduced to the women's suffrage movement. She founded and became involved with the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for both married and unmarried women. When that organisation broke apart, she tried to join the left-leaning Independent Labour Party through her friendship with socialist Keir Hardie but was initially refused membership by the local branch on account of her sex. While working as a Poor Law Guardian, she was shocked at the harsh conditions she encountered in Manchester's workhouses.
In 1903, Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words".E. Pankhurst 1914, p. 38. The group identified as independent from – and often in opposition to – political parties. It became known for physical confrontations: Its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists received repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions, and were often force-fed. As Pankhurst's eldest daughter Christabel took leadership of the WSPU, antagonism between the group and the government grew. Eventually, the group adopted bombings and arson as a tactic, and more moderate organisations spoke out against the Pankhurst family. In 1913, several prominent individuals left the WSPU, among them Pankhurst's younger daughters, Adela and Sylvia. Emmeline was so furious that she "gave [Adela] a ticket, £20, and a letter of introduction to a suffragette in Australia, and firmly insisted that she emigrate."Hochschild, Adam (2011). To End All Wars, p. 71. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston; . Adela complied and the family rift was never healed. Sylvia became a socialist.
With the advent of the First World War, Emmeline and Christabel called an immediate halt to the freedom fighting in support of the British government's stand against the "German Peril".Quoted in Purvis 2002, p. 270. Emmeline organised and led a massive procession called the Women's Right to Serve demonstration to illustrate women's contribution to the war effort. Emmeline and Christabel urged women to aid industrial production and encouraged young men to fight.
In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted votes to all men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30. This discrepancy was intended to ensure that men did not become minority voters as a consequence of the huge number of deaths suffered during the First World War.
Pankhurst transformed the WSPU machinery into the Women's Party, which was dedicated to promoting women's equality in public life. In her later years, she became concerned with what she perceived as the menace posed by Bolshevism and joined the Conservative Party. She was selected as the Conservative candidate for Whitechapel and St Georges in 1927.Purvis 2002, p. 248. She died on 14 June 1928, only weeks before the Conservative government's Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 extended the vote to all women over 21 years of age on 2 July 1928. Pankhurst was commemorated two years later with a statue in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament.
Early life
Emmeline Goulden was born on Sloan Street in the Moss Side district of Manchester on 15 July 1858. Although her birth certificate says otherwise, she believed and later claimed her birthday was a day earlier, on Bastille Day (14 July). Most biographies, including those written by her daughters, repeat this claim. Feeling a kinship with the female revolutionaries who stormed the Bastille, Pankhurst said in 1908: "I have always thought that the fact that I was born on that day had some kind of influence over my life."Quoted in Purvis 2002, p. 9; Bartley, pp. 15–16. Purvis suggests several possible reasons for the confusion. She notes that the name is spelled "Emiline" on the certificate. The family into which she was born had been steeped in political agitation for generations; her mother, Sophia, was a Manx woman from the Isle of Man who was descended from men who were charged with social unrest and slander.Bartley, p. 16; Liddington and Norris, p. 74.
In 1881, the Isle of Man became the first place in the British Isles to grant women the right to vote in their national elections (the Isle does not return members to the UK Parliament)."125th Anniversary of Women's Suffrage on the Isle of Man" . 10 October 2006. Isle of Man Government; retrieved 5 August 2008.Bartley, pp. 16–18. Her father, Robert Goulden, was a self-made manworking his way from errand boy to manufacturerfrom a humble Manchester family with its own background of political activity. Robert's mother, a fustian cutter, worked with the Anti-Corn Law League, and his father was press-ganged into the Royal Navy and present at the Peterloo massacre, when cavalry charged and broke up a crowd demanding parliamentary reform.Bartley, pp. 18–19; Purvis 2002, p. 9; Phillips, p. 145.
The Gouldens' first son died at the age of three, but they had 10 other children; Emmeline was the eldest of five daughters. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Seedley, an inner city suburb of Salford, where her father had co-founded a small business. Goulden was also active in local politics, serving for several years on the Salford town council. He was an enthusiastic supporter of dramatic organisations including the Manchester Athenaeum and the Dramatic Reading Society. He owned a theatre in Salford for several years, where he played the leads in several Shakespeare plays. Emmeline absorbed an appreciation of drama and theatrics from her father, which she used later in social activism.Bartley, pp. 20–21; Pugh, p. 7.
The Gouldens included their children in social activism. To support abolitionism, Robert welcomed American abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher when he visited Manchester. Sophia used the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Beecher's sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, as a regular source of bedtime stories for her sons and daughters. In her 1914 autobiography My Own Story, Emmeline recalls visiting a bazaar at a young age to collect money for newly freed slaves in the U.S.E. Pankhurst 1914, pp. 1–2; Bartley, pp. 18–19, 20–21; Purvis 2002, p. 10.
Emmeline began to read when she was very young, with one source claiming that she was reading as early as the age of three.Purvis 2002, p. 9. In her autobiography, Pankhurst wrote on p. 3: "I do not remember a time when I could not read." She read the Odyssey at the age of nine and enjoyed the works of John Bunyan, especially his 1678 story The Pilgrim's Progress.E. Pankhurst 1914, p. 3. Another of her favourite books was Thomas Carlyle's three-volume treatise The French Revolution: A History, and she later said the work "remained all [her] life a source of inspiration".
Despite her avid consumption of books, she was not given the educational advantages enjoyed by her brothers. Their parents believed that the girls needed most to learn the art of "making home attractive" and other skills desired by potential husbands.E. Pankhurst 1914, p. 6. She adds: "It used to puzzle me to understand why I was under such a particular obligation to make home attractive to my brothers. We were on excellent terms of friendship, but it was never suggested to them as a duty that they make home attractive to me." The Gouldens deliberated carefully about future plans for their sons' education, but they expected their daughters to marry young and avoid paid work.Purvis 2002, p. 11; Bartley, pp. 22–23. Although they supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, the Gouldens believed their daughters incapable of the goals of their male peers. Feigning sleep one evening as her father came into her bedroom, Goulden heard him pause and say to himself, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad."
It was through her parents' interest in women's suffrage that Goulden was first introduced to the subject. Her mother received and read the Women's Suffrage Journal, and Goulden grew fond of its editor Lydia Becker.Purvis 2002, p. 20. At the age of 14, she returned home from school one day to find her mother on her way to a public meeting about women's voting rights. After learning that Becker would be speaking, she insisted on attending. Goulden was enthralled by Becker's address and later wrote, "I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist."E. Pankhurst 1914, p. 9; Bartley, p. 22; Purvis 2002, p. 12. A year later, she arrived in Paris to attend the École Normale de Neuilly. The school provided its female pupils with classes in chemistry and bookkeeping, in addition to traditionally feminine arts such as embroidery. Her roommate was Noémie, the daughter of Victor Henri Rochefort, who had been imprisoned in New Caledonia for his support of the Paris Commune. The girls shared tales of their parents' political exploits and remained good friends for years.E. Pankhurst 1914, p. 10; E. S. Pankhurst 1931, pp. 54–55; Bartley, pp. 23–25; Purvis 2002, pp. 12–13. Emmeline was so fond of Noémie and the school that she returned with her sister Mary Jane as a parlour boarder after graduating. Noémie had married a Swiss painter and quickly found a suitable French husband for her English friend. When Robert refused to provide a dowry for his daughter, the man withdrew his offer of marriage and Emmeline returned, miserable, to Manchester.Purvis 2002, p. 14; Bartley, p. 25; West, pp. 245–246; C. Pankhurst, pp. 17–18.
Marriage and family
In the autumn of 1878, at the age of 20, Emmeline met and began a relationship with Richard Pankhurst, a barrister who had advocated women's suffrage – and other causes, including freedom of speech and education reform – for years. Richard, 44 years old when they met, had earlier resolved to remain a bachelor to better serve the public. Their mutual affection was powerful, but the couple's happiness was diminished by the death of his mother the following year. Sophia Jane Goulden chastised her daughter for "throwing herself" at RichardE. S. Pankhurst 1931, p. 56. and advised her without success to exhibit more aloofness. Emmeline suggested to Richard that they avoid the legal formalities of marriage by entering into a free union; he objected on the grounds that she would be excluded from political life as an unmarried woman. He noted that his colleague Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy had faced social condemnation before she formalised her marriage to Ben Elmy. Emmeline Goulden agreed, and they had their wedding in St Luke's Church, Pendleton on 18 December 1879.Purvis 2002, pp. 15–17; Pugh, pp. 19–24; E. S. Pankhurst 1931, pp. 55–57; C. Pankhurst, pp. 20–22; Bartley, pp. 25–27.