Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst (née Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was the leader of the British suffragette movement which helped women win the right to vote.

Emmeline Pankhurst
Emmeline Pankhurst (c. 1913)
Personal details
Born	15 July 1858 Moss Side, Manchester, England
Died	14 June 1928 (aged 69) Hampstead, London, England
Political party	Women's Party (1917–1919) Conservative Party (1926–1928)

In 1999 Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating: "she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back." She was widely criticized for her militant tactics, but her work helped to achieve women's suffrage in Britain.

After her husband died in 1898, Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organisation dedicated to "deeds, not words". The group became infamous when its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists were sentenced to repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions. As Pankhurst's oldest daughter Christabel took the helm of the WSPU, antagonism between the group and the government grew. Eventually arson became a common tactic among WSPU members, and more moderate organisations spoke out against the Pankhurst family. In 1913 several prominent individuals left the WSPU, among them Pankhurst's daughters Adela and Sylvia. The family rift never healed.

With the advent of the First World War, Emmeline and Christabel called an immediate halt to militant suffrage activism in support of the British Government's stand against the "German Peril". They urged women to aid industrial production and encouraged young men to fight. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act granted votes to women over the age of 30 and the WSPU was disbanded.

Pankhurst transformed the WSPU machinery into the Women's Party, dedicated to promoting women's equality in public life. In her later years she became concerned with the 'Bolshevik menace' and – unhappy with the political alternatives – joined the Conservative Party. She died in 1928, 17 days before women got equal voting rights and was commemorated two years later with a statue in London's Victoria Tower Gardens.

Emmeline Pankhurst Media

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  Lydia Becker was an early influence on Pankhurst and may have been enamoured of Pankhurst's father

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  Richard Pankhurst first caught Goulden's eye when she spied his "beautiful hand" opening the door of a taxi as he arrived at a public meeting in 1878

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  St Luke's Church, Pendleton

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  Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch, daughter of US suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, became friends with Pankhurst through their work in the Women's Franchise League.

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  Keir Hardie worked with the Pankhursts on a variety of political issues and later became a very close friend of Sylvia's.

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  Christabel Pankhurst, often called the favourite child, spent almost 15 years working by her mother's side for women's suffrage.

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  The WSPU. It was founded at Pankhurst's home on 62 Nelson Street, Manchester in 1903. The Grade II* Victoria Villa is now home to the Pankhurst Centre.

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  Pankhurst (wearing prison clothes) described her first incarceration as: "like a human being in the process of being turned into a wild beast."

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  Portrait badge of Emmeline Pankhurst – c. 1909 – Sold in large numbers by the WSPU to raise funds for its cause – Museum of London

Other websites

• Media related to Emmeline Pankhurst at Wikimedia Commons
• Works written by or about Emmeline Pankhurst at Wikisource
• Quotations related to Emmeline Pankhurst at Wikiquote