Emmeline Pankhurst
Born in Manchester, Greater ManchesterBorn on 14th of July 1858
Died in London
Died on 14th of June 1928
Quotes from Emmeline Pankhurst
'Every time you liberate a woma'... More
Emmeline Pankhurst was born Emmeline Goulden on 14th July 1858 and died 14th June 1928. She was a leading British women's rights activist, famous for leading the campaign to win the right for women to vote. She was born on Moss Side, Manchester, the eldest of 10 children, to Robert and Sophia Goulden, a couple with a tradition of radical politics. After going to school in Manchester, she attended the Ecole Normale, a finishing school in Paris, between 1873 to 1877. She returned to Manchester and in 1879 married local barrister, Dr Richard Marsden Pankhurst. He was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement and involved in implementing the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, which allowed women to keep earnings or property acquired before and after marriage, as well as the first parliamentary bill proposing women have the vote - the Women's Disabilities Removal Bill. The couple had 4 children in their first 6 years of marriage together, and in 1889 Emily Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, which fought to allow married women the right to vote in local elections. Her husband died in 1898, leaving Emily in great shock, resulting in her putting her campaign on hold. However, in 1903 she went on to found the militant Women's Social and Political Union whose members became known as the 'suffragettes'. Emily's daughters, Christabel and Sylvia joined her in the cause. The suffragettes shocked British society with their demonstrations, window smashing, arson and hunger strikes. In 1913 suffragette, Emily Davison, famously threw herself under the King's horse at the Derby as a protest at the government's failure to grant women the vote. Emily Pankhurst was arrested many times herself and went on numerous hunger strikes whilst in prison. She published her autobiography, 'My Own Story' in 1914 the year war broke out, and then turned her attentions to supporting the war effort. She put her campaign on hold and instead urged women to take over men's jobs in industry so that they could join up. The British government gradually started to implement voting rights for women across Britain and Ireland, and when the Representation of the People Act came into force in 1918, giving women over 30 with property the right to vote, the suffragettes saw it as a victory. When WWI was over, Emily toured the USA and Canada, lecturing about venereal disease. She gradually lost her socialist beliefs, and when she returned to Britain in 1925 she joined the Conservative Party and refused to speak to her daughter Sylvia when she had an illegitimate child. Emily Pankhurst died on 14th June 1928, shortly after women were granted equal voting rights with men. She is buried in Brompton Cemetry in London. The Pankhurst Centre in Manchester is a women-only work and social space housing the suffragette museum, located in Emily Pankhurst's old home.
Buried here
Links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pankhurst_emmeline BBC Profile
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrageengland/p/pankhurst.ht Womens History
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