Emmeline Pankhurst was a political activist and leader of the suffragette movement in the United Kingdom. She was born into a family with a history of radical politics. She married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister and a staunch supporter of the social and political emancipation of women, whose beliefs greatly strengthened her own. She created the Women’s Franchise League, an organization that battled for married women’s right to vote in local elections. She helped establish the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization whose actions garnered widespread prominence and whose members were the first to be called “suffragettes.” Christabel and Sylvia, her two daughters, were both involved in the cause. British politicians, the press, and the general public were astounded by the suffragettes’ marches, window breaking, arson, and hunger strikes. Like many suffragette activists, she was repeatedly jailed and went on hunger strike, ending in cruel force-feeding. With the onset of World War I in 1914, this phase of militancy came to an abrupt end. She devoted her efforts to aid the war effort. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 allowed women over 30 the right to vote. She passed away just before women were granted equal voting rights.
Youth and Early Life
Emmeline was born in Manchester, England, on 15 July 1858 to Robert Goulden, a prosperous businessman, and Sophia Jane Craine, a political activist. She was the oldest of her sisters and one of eleven siblings.
She studied The Odyssey, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe before enrolling at the École Normale de Neuilly in Paris at the age of 15.
Her parents did not value their daughters’ education because they expected them to marry early. Her mother received the Women’s Suffrage Journal, and Pankhurst admired the journal’s editor, Lydia Beckwith.
Emmeline Pankhurst’s Career
In 1879, she married Richard Pankhurst, a 44-year-old barrister who had advocated for women’s suffrage, freedom of expression, and school reform.
She received a range of guests at her Russell Square residence, including the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, the Indian parliamentarian Dadabhai Naoroji, the socialist campaigner Herbert Burrows and Annie Besant, and the French anarchist Louise Michel.
In 1888, when the National Society for Women’s Suffrage (NSWS), Britain’s first countrywide coalition of groups pushing for women’s right to vote, split, Pankhurst affiliated herself with the “Parliament Street Society” (PSS).
The PSS refrained from advocating for married women. In 1889, Pankhurst and her husband helped establish the Women’s Franchise League (WFL), which advocated for the right to vote for all women, married and unmarried.
The WFL was regarded as a radical organization because, in addition to its advocacy for women’s suffrage, it championed trade unionism and sought ties with socialist groups.
She met the Scottish socialist Keir Hardie. He was elected to parliament and helped found the Independent Labor Party in 1893. (ILP). She left the WLF in order to join the ILP.
Through the Committee for the Relief of the Unemployed, she donated meals to destitute men and women. In 1894, when she was chosen Chorlton-on-Medlock Poor Law Guardian, she was outraged by the circumstances in the Manchester workhouse.
After the death of her husband in 1898, she resigned from the Board of Guardians and became a paid Registrar of Births and Deaths in Chorlton in order to pay off her debts.
She was elected to the Manchester Board of Education in 1900.
When she attempted to bring a protest resolution to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in 1908, she was charged with obstruction and condemned to six weeks in prison.
Its militancy was characterized by the WSPU’s singular concentration on women’s suffrage. The WSPU insisted on distinguishing itself from political parties that did not prioritize women’s suffrage.
In 1910, she led a protest march of 300 women to confront Prime Minister Asquith, who refused to meet them. The marching women were severely handled by the cops. The event began to be known as Black Friday.
Hunger strikes, window breaking, protest marches, provoking arrests, and incarceration became the norm. She was arrested, released, and re-arrested 12 times in 1912, serving a total of around 30 days in jail.
Upon the outbreak of the First World War, she halted the suffrage movement and the government freed all suffragist prisoners. She founded an adoption home for babies born to unmarried moms in Campden Hill.
In 1916, Pankhurst toured North America, including the United States and Canada, to raise funds and urge the United States government to help Britain. She traveled to Russia and met with Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky.
The 1918 Representation of the People Act eliminated property requirements on men’s suffrage and provided the vote to women over the age of 30, at which point the WSPU transformed into the Women’s Party.
She joined the Conservative Party and campaigned for Parliament in 1928, but her campaign was cut short due to ill health.
Emmeline Pankhurst’s Major Opera
In 1903, she and several comrades broke away from the ILP and created the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which was open only to women and focused on direct action to win the vote.
The efforts of the WSPU gained fruit when the 1918 Representation of the People Act provided women over 30 the right to vote, and when the WSPU rebranded as the Women’s Party.
Personal History and Legacy
Emmeline married Richard Pankhurst in 1878, and the couple had five children named after his deceased brother: Christabel, Estelle Sylvia, Francis Henry, Adela, and Henry Francis. Richard died in 1898 leaving her in deep debt.
Her children were active in the WSPU, but differences between her and her daughter Sylvia became evident when the latter cultivated relations with socialists and gave birth to an illegitimate child, for which she was never forgiven.
She passed away on 14 June 1928 at the age of 69 due to sickness.
Sylvia’s 1931 book, The Suffrage Campaign, condemns her mother’s betrayal of the movement, whilst Christabel’s book, Unshackled: The Story of How We Won the Vote, portrays her as overly altruistic.
Estimated Net Worth
Emmeline is one of the wealthiest and most popular politicians in the world. According to our investigation, Wikipedia, Forbes, and Business Insider, Emmeline Pankhurst has an estimated net worth of $1.5 million.
Trivia
This British suffragette stated, “We must liberate half the human race, the women so that they can assist in liberating the other half.”
This suffragette’s life was dramatized by the BBC in the miniseries Shoulder to Shoulder, starring Welsh actress Sian Phillips.