Emmeline Pankhurst: biography of this leader of the suffragette movement.

A summary of the life of Emmeline Pankhurst, activist for women's right to vote.

Although it is now a thing of the past, at least in the Western world, it was not so long ago that women were regarded as beings with delicate hands, made to sew, drink tea and raise children, while it was the men who, through political struggle, took care of the affairs of state.

But all this changed when Victorian women, fed up with being denied the right to vote, took action. Under the slogan "deeds, not words," Emmeline Pankhurst fought for the recognition of women's suffrage.

Her life is that of a fighter, a woman who did not limit herself to intellectual life but participated in numerous protests, many of them not very peaceful but, thanks to them, women have recognized their right to vote. Let's discover her story through an abridged biography of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Short biography of Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst, née Goulden, was born in Manchester, England, on July 15, 1858.She read "Women's Suffrage", a publication that her mother bought every week, since Emmeline's family was politically active and sensitive to the situation of oppressed people. Her father, Robert, was an anti-slavery businessman, and her mother Sophia was a passionate feminist.

Youth and contact with the suffragettes

Despite her family's political interests and being against the way things were at the time, Emmeline's parents preferred to raise their daughter as a child, Emmeline's parents preferred to raise their daughter to be a good wife and mother, in tune with what they wanted her to be.in keeping with what was expected of a woman in Victorian society. However, the young girl did not agree with these ideas and that is why, at the age of 14, after attending a speech in favor of women's rights, Emmeline decided to join the British suffragette movement.

Shortly after, she had the opportunity to live in Paris, where she would attend the École Normale de Neuilly. France, or at least its capital, was a less conservative place than neighboring Great Britain, so women had access to knowledge that was rather limited in other parts of Europe. This is why young Emmeline would have the opportunity to study chemistry and accounting, but would also have to study subjects considered feminine, such as embroidery.

First years of demands

In the fall of 1878 she began her relationship with Richard Pankhurst, a lawyer 24 years her senior. Richard was a socialist and was very committed to the struggle for women's suffrage. The couple, despite their age difference, hit it off in a very short time and just a year later married with the approval of the bride's parents. The connection between the two was as much political as it was romantic.The connection between the two was both political and romantic, and Emmeline's parents were delighted to have such a brilliant lawyer in the family.

The marriage between Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst was appropriate for their class and time, having four children in the first six years of their lives. However, they were different from the others in that they were members of the Independent Labor Party and the suffragette movement. The couple would go on to found the Women's Franchise League (WFL), which advocated that both married and unmarried women should have the right of suffrage..

The WFL was considered a radical organization, an opinion that grew when the organization began to fight in favor of considering men and women equal in aspects such as divorce and inheritance. It advocated trade unionism and tried to seek alliances in political socialism. However, its ideas were too advanced for this time and even several of its suffragette members saw them as too radical, abandoning the organization and causing it to collapse.

Their activism: deeds, not words

In 1898, Richard Pankhurst died of a perforated ulcer died of a perforated ulcer, leaving Emmeline responsible for many debts. This is why she began working at the Chorlton Birth and Death Registry, near Manchester, where she would have the opportunity to learn first-hand about the lives of many women, seeing the real differences in the rights recognized between men and women.

In 1903 Emmeline realized that the moderate speeches on women's suffrage that were being made in parliament were leading nowhere. Disillusioned by the results of the moderate suffragettes, she decided to found the "Women's decided to found the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).. In it Emmeline publicly defended women's suffrage, and in one of her speeches she pronounced her slogan "Deeds, not words", which would eventually become the movement's motto.

The group began to assert itself through nonviolent action, making speeches, collecting signatures, organizing demonstrations and publishing a newsletter called "Votes for Women". She also convened a "Women's Parliament," which met to coincide with the sessions of the official Parliament.

On May 12, 1905, Pankhurst and several fellow members of the WSPU gathered in front of Parliament to demonstrate in favor of an amendment regulating women's suffrage.. The police showed up to disperse them, but the group later reassembled and continued to demand its passage. Although the amendment did not pass, Emmeline Pankhurst, seeing the lobbying power of such a demonstration, noted that their protest had turned them into a real political force.

Imprisonment as an act of protest

Emmeline's daughters, Christabel, Adela and Sylvia, were active members of the WSPU and, as a result, were arrested on more than one occasion. The first time Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested was in 1908, after attempting to enter Parliament to deliver a protest to the Prime Minister. She spent six weeks in prison, which gave her an insight into the deplorable conditions in which women prisoners were held, and it was at this point that Emmeline Pankhurst was first introduced to the deplorable conditions in which women prisoners were held. It was at this point that Emmeline Pankhurst decided to make imprisonment her means of protest.

She did everything she could to get herself arrested and imprisoned. This, which may seem to us to be an almost suicidal mission, had a powerful intention: to demonstrate to the world that she was not being arrested for committing crimes, but for wanting to become a legislator. Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested up to seven times before women's suffrage was passed in the United Kingdom.

On June 26, 1908, thousands of activists gathered in Hyde Park to demand women's suffrage.. At the end of the demonstration, several WSPU activists gathered to give speeches but the police came and arrested several attendees. Out of frustration, two members of the formation, Edith New and Mary Leigh, threw stones at the windows of the Prime Minister's home. Although they themselves said that their events were not organized by the WSPU, Emmeline Pankhurst pointed out that she was in favor of them.

In 1909, following the imprisonment of Marion Wallace Dunlop, a suffragette who went on hunger strike in prison, the WSPU decided to adopt this new lobbying strategy. Several suffragettes tried to go on hunger strikes, but prison officials would force-feed them by shoving tubes up their noses or into their mouths. Both the suffragette movement and medical professionals strongly criticized these measures.

The gap between the suffragism advocated by Emeline Pankhurst and that advocated by more moderate suffragettes led some WSPU members to begin using the term "suffragete. to use the term "suffragete" instead of "suffragist" to differentiate themselves from the moderates, who, as we have discussed beforewho, as noted above, did not seem to be contributing significantly to the movement.

In 1907 Emmeline Pankhurst sold her house to begin a rather hectic lifestyle. She moved from place to place calling for women's suffrage, staying in hotels or in the homes of acquaintances. In 1909 she traveled throughout the United States to give a series of lectures to raise funds for her cause, in addition to defraying the expenses of her son Henry's illness.She was also able to defray the expenses of the illness her son Henry was suffering from.

The cat and mouse law

After the 1910 election, a Women's Suffrage Conciliation Committee was organized. The WSPU suspended its protest actions while a bill was negotiated to give women the right to vote. The bill did not go forward, prompting Pankhurst to lead a protest march on Nov. 18, with more than a protest march with more than 300 women heading for Parliament Square on November 18.. There they were met with police repression led by the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, an event that would become known as Black Friday.

In March 1912 a second bill was rejected. It was another straw that broke the camel's back and, fed up with so many refusals, several WSPU members, including Emmeline Pankhurst, stepped up their actions. The police responded by raiding their offices and pursuing her daughter Christabel, the organization's chief coordinator, who was forced into exile in Paris. Emmeline was arrested and convicted of conspiracy, which led her to organize her first hunger strike in her cell. in her cell.

Public opinion was scandalized by the treatment and harassment of suffragettes by the police, so the authorities decided to apply a new strategy to repress the movement: the cat and mouse law. The cat was the government, which released the mice, the suffragettes, when their health deteriorated. Once they recovered and returned to the political struggle, the government went back to chasing them and locking them up. But the WSPU was already a big pack of mice, with over 100,000 members.

The WSPU had long since abandoned peaceful activism in favor of more invasive measures, including arson as a weapon of protest.including arson as a weapon of protest. Several activists tried to cause explosions and set fire to various locations during 1913 and 1914. Although Emmeline and her daughter Christabel indicated that these actions had not been approved by the organization, they did support them.

One of the best known acts perpetrated by members of the WSPU is that of Mary Richardson who, in 1914, slashed the Spanish Diego Velázquez's painting "Venus of the Mirror" from 1647, in protest against Pankhurst's imprisonment. Although this canvas would eventually be restored, such an action against a piece of art was very controversial and, at the same time, intensified the pressure on the government and society.

In November 1917 the WPSU became the Women's Party.. A year later Christabel announced that she was standing as its candidate in the next election, the first in which women could run. She lost to the Labour candidate by 775 votes, which led to the party not standing in another election and, shortly thereafter, to disintegrate.

Partial victory in her final years

A few months later, women's suffrage was approved, albeit partially, since only women over 30 years of age were allowed to vote.. The reason for this was that there was still a strong belief that women matured much later than men and that they were not mentally adult until they were in their thirties. This was not satisfactory to the suffragette movement, but it was better than nothing. Still, they did not give up the struggle and, fueled by this victory, continued to exert pressure.

But Emmeline Pankhurst's time was growing short. Just as she was nearing her main life purpose, namely that all women should be able to vote, Emmeline Pankhurst's health took a turn for the worse and she had to enter a home for the aged. It was there that she would spend her last days, passing away on June 14, 1928, at the age of 69.. A little over a month later, on July 21, the government extended the right to vote to all women, both married and unmarried, over the age of 21.

Bibliographical references:

• Ruiza, M., Fernández, T. and Tamaro, E. (2004). Biography of Emmeline Pankhurst. In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona (Spain). Retrieved from https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/p/pankhurst.htm on September 16, 2020.
• Bartley, Paula. Emmeline Pankhurst (2002). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-20651-0.
• Purvis, June. Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (2002). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-23978-8.