These women mean business!

Three women, one of whom I recognize by name. Emmeline Pankhurst!


Three British Suffragettes for Sepia Saturday


All the following information is from Wikipedia, with various sources cited.  I'm afraid I don't know how accurate they are!

Emmeline Pankhurst (born Emiline Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist and organizer of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote. 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".^[1] 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.^[2][3]

Born in Sloan Street Moss Side, Manchester in 1858,^[4] to politically active parents, Pankhurst was introduced at the age of 14 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".^[5] 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 arson as a tactic, and more moderate organisations spoke out against the Pankhurst family.

With the advent of the First World War, Emmeline and Christabel called an immediate halt to militant suffrage terrorism in support of the British government's stand against the "German Peril".^[7] They urged women to aid industrial production and encouraged young men to fight, becoming prominent figures in the white feather movement.^[8] 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.^[9]

She 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.^[10][11] She died on 14 June 1928, only weeks before the Conservative government's Representation of the People Act (1928) extended the vote to all women over 21 years of age on 2 July 1928. She was commemorated two years later with a statue in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament.

 Emmaline Pankhust 1908

The Wikipedia article goes on for many more pages under her name!

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Mary Gawthorpe - a new name to me.  I've got many of the American Suffragists in my history, especially as a 1970's feminist.  But the British women who were working with similar efforts, nope, I haven't studied them, nor seen the film (it's still on my wish list) "Suffragettes."

 Mary Gawthorpe 1908

After qualifying as a teacher in her native Leeds, Mary Gawthorpe became a socialist and was active in the local branch of the National Union of Teachers. She joined the Independent Labour Party and in 1906, became secretary of the newly formed Women's Labour League. She became involved in the women's suffrage movement and, in 1905, joined the Women's Social and Political Union. In 1906, she left teaching to become a full-time, paid organiser for the WSPU in Leeds. Sylvia Pankhurst came to Leicester in 1907 and joined Alice Hawkins who made introductions. They were joined by Gawthorpe and they established a WSPU presence in Leicester.^[5]

She later joined Christabel Pankhurst in Wales, where she drew upon her working-class background and involvement in the labour movement. At the meeting in Wales, organised by Samuel Evans, who was standing for reelection to Parliament, Gawthorpe, in perfect Welsh, worried Evans by putting questions to him in his own language at his own meetings.

Gawthorpe emigrated to New York City in 1916.^[15] She was active in the American suffrage movement and later in the trade union movement, becoming an official of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union. She chronicled her early efforts in her autobiography, Up Hill to Holloway (1962)

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Ada Susan Flatman 1917

Ada Susan Flatman was born in Suffolk in 1876. She was on independent means and she became interested in women's rights.
Flatman was sent to Holloway Prison^[1] after she took part in the "raid" on the Houses of Parliament in 1908. The following year she was employed by the WSPU to organise their activities in Liverpool^[2] taking over from Mary Phillips.^[3]
 

Flatman worked with Dr Alice Stewart Ker, but it was Ada who was trusted by Emmeline Pethick when Liverpool requested that they be allowed to open a WSPU shop. The shop was a success and it raised substantial funds for the cause.

The first world war started in 1914 and the leading suffrage organizations agreed to suspend their protest until the war was over. Many activists disagreed and Ada Flatman was one. She decided to carry on her work in the US and she emigrated to the US to work (at) Alice Paul's The Suffragist newspaper in 1915.^[4] She became their Business and Advertising manager.^[5] After the war was completed she was keen to carry on the work but organizations in America and South Africa did not accept her offer of assistance.^[4] Flatman supported the work of Edith How-Martyn in later documenting the movement in the Suffragette Fellowship. ^[6]
 
Flatman died in Eastbourne in 1952.^[4]

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OK, I should know about these women, especially the ones who came to the US to help the women's cause, the suffragists.