Emmeline Pankhurst Essay

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Emmeline Pankhurst: A Historical Investigation:

Emmeline Pankhurst was a middle class woman living in Britain from 1858 to 1928 whose name is often equated with the British suffrage movement. Pankhurst’s most significant contribution to her society was adding militancy to the suffrage movement in Britain by creating the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. In creating this movement Pankhurst led a persistent and aggressive campaign, spanning over forty years, to help British women to achieve the right to vote and have a voice within Britain’s emerging democracy.

On the 14th of July 1858, Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester England to her parents Robert Goulden and Sophia Craine. Both Goulden and Craine were liberal reformers, …show more content…

From the age of fourteen, Emmeline Pankhurst would accompany her mother to many of the women’s suffrage meetings and was encouraged to read the Women’s Suffrage Journal to which her mother was a subscriber. Emmeline Pankhurst was particularly interested in the speeches and writing of Lydia …show more content…

Pankhurst her interest in politics developed. Dr Pankhurst was a member of the Liberal Party believed in equal voting rights for women and often campaigned for other social reforms such as allowing Irish Home rule and abolishing the monarchy. Richard Pankhurst was involved in drafting a number of amendments in relation to women’s suffrage such as the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 and also helped his wife to form the Women’s Franchise League in 1889. Mrs. Pankhurst also joined a number of suffrage movements to develop her interest in the movement after her marriage such as the executive committee of the Women 's Suffrage Society, and also was also on the executive board of the committee which was working to secure the Married Women 's Property Act. In 1893 Richard and Emmeline formed a branch of the Independent Labour Party in Manchester. After death of her husband in 1898, Emmeline Pankhurst worked as both a register and amongst a factory where she was exposed to the inequality experienced by working women on a social, economic and legal level within her society. Further Pankhurst was growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress made in changing legislation for women’s suffrage by the pacifist approaches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Thus in 1903 Pankhurst formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) which went onto become a much more aggressive branch of

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