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This display forms part of the national commemorations marking the centenary of the 1918 Act that gave some women the right to vote for the first time. Dedicated to those who campaigned tirelessly for over 50 years to achieve votes for women, the exhibition features iconic objects from the Museum's vast Suffragette collection, including Emmeline Pankhurst's hunger strike medal. At the heart of the display is a powerful, newly commissioned film that reflects on the contemporary relevance of the militant campaign that continues to inspire, shock and divide opinion.

Groups of 10 or more are asked to book their free visit in advance.

Join the conversation #VotesforWomen

Gallery access

Capital Concerns gallery

10am - 5.50pm

Accessible via a lift

Gallery on the lower ground floor

Votes for Women also of interest

Shades of Militancy: the forgotten Suffragettes

Who were the women who fought for the right to vote?

Celebrating female suffrage

How and why are we marking a century of votes for women?

London on wheels: a suffrage story

Join us for a bus tour exploring key sites and stories from the women's suffrage movement.

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Votes for Women exhibition | Museum of London

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This display forms part of the national commemorations marking the centenary of the 1918 Act that gave some women the right to vote for the first time. Dedicated to those who campaigned tirelessly for over 50 years to achieve votes for women, the exhibition features iconic objects from the Museum's vast Suffragette collection, including Emmeline Pankhurst's hunger strike medal.

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Six facts about Suffragette hunger strikes | Museum of London

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Discover six key facts about the Suffragette hunger strikes, including why they went on hunger strike, why they were force fed, and Emmeline Pankhurst’s role.

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First 15 Countries To Grant Women's Suffrage

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First 15 Countries To Grant Women's Suffrage

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Surprisingly, women have not always had the right to vote and hold public office. Denial of these rights is rooted in Athenian democracy in which only men could vote. Although involving women in the electoral process was not a common practice throughout the western world, many indigenous tribes had key positions for women in governing bodies. Suffrage efforts were long and difficult; countries granted voting equality over many years, some long before others. Each place has its story, and some are quite surprising. This list will take a look at the first countries to grant women suffrage as well as a brief history of the movement.

The First Countries to Grant Women's Suffrage

New Zealand

In 1893, New Zealand became the first permanent and independent country to pass suffrage laws. Although the Corsican Republic, Pitcairn Island, Isle of Man and the Cook Islands all granted women the right to vote before this year, these acts were temporary as these countries were colonized and lost the right to vote. In New Zealand, the landmark act did not grant women the right to hold office in Parliament.

Australia

Nine years later, Australia followed suit and also passed a suffrage act for women, after independence from Great Britain. This act took effect in 1902, and though it did apply to all women in the new country, aboriginal women were left out.

Finland

Finland was the first European country to join the ranks of other, more progressive nations in 1906. In that time, the country was called the Grand Duchy of Finland. Women had enjoyed voting rights before this, however, under both Swedish and Russian rule. What was unique about the 1906 ruling is that it also granted women the right to stand for parliament, the first country in the world to do so.

Norway

Norway granted suffrage in 1913 to women though men in the nation had been voting since 1898. The suffrage movement here was led by Gina Krog, and she helped pioneer a law in 1901 that would allow some women to vote. These women must have paid a certain amount of taxes or be married to a man who paid that same amount. Not satisfied, Gina Krog and other women continued fighting for the next 12 years.

Denmark

Parliament in Denmark began discussing women's suffrage in 1886 though the right was limited to tax paying women living in Copenhagen. Women here got organized and formed the Women's Suffrage Association, which held public meetings to discuss women's rights and questioned parliamentary candidates about their views on the matter. Denmark finally granted women suffrage in 1915.

Armenia

The year 1917 saw sweeping legalization movements in favor of women voting. Armenia was granted women's suffrage by the ruling Russian government and later passed its own law in 1919. The final Armenian law allowed for voting and holding public office.

Estonia

Estonia gained independence in 1918 but had already practiced equal voting rights since 1917. The first parliament elections were held in 1920, and two women were elected to serve. This year is the same year that Latvia granted women the right to vote.

Russia

Women had a difficult time obtaining the right to vote in Russia. Suffragists organized and rallied throughout the year 1917, even holding a march of over 40,000 attendees. The government finally relinquished and gave women the same voting rights as men on June 20, 1917.

Canada

The final country on the list is Canada. It joins several other countries in having granted women the right to vote in 1917. Only women who were war widows or had husbands or sons at war were able to vote. Considerations of extending this right were linked to the desire of the nation to remain a "White Settler" land. The government believed that by extending political rights to white women, the country would be further protected from racial degeneration. In May 1918, women citizens (this did not include indigenous women) were given the right to vote.

The Importance of Women's Suffrage

Securing the right to vote was the first step toward equality for women. The most fundamental of Democratic rights, voting, gives a voice to individuals and allows them to participate in the actions of their government. The Suffrage Movement was more than this; women used this as a platform for continuing civic action and have since contributed to lasting change in their communities.

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which country first gave women the right to vote

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Which Country First Gave Women the Right to Vote?

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Surprisingly, women have not always had the right to vote and hold public office. Denial of these rights is rooted in Athenian democracy in which only men could vote. Although involving women in the electoral process was not a common practice throughout the western world, many indigenous tribes had key positions for women in governing bodies.

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6 February 1918: Women get the vote for the first time  BBC 

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6 February 1918: Women get the vote for the first time  BBC 

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100 years ago - on 6 February 1918 - an important law was passed which changed the UK forever.

It was called the Representation of People Act 1918.

What was this law?

The Representation of People Act 1918 was an important law because it allowed women to vote for the very first time. It also allowed all men over the age of 21 to vote too.

Before this law, women weren't allowed to vote in general elections at all. Some men could vote, but not all of them - for example, a man had to have property in order to be able to vote, so it excluded people who weren't as wealthy.

The contribution made during World War One by men and women who didn't have the right to even vote was an important reason for the law changing (find out more about this below).

But even after the Representation of People Act 1918, men and women still didn't have the same rights when it came to politics.

The law said that women over the age of 30 who occupied a house (or were married to someone who did) could now vote. This meant 8.5 million women now had their say over who was in Parliament - about 2 in every 5 women in the UK.

It also said that all men over the age of 21 could vote - regardless of whether or not they owned property - and men in the armed forces could vote from the age of 19. The number of men who could now vote went from 8 million to 21 million.

So the situation was still very unequal between men and women.

It was another 10 years before women were allowed to vote in the same way that men could.

However, the Representation of People Act 1918 was an important step in the fight for getting equality for women in society.

So what's the story behind it?

In a democracy, like the UK today, members of the public get to vote for who they want to lead them and have more say in how the country is run.

But this has not always been the case. In the past, the King or Queen had huge powers and there was very little that ordinary people could do to have a say in how they were governed.

In the early 1800s, there were still very few people who could vote - and the ones that could were all men. Women didn't have a say at all.

But around this time, things started to changed. Throughout the 19th Century, groups like the Chartists campaigned to allow all men to be able to vote.

In 1832 and 1867, laws were passed which did allow more men to vote than could before, but they still didn't apply to all men. For example, men still had to be quite rich to have their say.

Meanwhile, women were still not allowed to have a say at all in who was in Parliament.

Up until Victorian times (1837-1901), women had very few rights at all, especially once they were married. For example, anything they owned became their husband's property.

It was also traditionally thought that women shouldn't be part of politics. Even Queen Victoria agreed!

It was felt a woman's place was at home, raising children and running the household.

More and more women were working in full-time jobs though. This made it easier for them to get together to discuss politics and issues which affected their lives - and many of them weren't happy about how society treated them so differently to men.

When the laws were passed in the 19th century that gave men more voting rights, and women were still left out, they began to campaign for their right to be able to vote too.

Women wanted more equality in society in general, but their right to vote became the focus of their fight. There were men who campaigned for their right to vote too, but it was not a popular opinion.

The first petition to Parliament asking for women to get the vote was presented by a man called Henry Hunt on 3 August 1832, but it was not successful.

Then, in 1867, a man called John Stuart Mill suggested to Parliament that the law should be changed to give women the same voting rights as men. His proposal was also rejected by 194 votes to 73 - but it got the campaign going. (It's worth mentioning that there weren't any women in Parliament at this point!)

Changes to the law in favour of women getting the vote were presented in Parliament almost every year from 1870 onwards. But they weren't successful, so some women felt the campaign needed to be turned up a notch!

One woman in particular who was very important in the fight for women's right to vote was Emmeline Pankhurst.

In 1903, she helped to start a group called the Women's Social and Political Union. Members of this group became the first suffragettes - a group of women who fought hard for women's votes.

They got their name from the word suffrage, which means right to vote.

As part of their campaigning, suffragettes used to carry out demonstrations, which were sometimes violent. In order to get their message heard, they would smash windows, set fire to politicians' postboxes, refuse to eat and chain themselves to railings.

One suffragette called Emily Davison even gave her life for the cause, when she was killed after running out in front of the King's horse.

Many people supported women's right to be able to vote, but did not agree with the violent action of the suffragettes. They preferred to hold meetings, parade with banners, write letters or sign petitions.

A group called the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which was formed in 1897, believed in using non-violent tactics to persuade the country that women deserved the vote.

They were called the suffragists and were led by another important figure in the fight for women's right to vote - a woman called Millicent Fawcett. Emmeline Pankhurst had been a member of this group originally.

Although the suffragists and the suffragettes used different methods, they both had one goal in mind - get women the vote.

In 1914, World War I broke out.

Many women took on jobs that men traditionally did, while they were away fighting.

Emmeline Pankhurst focused her efforts on helping the war effort and encouraged other suffragettes to do the same. She pointed out that there was no point in continuing to fight for the vote when there might be no country in which they could vote!

Doing this gained for the women fighting for suffrage a lot of respect.

During this time, there were no elections to choose a new government - and attitudes to women in society really started to change.

A big reason for this was because of the contributions that women had made to society throughout the war.

Women proved themselves to be every bit as equal as men and the government promised to give women the vote when the war was finished.

In 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed in February and women voted in the general election for the very first time in December that year.

What has happened since?

The work done by the suffragettes and suffragists in the years leading up to World War I was extremely important for women getting the right to vote.

But it wasn't until a law called the Equal Franchise Act in 1928 that suffrage was extended to all women over the age 21, meaning that women finally had the same voting rights as men.

Up until 1918, women hadn't been allowed to be MPs in Parliament either. But a different law was passed in the same year as the Representation of People Act which changed this too. In December 1918, the first woman was elected to the House of Commons.

The UK has come a long way since then in treating women the same way as men.

Before the 20th Century, there had certainly been no female prime ministers. Now, there have been two - including our current Prime Minister Theresa May - and there are many female MPs.

But there are still more male MPs in Parliament that there are women and there is still inequality in the UK between men and women in other areas of life.

People are also treated differently because of their gender in other countries around the world, so there is more work to be done - both in the UK and in other countries.

Many people continue to fight for equality with the hope is that one day everybody will be treated the same all over the world, regardless of their gender.

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6 February 1918: Women get the vote for the first time - CBBC Newsround

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100 years ago - on 6 February 1918 - an important law was passed which changed the UK forever. It was called the Representation of People Act 1918. What was this law? The Representation of People Act 1918 was an important law because it allowed women to vote for the very first time.

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Very interesting article on Suffragettes and the use of violence

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Very interesting article on Suffragettes and the use of violence

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Citation: C N Trueman "Suffragettes"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, . .

The Suffragettes wanted the right for women to vote.

The move for women to have the vote had really started in 1897 when Millicent Fawcett founded the National Union of Women's Suffrage. "Suffrage" means the right to vote and that is what women wanted - hence its inclusion in Fawcett's title.

Millicent Fawcett believed in peaceful protest. She felt that any violence or trouble would persuade men that women could not be trusted to have the right to vote. Her game plan was patience and logical arguments. Fawcett argued that women could hold responsible posts in society such as sitting on school boards - but could not be trusted to vote; she argued that if parliament made laws and if women had to obey those laws, then women should be part of the process of making those laws; she argued that as women had to pay taxes as men, they should have the same rights as men and one of her most powerful arguments was that wealthy mistresses of large manors and estates employed gardeners, workmen and labourers who could vote........but the women could not regardless of their wealth.....

However, Fawcett's progress was very slow. She converted some of the members of the Labour Representation Committee (soon to be the Labour Party) but most men in Parliament believed that women simply would not understand how Parliament worked and therefore should not take part in the electoral process. This left many women angry and in 1903 the Women's Social and Political Union was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. They wanted women to have the right to vote and they were not prepared to wait. The Union became better known as the Suffragettes. Members of the Suffragettes were prepared to use violence to get what they wanted.

In fact, the Suffragettes started off relatively peacefully. It was only in 1905 that the organisation created a stir when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney interrupted a political meeting in Manchester to ask two Liberal politicians (Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey) if they believed women should have the right to vote. Neither man replied. As a result, the two women got out a banner which had on it "Votes for Women" and shouted at the two politicians to answer their questions. Such actions were all but unheard of then when public speakers were usually heard in silence and listened to courteously even if you did not agree with them. Pankhurst and Kenney were thrown out of the meeting and arrested for causing an obstruction and a technical assault on a police officer.

Both women refused to pay a fine preferring to go to prison to highlight the injustice of the system as it was then. Emmeline Pankhurst later wrote in her autobiography that:

The Suffragettes refused to bow to violence. They burned down churches as the Church of England was against what they wanted; they vandalised Oxford Street, apparently breaking all the windows in this famous street; they chained themselves to Buckingham Palace as the Royal Family were seen to be against women having the right to vote; they hired out boats, sailed up the Thames and shouted abuse through loud hailers at Parliament as it sat; others refused to pay their tax. Politicians were attacked as they went to work. Their homes were fire bombed. Golf courses were vandalised. The first decade of Britain in the twentieth century was proving to be violent in the extreme.

Suffragettes were quite happy to go to prison. Here they refused to eat and went on a hunger strike. The government was very concerned that they might die in prison thus giving the movement martyrs. Prison governors were ordered to force feed Suffragettes but this caused a public outcry as forced feeding was traditionally used to feed lunatics as opposed to what were mostly educated women.

The government of Asquith responded with the Cat and Mouse Act. When a Suffragette was sent to prison, it was assumed that she would go on hunger strike as this caused the authorities maximum discomfort. The Cat and Mouse Act allowed the Suffragettes to go on a hunger strike and let them get weaker and weaker. Force feeding was not used. When the Suffragettes were very weak..........they were released from prison. If they died out of prison, this was of no embarrassment to the government. However, they did not die but those who were released were so weak that they could take no part in violent Suffragette struggles. When those who had been arrested and released had regained their strength, they were re-arrested for the most trivial of reason and the whole process started again. This, from the government's point of view, was a very simple but effective weapon against the Suffragettes.

As a result, the Suffragettes became more extreme. The most famous act associated with the Suffragettes was at the June 1913 Derby when Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under the King's horse, Anmer, as it rounded Tattenham Corner. She was killed and the Suffragettes had their first martyr. However, her actions probably did more harm than good to the cause as she was a highly educated woman. Many men asked the simple question - if this is what an educated woman does, what might a lesser educated woman do? How can they possibly be given the right to vote?

It is possible that the Suffragettes would have become more violent. They had, after all, in February 1913 blown up part of David Lloyd George's house - he was probably Britain's most famous politician at this time and he was thought to be a supporter of the right for women to have the vote!

However, Britain and Europe was plunged into was to be vital for Britain's war effort. In 1918, the World War One in August 1914. In a display of patriotism, Representation of the People Act was passed by Parliament. Emmeline Pankhurst instructed the Suffragettes to stop their campaign of violence and support in every way the government and its war effort. The work done by women in the First World War

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1903 Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) founded 1906 Liberal Party win landslide general election victory. Suffragettes expected much from the party....

Emily Wilding Davison is one of the most famous of the Suffragettes. It was Emily Wilding Davison who threw herself under the king's horse at...

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Women's right to vote - Suffragettes - History Learning Site

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Citation: C N Trueman "Suffragettes"historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, . . The Suffragettes wanted the right for women to vote. The move for women to have the vote had really started in 1897 when Millicent Fawcett founded the National Union of Women's Suffrage.

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Discover unexpected relationships between popular figures when you explore our collection of famous groups on Bio.com.

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American Suffragettes

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History has already been made this election season with a woman on the ticket of a major political party. But what about the history ― or her story ― that's gotten our country to this seminal point?

On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment, which granted universal suffrage, was ratified. In some states, however, many /www.wesleyan.edu/mlk/posters/suffrage.html"}}">women of color weren't able to vote until the 1960s, partially due to voter registration restrictions put in place to deny voting rights to people of color.

That means that for 133 years, women didn't have the right to vote and many of them spent most of those years fighting tooth and nail for it.

In the U.S., the suffrage movement began in the late 1840s when women's rights advocates began organizing on a national level. Early organizers included suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony.

The American suffragettes took many cues from the suffrage sister movement in the U.K., organizing marches and using propaganda such as pro-suffrage pamphlets and comics. The British suffragettes deviated slightly from the Americans as they were known for their outspoken and militant-style protests, which often included smashing windows and destroying public property with arson and homemade bombs.

To honor the hard work of the suffragettes and the many women who came before us, we've rounded up 22 vintage images of women fighting for the right to vote. The images include pro-suffrage propaganda and call-to-action illustrations from both the American and British suffrage movements.

Scroll below to learn some suffragette herstory.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the 19th Amendment granted only white women the right to vote.

BEFORE YOU GO

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20 Suffragette Memes Remind Us How Hard We've Fought For A Woman On The Ballot

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History has already been made this election season with a woman on the ticket of a major political party. But what about the history ― or her story ― that's gotten our country to this seminal point? On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment, which granted universal suffrage, was ratified.

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biography.com Suffragette : the real women who inspired the film

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biography.com Suffragette : the real women who inspired the film

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In early 20th century Britain, the cause of female suffrage was usually ignored by the press and dismissed by politicians. To gain support for their right to vote, suffragettes turned away from peaceful protest and embraced militant tactics that grew to include window breaking and arson. Their fight for equality escalated in violence in 1912 and 1913.

Here are six real-life suffragettes (plus one man) who fought to give women the right to vote:

Emmeline Pankhurst

Photo: Jimmy Sime/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1903, when she was a 45-year-old widow, Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU, whose slogan became "deeds not words." In her work for the group, she gave speeches that encouraged militant action. She declared in 1913, "Militancy has brought woman suffrage where we want it, that is, to the forefront of practical politics. That's the justification for it."

Between 1908 and 1914, Pankhurst was imprisoned 13 times. She would be released after going on hunger strikes, but the police pursued her again once her health had recovered. This cycle only ended with the advent of World War I, when Pankhurst directed WSPU members to support the war effort. In 1918, after the war, Pankhurst was pleased to see women granted limited suffrage.

Hannah Mitchell

Born to a poor family in 1872, Mitchell grew up resenting unfair treatment such as being made to darn her brothers' socks while they got to relax. However, as an adult she initially considered the fight for female suffrage a middle-class issue: as there was a property requirement for voters, expanding the franchise would do little for women like her.

Instead, Mitchell, who'd worked as a domestic servant and seamstress, devoted her energies to the Independent Labour Party - until she came to feel that the ILP was more focused on universal male suffrage. By 1904, Mitchell had joined the Women's Social and Political Union, the group headed by Pankhurst whose members became known as suffragettes.

After disrupting a political meeting in 1906, Mitchell was charged with obstruction and given a three-day sentence. Working-class suffragettes with family obligations often found spending time in custody to be difficult - unlike most middle and upper-class women, they had no servants to handle cooking and cleaning while they were away. Mitchell was no exception to this rule - though her husband was a Socialist, he ignored her wishes and paid her fine so she could leave jail after one day. As she noted in her autobiography, The Hard Way Up: "Most of us who were married found that "Votes for Women" were of less interest to our husbands than their own dinners. They simply could not understand why we made such a fuss about it."

Mitchell left the WSPU in 1907 - in part because she was hurt that Pankhurst didn't visit when she was recovering from a breakdown - but continued to fight for suffrage with the Women's Freedom League.

Barbara and Gerald Gould

Photo: Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images

One real-life couple who both supported female suffrage was Barbara Ayrton Gould and her husband Gerald. Barbara, who'd studied chemistry and physiology at University College, London, became a member of WSPU in 1906 and was a full-time organizer for the group by 1909. Barbara and Gerald got married in 1910.

Gerald supported women's suffrage with actions like writing a pro-suffrage pamphlet entitled The Democratic Plea. In March 1912, Barbara participated in an attention-grabbing bout of smashing store windows in the West End of London. After this, Barbara spent time in prison; in 1913, she went to France for a time to avoid being rearrested.

Frustrated by WSPU leadership, Barbara left the group in 1914. However, the Goulds didn't abandon their quest for women's suffrage: On February 6, 1914, they were among the founders of the United Suffragists, which welcomed both men and women as members. That group ended its campaign when 1918's Representation of the People Act gave women limited suffrage.

Edith Garrud

Suffragette Edith Garrud was born in 1872. While protesting, suffragettes often faced harassment and attacks, both from the police and members of the public. But thanks to Garrud's martial arts instruction, which she was offering to suffragettes by 1909, many learned how to defend themselves with jiu-jitsu.

In addition to "suffrajitsu," as this training came to be nicknamed, Garrud also organized a protective force - called "The Bodyguard" - to keep Pankhurst and other suffragette leaders safe and out of police custody. Besides their martial arts skills, women on protective duty learned to wield clubs they kept hidden in their dresses.

Olive Hockin

One target of suffragette ire was chancellor of the exchequer David Lloyd George. In February 1913, suffragettes bombed an empty house that was being built for Lloyd George.

The actual perpetrator(s) of the bombing were never found - instead, Pankhurst was arrested after declaring, "The authorities need not look for the women who did what was done last night. I accept full responsibility for it." However, police considered Olive Hockin one of the prime suspects.

Though Hockin wasn't charged with the Lloyd George bombing, police raided her home in March 1913 after a suffragette paper with her name and address was found at the site of an arson attack on the Roehampton Golf Club. Inside her apartment, they found a "suffragette arsenal" that included acid, a fake license plate, stones, a hammer and wire cutters.

Emily Wilding Davison

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Emily Davison, who was born in 1872, joined the WSPU in 1906, and soon was devoting all her energy to the fight for suffrage. Her militant actions included attacking a man with a whip when she mistook him for George, stone-throwing and arson. (Davison has sometimes been labeled as one of the suffragettes who bombed George's house in 1913, but records indicate the police did not view her as a suspect.)

Davison was jailed nine times for her militancy. During her time behind bars, she was subjected to 49 force-feedings (many suffragettes were force-fed when they started hunger strikes in prison). In an article, she wrote that these feedings were a "hideous torture."

Davison's last militant act took place at the Epsom Derby in June 1913. There, she ran in front of, and was subsequently trampled by, the king's horse; she died a few days later. Davison's true intentions have been debated: Some feel she wanted to become a martyr, others believe she only aimed to make a statement by placing the suffragette colors of purple, white and green on the king's horse. The fact that Davison had a return train ticket in her purse and was planning a vacation in France indicate she didn't intend to commit suicide, but there is no definitive answer.

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7 People Who Fought to Give Women the Right to Vote

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In early 20th century Britain, the cause of female suffrage was usually ignored by the press and dismissed by politicians. To gain support for their right to vote, suffragettes turned away from peaceful protest and embraced militant tactics that grew to include window breaking and arson.

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Suffragette Official UK Trailer #1 (2015) - Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep Drama HD

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Suffragette: tough questions disenfranchised despite earnest attempt

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Historians still debate whether the violence of the women’s suffrage movement was justified. This movie commendably focuses on a working-class suffragette, but doesn’t attempt to make any of the really tough calls

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Merci à Valentine !  cliquez pour faire défiler les images

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Merci à Valentine !  cliquez pour faire défiler les images

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Emily Davison knocked down by King's horse at Epsom

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Emily Davison knocked down by King's horse at Epsom

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Newsreel from exactly a century ago, when suffragette Emily Davison was knocked down by the King's horse at Epsom Derby. The militant campaigner for women's right to vote died of her injuries four days later. Opinion is still divided over whether the 40-year-old meant to die on derby day or whether she was trying to merely disrupt the race to draw attention to the suffragettes' cause

Warning: some may find images upsetting

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Suffragette Emily Davison knocked down by King's horse at Epsom - video

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Newsreel from exactly a century ago, when suffragette Emily Davison was knocked down by the King's horse at Epsom Derby. The militant campaigner for women's right to vote died of her injuries four days later.

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Analysys of historical references in  the song Bad Romance

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Analysys of historical references in  the song Bad Romance

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Ce padlet montre les documents étudiés en cours, les autres sont pour votre culture personnelle ;-)

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Ce padlet montre les documents étudiés en cours, les autres sont pour votre culture personnelle ;-)

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Women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19 Amendment. On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised this right for the first time. For almost 100 years, women (and men) had been fighting for women's suffrage: They had made speeches, signed petitions, marched in parades and argued over and over again that women, like men, deserved all of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The leaders of this campaign-women like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Ida B. Wells-did not always agree with one another, but each was committed to the enfranchisement of all American women.
READ MORE: The 19th Amendment
Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906

Library of Congress

Perhaps the most well-known women's rights activist in history, Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, to a Quaker family in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts. Anthony was raised to be independent and outspoken: Her parents, like many Quakers, believed that men and women should study, live and work as equals and should commit themselves equally to the eradication of cruelty and injustice in the world.

Did you know? Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton lived in a part of upstate New York that would become known as the "Burnt District" or the "Burned-Over District" because it was home to so many religious revivals, utopian crusades and reform movements: They swept through the region, people said, as unstoppably as a forest fire.

Before she joined the campaign for woman suffrage, Anthony was a temperance activist in Rochester, New York, where she was a teacher at a girls' school. As a Quaker, she believed that drinking alcohol was a sin; moreover, she believed that (male) drunkenness was particularly hurtful to the innocent women and children who suffered from the poverty and violence it caused. However, Anthony found that few politicians took her anti-liquor crusade seriously, both because she was a woman and because she was advocating on behalf of a "women's issue." Women needed the vote, she concluded, so that they could make certain that the government kept women's interests in mind.

In 1853, Anthony began to campaign for the expansion of married women's property rights; in 1856, she joined the American Anti-Slavery Society, delivering abolitionist lectures across New York State. Though Anthony was dedicated to the abolitionist cause and genuinely believed that African American men and women deserved the right to vote, after the Civil War ended she refused to support any suffrage amendments to the Constitution unless they granted the franchise to women as well as men.

This led to a dramatic schism in the women's rights movement between activists like Anthony, who believed that no amendment granting the vote to African Americans should be ratified unless it also granted the vote to women (proponents of this point of view formed a group called the National Woman Suffrage Association), and those who were willing to support an immediate expansion of the citizenship rights of former slaves, even if it meant they had to keep fighting for universal suffrage. (Proponents of this point of view formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association.)

This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups joined to form a new women's suffrage organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was NAWSA's first president; Anthony was its second. She continued to fight for the vote until she died on March 13, 1906.

Alice Paul, 1885-1977

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Alice Paul was the leader of the most militant wing of the woman-suffrage movement. Born in 1885 to a wealthy Quaker family in New Jersey, Paul was well-educated-she earned an undergraduate degree in biology from Swarthmore College and a PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania-and determined to win the vote by any means necessary.

While she was in graduate school, Paul spent time in London, where she joined the suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst's radical, confrontational Women's Social and Political Union and learned how to use civil disobedience and other "unladylike" tactics to draw attention to her cause. When she returned to the United States in 1910, Paul brought those militant tactics to the well-established National American Woman Suffrage Association. There, as the chair of NAWSA's Congressional Committee, she began to agitate for the passage of a federal suffrage amendment to the Constitution like the one her hero Susan B. Anthony had wanted so badly to see.

On March 3, 1913, Paul and her colleagues coordinated an enormous suffrage parade to coincide with-and distract from-President Wilson's inauguration. More marches and protests followed. The more conservative women at NAWSA soon grew frustrated with publicity stunts like these, and in 1914 Paul left the organization and started her own, the Congressional Union (which soon became the National Woman's Party). Even after the U.S. entered World War I, the NWP kept up its flamboyant protests, even staging a seven-month picket of the White House.

For this "unpatriotic" act, Paul and the rest of the NWP suffragists were arrested and imprisoned. Along with some of the other activists, Paul was placed in solitary confinement; then, when they went on a hunger strike to protest this unfair treatment, the women were force-fed for as long as three weeks. These abuses did not have their intended effect: Once news of the mistreatment got out, public sympathy swung to the side of the imprisoned activists and they soon were released.

In January 1918, President Wilson announced his support for a constitutional amendment that would give all female citizens the right to vote. In August, ratification came down to a vote in the conservative Southern state of Tennessee. The battle over ratification in Tennessee was known as the "War of the Roses" because suffragists and their supporters wore yellow roses and "Antis" wore red. While the resolution passed easily in the Tennessee Senate, the House was bitterly divided. It passed by one vote, a tie-breaking reversal by Harry Burn, a young red-rose wearing representative who had received a pro-suffrage plea from his mother. On August 26, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, making it law.

In 1920, Alice Paul proposed an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution. ("Men and women," it read, "shall have equal rights throughout the United States.") The ERA has never been ratified.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902
WATCH: The Seneca Falls Convention
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the foremost women's-rights activists and philosophers of the 19th century. Born on November 12, 1815, to a prominent family in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady was surrounded by reform movements of all kinds. Soon after her marriage to abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840, the pair traveled to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where they were turned away: Female delegates, they were told, were unwelcome.

This injustice convinced Stanton that women needed to pursue equality for themselves before they could seek it for others. In the summer of 1848, she-along with the abolitionist and temperance activist Lucretia Mott and a handful of other reformers-organized the first women's-rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Some 240 men and women gathered to discuss what Stanton and Mott called "the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women." One hundred of the delegates-68 women and 32 men-signed a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, declaring that women were citizens equal to men with "an inalienable right to the elective franchise." The Seneca Falls Convention marked the beginning of the campaign for woman suffrage.

Like Susan B. Anthony, Stanton was a committed abolitionist; however, she too refused to compromise on the principle of universal suffrage. As a result, she campaigned against the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed Black men the right to vote but denied it to women.

After the fight over the 14th and 15th Amendments, Stanton continued to push for women's political equality-but she believed in a much broader vision of women's rights. She advocated for the reform of marriage and divorce laws, the expansion of educational opportunities for girls and even the adoption of less confining clothing (such as the pants-and-tunic ensemble popularized by the activist Amelia Bloomer) so that women could be more active. She also campaigned against the oppression of women in the name of religion-"From the inauguration of the movement for woman's emancipation," she wrote, " the Bible has been used to hold her in the 'divinely ordained sphere'"-and in 1895 published the first volume of a more egalitarian Woman's Bible.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in 1902. Today, a statue of Stanton, with fellow women's rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott, stands in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
WATCH: The 19th Amendment
Lucy Stone, 1818-1893

Lucy Stone, born in Massachusetts in 1818, was a pioneering abolitionist and women's-rights activist, but she is perhaps best known for refusing to change her last name when she married the abolitionist Henry Blackwell in 1855. (This tradition, the couple declared, "refuse[d] to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being" and "confer[red] on the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority.")

After she graduated from Oberlin College in 1847, Stone became a traveling lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society-advocating, she said, "not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex." She continued her activism on behalf of abolitionism and women's rights until 1857, when she retired from the anti-slavery lecture circuit to care for her baby daughter.

After the Civil War, advocates of woman suffrage faced a dilemma: Should they hold firm to their demand for universal suffrage or should they endorse-even celebrate-the 15th Amendment while they kept up their own campaign for the franchise? Some suffragists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, chose the former, scorning the 15th Amendment while forming the National Woman Suffrage Association to try and win the passage of a federal universal-suffrage amendment. Stone, on the other hand, supported the 15th Amendment; at the same time, she helped found the American Woman Suffrage Association, which fought for woman suffrage on a state-by-state basis.

In 1871, Stone and Blackwell began to publish the weekly feminist newspaper The Woman's Journal. Stone died in 1893, 27 years before American women won the right to vote. The Woman's Journal survived until 1931.

Ida B. Wells, 1862-1931

R. Gates/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Ida B. Wells, born in Mississippi in 1862, is perhaps best known for her work as a crusading journalist and anti-lynching activist. While working as a schoolteacher in Memphis, Wells wrote for the city's Black newspaper, The Free Speech. Her writings exposed and condemned the inequalities and injustices that were so common in the Jim Crow South: disfranchisement, segregation, lack of educational and economic opportunity for African Americans, and especially the arbitrary violence that white racists used to intimidate and control their Black neighbors.

Wells's insistence on publicizing the evils of lynching, in particular, won her many enemies in the South, and in 1892 she left Memphis for good when an angry mob wrecked the offices of The Free Speech and warned that they would kill her if she ever came back. Wells moved north but kept writing about racist violence in the former Confederacy, campaigning for federal anti-lynching laws (which were never passed) and organizing on behalf of many civil rights causes, including woman suffrage.

In March 1913, as Wells prepared to join the suffrage parade through President Woodrow Wilson's inaugural celebration, organizers asked her to stay out of the procession: Some of the white suffragists, it seemed, refused to march alongside Black people. (Early suffrage activists had generally supported racial equality-in fact, most had been abolitionists before they were feminists-but by the beginning of the 20th century, that was rarely the case. In fact, many middle-class white people embraced the suffragists' cause because they believed that the enfranchisement of "their" women would guarantee white supremacy by neutralizing the Black vote.) Wells joined the march anyway, but her experience showed that to many white suffragists, "equality" did not apply to everyone.

Wells continued to fight for civil rights for all until she died in 1931.
READ MORE: 5 Black Suffragists Who Fought for the 19th Amendment-And Much More
Frances E.W. Harper (1825-1911)

Born to free Black parents in Maryland, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was orphaned while she was still very young. She was raised by her aunt and uncle, William Watkins, an abolitionist who set up his own school, the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth. Harper attended the academy, began writing poetry as a teenager and later became a teacher at schools in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Barred from returning to Maryland by an 1854 law mandating that free Blacks who entered the South would be forced into slavery, she moved in with her uncles' friends, whose home served as a station on the Underground Railroad.

Through her poetry, which dealt with issues of slavery and abolition, Harper became a leading voice of the abolitionist cause. She began traveling the country, lecturing on behalf of anti-slavery groups, and advocating for women's rights and temperance causes. She also continued to write fiction and poetry, including short stories and a novel, Iola Leroy (1892), one of the first to be published by a Black woman in the United States.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Harper was one of only a few Black women included in the growing women's rights movement. In 1866, she delivered a famous speech at the National Woman's Rights Convention in New York, in which she urged white suffragists to include Black women in their fight for the vote. During the debate over the 15th Amendment (which Harper supported), she and other abolitionists split with white suffragist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and helped form the American Women Suffrage Association (AWSA). In 1896, Harper and others founded the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC), which advocated for a number of rights and advancements for Black women, including the right to vote.

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)

Terrell grew up in an affluent family in Tennessee; her formerly enslaved parents both owned successful businesses, and her father, Robert Reed Church, was one of the South's first Black millionaires. After graduating from Oberlin College, she began working as a teacher in Washington D.C, and became involved in the women's rights movement. She joined Ida B. Wells-Barnett in her anti-lynching campaign in the early 1890s, and later co-founded the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC) with Wells-Barnett and other activists. Terrell served as the organization's first president until 1901, writing and speaking extensively on women's suffrage as well as issues such as equal pay and educational opportunities for African Americans.

Terrell joined Alice Paul and other members of the National Women's Party in picketing for women's voting rights outside Woodrow Wilson's White House. In her view, Black women should be dedicated to the suffrage cause, as "the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount...both sex and race."

As a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), Terrell remained an outspoken fighter on behalf of civil rights after passage of the 19th Amendment. In her 80s, she and several other activists sued a D.C. restaurant after being refused service, a legal battle that led to the court-ordered desegregation of the capital's restaurants in 1953.
READ MORE: A Timeline of the Fight for All Women's Right to Vote

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Women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19 Amendment. On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised this right for the first time.

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BBC : Were extreme suffragettes regarded as terrorists?

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BBC : Were extreme suffragettes regarded as terrorists?

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A century ago, British women still did not have the vote and violent protests by the suffragettes were escalating. Were these women seen at the time as something akin to terrorists, or as activists legitimately fighting for a political cause?

Frustrated by the lack of reform at the start of the 20th Century, hundreds of suffragettes were jailed after taking part in protests.

Until 1912 the campaigning was largely within the law, mainly chaining themselves to railings and disturbing the peace. But activism grew to include planting bombs, smashing shop windows and acts of arson.

Targets were not just buildings, even artworks were mutilated - most notably Velazquez's famous Rokeby Venus, repeatedly slashed with a meat cleaver at the National Gallery in 1914.

There had been earlier concerns. In 1909, the government had been concerned about a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. The perceived threat came from an unidentified "little woman" picketing the House of Commons and "wearing a Tam o' Shanter", according to a file only released in 2006 by the National Archives in Kew.

The government's concern was heightened when it was informed that two women had been observed practicing with revolvers at a shooting range.

But the period after 1912 marked a clear escalation.

How suffragettes were described

April 1913: Times newspaper - "militant movement of the Women's Social and Political Union..."

June 1914: Home secretary Reginald McKenna - "these women are so foolish and mischievous"

Also McKenna: "What is thought is that the indignity of being sent to Broadmoor as criminal lunatics would bring them to their senses"

In 1913, Emily Davison threw herself in front of the King's horse at the Derby and died from her injuries. Historian Sir Brian Harrison thinks she was probably seeking martyrdom - as later Irish militants did.

"A funeral is a great opportunity for publicity. The militants made the most of the publicity resulting from that death," he says.

But "terrorism" is far too strong a word for the actions of the suffragettes, considering the context, says Baroness Brenda Dean.

"If you look at any major social change, within it somewhere has been a degree of militancy... You've got to throw yourself back to the turn of the century when the whole social order was very different."

Their actions have to be seen through the prism of their inability to use normal means to advocate their views, she suggests.

"These were pretty desperate measures by people in a desperate situation."

Baroness Dean is calling on the government to give a posthumous apology for the way the suffragettes were treated.

Krista Cowman, a professor of women's studies at the University of Lincoln, says the suffragettes would have been considered terrorists at the time but not in the same way people would view terrorists today.

"The key difference you have to remember, unlike today's terrorist act, where acts are being committed by people who do have a vote, who are enfranchised, these women were completely outside the system but asked to work within it."

It was natural that the establishment would fear the suffragettes.

"Because there were many other political issues at that time, such as the Irish militancy, it makes it more dangerous. If you can't contain your own women, particularly middle class women who have traditionally been a quieter group, then you really are losing a grip on everything," she adds.

Lloyd George's failure

My great-great-grandfather David Lloyd George had always supported women getting the vote when in opposition, but didn't make much of it when in power.

Votes for women was too difficult to swing and he cared about it less than his welfare reforms - it was a useful Conservative-bashing tool when in opposition but too controversial once he was in power.
Dan Snow, presenter, The Lost World of the Suffragettes
However, Prof June Purvis, who wrote a biography of Emmeline Pankhurst, disagrees, and says that there is a great difference between lawlessness and being labelled a terrorist.

Purvis says the Liberal government tortured women by force feeding them when they were on hunger strike and perpetrated other indignities.

"It wasn't just forcible feeding. On Black Friday, 18 November 1910, women were kicked to the ground, punched, their breasts were pinched."

Helen Moyes - who died in 1979 - belonged to the non-militant arm of the suffrage movement, known as the "suffragists". She objected to the militant tactics employed by Christabel Pankhurst, a daughter of the movement's leader Emmeline.

"I saw no value or use of militancy in a cause. I told her that and said 'you use argument and reason in a cause, not militancy'," she told historian Sir Brian Harrison, who interviewed 180 people in the 1970s as part of his research on the suffragette movement.

Key dates for women's suffrage

1867: MP John Stuart Mill supports equality for women in the Second Reform Act, but is defeated

1903: The Women's Social and Political party, later referred to as the suffragettes, holds its first meeting

1918: Representation of the People's Act allows women over 30 to vote

1928: Women over 21 get the vote

Listen to women describing their role in the suffrage movement
Independent newspapers, later banned by the government, clever photo journalism and mass protests all brought the cause for women's rights to the public eye.

Dressmaker Elsie Flint, a suffragette who was part of the militant arm, recalled in the 1970s: "People laugh and say what ridiculous things to do, but it was never done for fun. They had to get the notice of the public and that was their way of doing it."

On the afternoon of 1 March 1912 around 150 women were standing in front of shop windows and government offices in London's West End and simultaneously took hammers and stones from their pockets and smashed the windows, explains historian Elizabeth Crawford.

"There was great confusion, they didn't try to run away. They were arrested immediately."

One of the suffragettes, Victoria Lidiard, recalled the attack in the 1970s: "We started at the Marble Arch and... were stationed right down from Marble Arch to Tottenham Court Road - and then bang went all the windows."

An estimated 124 women were arrested. After the window smashing episode, the police used weapons and force to close down the Women's Social and Political Union.

A year later, arson attacks were commonplace. One such attack greatly damaged an unfinished house being built for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd-George, who had become a hate figure for the suffragettes.

Find out more

The Lost World of the Suffragettes will be broadcast on Saturday 11 February at 20:00 GMT on BBC Radio 4

Catch up later via the iPlayer

The Suffragette-defaced penny Jenni Murray on being a 20th Century woman
Dr Tobias Feakin of the Royal United Services Institute compares the suffragettes to a protest campaign like the Occupy movement against economic inequality, but says today they would not be perceived as terrorists.

"Animal rights activists have used more extreme measures to express themselves, though in the US they do ban a lot of environmental groups as environmental terrorists."

Crawford says she "can't help but sympathise" with the suffragettes, but believes their methods were "a rather dangerous way of going about things".

"We tend to underestimate the amount of damage that was done. At the time they wouldn't have used the term terrorism, but with our experience of terrorism now, if one group is trying to coerce the state, I think we might view it rather differently."

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Were extreme suffragettes regarded as terrorists?

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A century ago, British women still did not have the vote and violent protests by the suffragettes were escalating. Were these women seen at the time as something akin to terrorists, or as activists legitimately fighting for a political cause?

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Pankhurst was a leading British women's rights activist, who led the movement to win the right for women to vote.

Emmeline Goulden was born on 14 July 1858 in Manchester into a family with a tradition of radical politics. In 1879, she married Richard Pankhurst, a lawyer and supporter of the women's suffrage movement. He was the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, which allowed women to keep earnings or property acquired before and after marriage. His death in 1898 was a great shock to Emmeline.

In 1889, Emmeline founded the Women's Franchise League, which fought to allow married women to vote in local elections. In October 1903, she helped found the more militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) - an organisation that gained much notoriety for its activities and whose members were the first to be christened 'suffragettes'. Emmeline's daughters Christabel and Sylvia were both active in the cause. British politicians, press and public were astonished by the demonstrations, window smashing, arson and hunger strikes of the suffragettes. In 1913, WSPU member Emily Davison was killed when she threw herself under the king's horse at the Derby as a protest at the government's continued failure to grant women the right to vote.

Like many suffragettes, Emmeline was arrested on numerous occasions over the next few years and went on hunger strike herself, resulting in violent force-feeding. In 1913, in response to the wave of hunger strikes, the government passed what became known as the 'Cat and Mouse' Act. Hunger striking prisoners were released until they grew strong again, and then re-arrested.

This period of militancy was ended abruptly on the outbreak of war in 1914, when Emmeline turned her energies to supporting the war effort. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act gave voting rights to women over 30. Emmeline died on 14 June 1928, shortly after women were granted equal voting rights with men (at 21).

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Pankhurst was a leading British women's rights activist, who led the movement to win the right for women to vote. Emmeline Goulden was born on 14 July 1858 in Manchester into a family with a tradition of radical politics. In 1879, she married Richard Pankhurst, a lawyer and supporter of the women's suffrage movement.

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There was Ethel Moorhead who threw an egg at Winston Churchill; Adela Pankhurst, who hid up a chimney to escape arrest in a Dundee Theatre and 'General' Flora Drummond who rode the streets of Edinburgh on a horse. Contrary to popular belief, the women of Scotland were not shy of taking part in suffragette activity, as a new exhibition at the Scottish Parliament shows.

Many of the items have been loaned by Norman Watson who has been collecting stories and ephemera of the suffrage movement for many years. He took Helen Ross on a tour of the exhibits which are on display in the entrance hall.

Disclaimer Scottish Parliament

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

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BBC - Radio 4 Woman's Hour -Scottish Suffragettes

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There was Ethel Moorhead who threw an egg at Winston Churchill; Adela Pankhurst, who hid up a chimney to escape arrest in a Dundee Theatre and 'General' Flora Drummond who rode the streets of Edinburgh on a horse.

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Organised campaigns for women's suffrage began in 1866. When Parliamentary Reform was being debated in 1867, John Stuart Mill proposed an amendment that would have given the vote to women on the same terms as men. But it was rejected by 194 votes to 73. The campaign gained momentum after this.

19th century feminists talked about "The Cause". This described a movement for women's rights generally. While it had no particular political focus, by the close of the century the issue of the vote became the focus of women's struggle for equality.

The NUWSS (Suffragists)

By the early 1900s, the Suffragists were flourishing, with a rising membership and an efficient nation-wide organisation. By 1914, the NUWSS had approximately 54,000 members, the majority being middle class, respectable citizens.

The Suffragists believed in a gradualist strategy, using non-violent tactics to persuade the country that women deserved the vote.

The WSPU (Suffragettes)

Emmeline Pankhurst, who had been a member of the Manchester Suffragist group, had grown impatient with the NUWSS and decided to form her own suffrage movement. She believed it would take an active organisation, with young working class women, to draw attention to the cause.

By 1909 the WSPU had branches all over the country. It published a newspaper called 'Votes for Women' that sold 20,000 copies each week.

The Suffragettes motto was 'Deeds Not Words'. They wanted to heighten the profile of the suffrage movement in the media and parliament as well as achieve success more quickly than the NUWSS was allowing.

1905 - heckling of Sir Edward Grey

1908 - window-smashing campaign on government buildings

1909 - Prime Minister Herbert Asquith is attacked

1909 - Marion Dunlop goes on hunger strike in prison, sparking a spate of copycats

1913 - Emily Davison is killed when she jumps in front of the King's horse at the Derby

The Women's Freedom League

In 1907 the WSPU split into two groups after Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel came into conflict with other members of the WSPU's executive body.

Those who left formed the Women's Freedom League. The Pankhursts and their supporters established an even tighter grip on the workings of the WSPU.

Impact of the movement

Historians debate the effectiveness of the different groups in the struggle for women's suffrage:

some modern historians argue that the influence of NUWSS has not been given enough credit

membership of this organisation remained high throughout the period

many women, who became alienated from the Suffragettes because of their militancy, switched allegiance to the Suffragists

some historians argue that the activities of the WSPU were critical in keeping women's suffrage high on the political agenda

others believe that its violent tactics actually delayed votes for women by its "irresponsibility" in attacking private property

In some cases, the rough treatment of many Suffragettes arrested and jailed during their protests won increasing sympathy and support from the public:

Force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strike brought a great public outcry against the government.

The Prisoner's Temporary Discharge for Ill Health (Cat and Mouse) Act also brought public sympathy for the protesters.

The commendable behaviour of the Suffrage movement during the war, including the suspension of protests for the sake of national unity, proved that the women were far from unreasonable.

the tactics of the WSPU received massive publicity but much of it was negative

some argued that women who acted like this did not deserve the vote

at one point, Churchill proclaimed that "their cause has marched backwards"

opposition to militant campaigning was so strong that organisations evolved from 1908 to form the National League For Opposing Woman Suffrage in 1911

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Women's Suffrage campaigns - Why women won greater political equality by 1928 - Higher History Revision - BBC Bitesize

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Organised campaigns for women's suffrage began in 1866. When Parliamentary Reform was being debated in 1867, John Stuart Mill proposed an amendment that would have given the vote to women on the same terms as men. But it was rejected by 194 votes to 73. The campaign gained momentum after this.

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The suffragettes : Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 - 1928)

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