Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette

1858 Emmeline Pankhurst (d. June 14, 1928), most influential and famous of the British suffragettes, mother of Christabel, Sylvia and Adela.

She was born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, England to abolitionist parents, and married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister, in 1879. Dr Pankhurst was already a supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882.

In 1889, Mrs Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, but her campaign was interrupted by her husband's death in 1898. In 1903 she founded the better-known Women's Social and Political Union, an organization most famous for its militancy which began in 1905. Its members included the notorious Annie Kenney, the suffragette 'martyr', Emily Davison and the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth ...

Categories: biography, feminist, history, suffragette