Emmeline Pankhurst and suffragette involvement in the Conciliation Bills

Emmeline Pankhurst was the owner of a women’s shop called Emerson’s. Emmeline Goulden married Dr. R. M. Pankhurst who was also an advocate for the rights of women which furthered her interest in women’s rights. Emmeline Pankhurst established The Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. The Women’s Social and Political Union was a militant organization in the years before World War I with women smashing store windows, going to parliament meetings to shout, “Votes for women” and other political protests. This is interesting in relation to Pankhurst because she advocated the smashing of store windows while she was a shop owner. Pankhurst owning a shop also put her in a more progressive position than many women at this time because she owned her own business. In 1910 The Women’s Social and Political Union started protesting the rejection of the conciliation bill and H.H. Asquith’s promise that a bill for women’s right to vote being facilitated. The protests included many tactics such as using acid to burn suffragette slogans into the golf courses that member of the Liberal party, which H.H. Asquith belonged to, played on.  They also cut telephone and telegraph wires, set fire to letters in public postboxes and on one occasion set off a bomb in Llyod George’s partly built house. Lloyd Geroge was in opposition to the Liberal Party and was considered radicial in his opposition to the Liberal Party. One of their protests in of 1910 became known as “Black Friday” when 300 women tried to enter Parliament to stand up for their rights and a riot followed.  Winston Churchill was the home secretary at this time and showed the government’s wrath with the extreme police brutality on “Black Friday.” 

The book review entitled “A Conservative Revolutionary: Emmeline Pankhurst (1857-1928)” gives a detailed account of how Emmeline Pankhurst was described in June Purvis’s biography of her. Purvis describes Pankhurst in very masculine terms such as “A Reel of Steel” while other articles describe her as the exact ideal of beauty in England in Pankhurst’s time.  This article is important because it gives background on Emmeline Pankhurst and discusses the images other articles made of Emmeline Pankhurst. This article discusses her life and what she was really like behind all the media images created about her. The article “The Most Prominent Suffragette” gives a look at the biography written by Purvis and talks about Pankhurst’s life in addition to the obstacles she faced in fighting for women’s rights. In this article, she points out some important flaws in the biography of Pankhurst such as a lack of information on her views of race. The article “Model Citizens and Millenarian Subjects: Vorticism, Suffrage, and London's Great Unrest” is about representation of suffragettes but shows a more In-depth view of the protests that Emmeline Pankhurst’s organization The Women’s Social and Political Union carried out in 1910. The article on page five goes into detail about the types of protests that the suffragettes used to gain attention for their cause. The article “The 1910s: ‘We have sanitised our history of suffragettes’” is also about the representation of suffragettes but gives a look into the suffragette protest that became known as “Black Friday” which was in the attempt to get the Conciliation bill passed. 

A Conservative Revolutionary: Emmeline Pankhurst (1857-1928)

https://www-jstor-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/stable/pdf/26440996.pdf?refreqid=search%3A61b787e51620c769540075413699c65e

ROLLYSON, CARL. “A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTIONARY: EMMELINE PANKHURST (1857-1928).” The Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 79, no. 2, 2003, pp. 325–334. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26440996.

The Most Prominent Suffragette

https://www-jstor-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/stable/pdf/4024138.pdf?refreqid=search%3A61b787e51620c769540075413699c65e

Winslow, Barbara. “The Most Prominent Suffragette.” The Women's Review of Books, vol. 20, no. 8, 2003, pp. 13–14. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4024138.

Model Citizens and Millenarian Subjects: Vorticism, Suffrage, and London's Great Unrest

https://www-jstor-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/stable/pdf/10.2979/jmodelite.37.3.1.pdf?refreqid=search%3A7e8779ca6f73961def1fd75e68faa29f

Richards, Jill. “Model Citizens and Millenarian Subjects: Vorticism, Suffrage, and London's Great Unrest.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 37, no. 3, 2014, pp. 1–17. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jmodelite.37.3.1.

The 1910s: ‘We have sanitised our history of suffragettes

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/06/1910s-suffragettes-suffragists-fern-riddell

Riddell, Fern. “The 1910s: 'We Have Sanitised Our History of the Suffragettes'.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Feb. 2018, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/06/1910s-suffragettes-suffragi....

Lloyd George

https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Lloyd-George

Robert Norman William Blake, Baron Blake. “David Lloyd George.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 19 Mar. 2018, www.britannica.com/biography/David-Lloyd-George.

Associated Place(s)

Event date:

1910 to 1913

Parent Chronology: