By , militant actions by WSPU members included window-breaking, vandalizing public art and arson. We were determined to press this question of the enfranchisement of women to the point where we were no longer to be ignored by the politicians. Throughout these protests, suffragettes were arrested, but in the women had begun to engage in hunger strikes while in prison.
Though this resulted in violent force-feeding, the hunger strikes also led to early release for many suffragettes. Spared from being forcibly fed, she was soon freed. In , after an incendiary device went off in an unoccupied house being built for the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, Pankhurst received a sentence of three years of penal servitude for inciting the crime.
She was released after a hunger strike, but the Cat and Mouse Act led to a series of rearrests and releases—during one furlough, Pankhurst proceeded to the United States for a fundraising and lecture tour—that continued into But everything changed with the arrival of World War I.
Feeling that suffragettes needed to make sure they had a country to vote in, Pankhurst decided to call for a halt to militancy and demonstrations. The government released all WSPU prisoners, and Pankhurst encouraged women to join the war effort and fill factory jobs so that men could fight on the front.
The contributions of women during wartime helped convince the British government to grant them limited voting rights—for those who met a property requirement and were 30 years of age the voting age for men was 21 —with the Representation of the People Act of Later that year, another bill gave women the right to be elected to Parliament.
Though all her daughters had been members of the WSPU at some point, Pankhurst was only able to celebrate the achievement of limited suffrage with Christabel, her favorite.
She worried about the rise of Bolshevism and eventually became a member of the Conservative Party. Pankhurst even ran for a seat in Parliament as a Conservative, but her campaign was disrupted by ill health exacerbated by the public revelation that Sylvia had given birth to an illegitimate child. Pankhurst was 69 when she died in London on June 14, Pankhurst did not live to see it, but on July 2, , Parliament gave women voting rights on par with those of their male counterparts.
On February 6, , the U. In , 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 and , which allowed women to keep earnings or property acquired before and after marriage.
His death in was a great shock to Emmeline. In , Emmeline founded the Women's Franchise League, which fought to allow married women to vote in local elections. In October , 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 , 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.
Despite being academically gifted, she did not receive the same education as her brothers. Although her parents supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, they believed that the most important part of a girl's education were the skills needed to make a home for her family.
In she married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister 24 years her senior who supported women's right to vote and Emmeline's political work outside the home. Over the next ten years, Pankhurst had five children while remaining active in political organizations, including the Women's Suffrage Society. In , the Pankhursts founded the Women's Franchise League, which advocated suffrage for all women—married and unmarried.
In , Pankhurst began to distinguish herself as an activist in her own right. She became active with the Women's Liberal Federation WLF , an auxiliary of the Liberal Party, but quickly grew disenchanted with the group's moderate positions.
She was refused admission to the local branch because of her gender, but eventually joined the national ILP. One of her first activities with the ILP was distributing food to the poor through the Committee for the Relief of the Unemployed. She also worked as a Poor Law Guardian, exposing her to the harsh conditions in Manchester workhouses. She campaigned for improvements to the conditions, becoming a successful voice of reform on the Board of Guardians.
In , after the death of her husband, Pankhurst resigned from the Board of Guardians and took a paid position as Registrar of Births and Deaths in Chorlton. This position and her elected position on the Manchester School Board served to reinforce her political convictions regarding women's suffrage. The Pankhurst children also started becoming more active in the women's suffrage movement. In prison, the women staged hunger strikes and the authorities' policy of force-feeding garnered significant sympathy for the women.
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