Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst

Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst , 1858-1928, British woman suffragist. Disappointed in the disinterest in women's suffrage shown by the Liberal party, the Fabian Society, and the Independent Labour party, she founded (1903) her own movement, the Women's Social and Political Union. Using spectacular militant means to further their cause, the members of her movement were frequently arrested. Arrested and imprisoned herself in 1912, she went on a hunger strike and soon gained release. Arrested again in 1913 she was released once more after a hunger strike, but imprisoned upon her recovery according to the provisions of the newly passed "Cat and Mouse" Act (Prisoners, Temporary Discharge for Health, Act; 1913). This pattern repeated itself 12 times in the following 12 months. On the outbreak of World War I, however, the government granted her a full release, and she turned her powers of leadership from the suffragist movement to the war effort. After the war she moved to Canada and her work for women's rights virtually ceased. Upon her return to England in 1926 she was a nationally revered figure. She died while standing for election to Parliament as a Conservative candidate two years later. A statue in her memory stands at Westminster.

Bibliography: See her autobiography, My Own Story (1914, repr. 1970), and the biography by her daughter E. S. Pankhurst (1936, repr. 1969); R. Strachey, The Cause (1928, repr. 1969); D. Barker, Prominent Edwardians (1969).

Her oldest daughter, Christabel Pankhurst, 1880-1958, was also a suffragist. Educated for the bar but refused admittance because of her sex, she later became an evangelist. In 1936 she was made a Dame of the British Empire. The youngest daughter, Sylvia Pankhurst, 1882-1960, created a sensation by opposing marriage as an institution and defending unmarried mothers; she carried her theories into practice by bearing an illegitimate son in 1927. She later was active in the cause of Ethiopian independence. Her writings include The Suffragette Movement (1931) and Ethiopia, A Cultural History (1935), in addition to the biography of her mother (1936).

Bibliography: See B. Castle Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst (1987).

Pankhurst Emmeline (née Goulden), (b. 4 July 1858, d. 14 June 1929). British suffragette leader Born in Manchester, she joined the Independent Labour Party in 1893. Frustrated by the organization's failure to promote the issue of women's suffrage, she and her daughter Christabel Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. As leading suffragettes, they put pressure on the Liberal government to grant votes for women. For her militant tactics she was frequently imprisoned, most famously in 1913, when she was sentenced to three years for arson. Released after a year (August 1914), she abandoned the suffrage campaign to encourage women to assist the war effort by joining the police and services, or by going into industry. She lived in Canada after the war, where she was involved in child welfare and the National Council for Combating Venereal Disease. She returned to England in 1926 and but for her death would have stood as Conservative candidate for Whitechapel in 1929.

Pankhurst, Emmeline (1858–1928). Suffragette leader. A superb platform speaker with a fine physical presence, Emmeline Pankhurst came to symbolize the women's struggle for the parliamentary vote.

Emmeline acquired radical views from her father Robert Goulden, a Manchester cotton‐manufacturer. In 1874 she married the Liberal lawyer Dr Richard Pankhurst and followed him into the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party. Following Richard's death in 1898 Emmeline fell under the influence of her eldest daughter Christabel, who became increasingly impatient with the failure of the ILP to give priority to women's suffrage. As a result they established the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903, moved to London, and adopted militant tactics. She decided to vary her methods by attacking property: ‘the argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics.’ After a spate of window‐breaking in the West End in March 1912 she was charged with conspiracy to commit damage and awarded a nine‐month sentence. In February 1913 she accepted responsibility for a bomb which exploded at Lloyd George's house at Walton Heath and was sentenced to three years' penal servitude. Under the terms of the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ she was rearrested twelve times.