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Manchester ARTICLES

Manchester At The Forefront Of Women’S Rights

16th November 2008

The Pankhurst Centre Museum on 62 Nelson Street is a reminder of the importance that Manchester played in the formation of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

The Pankhurst Trust raised money to make the parlour room in the house as a living testament and memorial to the fight of the WSPU movement.

The Pankhurst Museum is the former home of the founder of the Women’s Social and Political Party.

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in 1858 and came from a family with strong political beliefs. She married Dr Richard Pankhurst in1879, who was already an established campaigner of radical reforms. Her marriage produced two daughters Sylvia and Christabel who were both significant in the fight for women’s rights.

After her husband’s death in 1896 Emmeline became increasingly involved with women’s suffrage. However she believed that the organisation was evolving in a positive direction so she formed the WSPU in the front room of her house on October 10th 1903.

The WSPU were more militant than the suffrage movement, Christabel Pankhurst purported,

“This was beginning of a campaign the like of which was never known in England or for that matter in any other country…we interrupted a great many meetings…and were violently thrown out and insulted. Often we were painfully bruised and hurt.”

Mrs Pankhurst moved to London to be closer to the Houses of Parliament and expand the WSPU movement. The movement was continually in the media and gained themselves the title Suffragettes.

During this period Mrs Pankhurst was incarcerated for acts of civil disobedience on several occasions and in an eighteen month time period went through ten hunger strikes while in prison.

However after a vigorous lecturing tour of America Mrs Pankhurst joined the Conservative Party, much to this disbelieve of her daughters. It was also at this time that Mrs Pankhurst refused to talk to her daughter Sylvia after she gave birth to an illegitimate child.

On January 1918 a new law was introduced, stating that women over the age of 30 had the right to vote in political elections.

A few weeks after her death on the 14th June 1928, women were granted full voting rights, giving every woman over the age of 18 the entitlement to vote in political elections.

Source: The Pankhurst Centre