Women's Franchise League

Last updated

The Women's Franchise League was a British organisation created by the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst together with her husband Richard and others in 1889, fourteen years before the creation of the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. [1] The President of the organisation in 1889 was Harriet McIlquham. [2] [3] In 1895 the committee who met in Aberystwyth were Ursula Mellor Bright, Mrs Behrens, Esther? Bright, Herbert Burrows, Dr Clark MP, Mrs Hunter of Matlock Bank, Jane Brownlow, Mrs E. James (who lived locally), H.N.Mozley, Alice Cliff Scatcherd, Countess Gertrude Guillaume-Schack, Jane Cobden Unwin and Dr and Mrs Pankhurst. [4]

The organization's main achievement was to secure the vote for some married women in local elections after the campaigning of its members, whereas up to the 1894 Local Government Act voting in municipal elections was only available to some single women. [5]

The league broke up in 1903, five years after the death of Richard. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emmeline Pankhurst</span> British suffragette (1858–1928)

Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's Social and Political Union</span> UK movement for womens suffrage, 1903–1918

The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom founded in 1903. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and policies were tightly controlled by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Sylvia was eventually expelled.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies</span> Organisation of womens suffrage societies in the United Kingdom

The National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), also known as the suffragists was an organisation founded in 1897 of women's suffrage societies around the United Kingdom. In 1919 it was renamed the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's Freedom League</span>

The Women's Freedom League was an organisation in the United Kingdom from 1907 to 1961 which campaigned for women's suffrage, pacifism and sexual equality. It was founded by former members of the Women's Social and Political Union after the Pankhursts decided to rule without democratic support from their members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme-Elmy</span> English suffragist

Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy was a life-long campaigner and organiser, significant in the history of women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She wrote essays and some poetry, using the pseudonyms E and Ignota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lydia Becker</span> 19th-century British activist and suffragist

Lydia Ernestine Becker was a leader in the early British suffrage movement, as well as an amateur scientist with interests in biology and astronomy. She established Manchester as a centre for the suffrage movement and with Richard Pankhurst she arranged for the first woman to vote in a British election and a court case was unsuccessfully brought to exploit the precedent. Becker is also remembered for founding and publishing the Women's Suffrage Journal between 1870 and 1890.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mud March (suffragists)</span> 1907 demonstration by suffragists in London

The United Procession of Women, or Mud March as it became known, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in which more than 3,000 women marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in support of women's suffrage. Women from all classes participated in what was the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen until then. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather since incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-splattered.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Friday (1910)</span> Womens suffrage event on 18 November 1910

Black Friday was a suffragette demonstration in London on 18 November 1910, in which 300 women marched to the Houses of Parliament as part of their campaign to secure voting rights for women. The day earned its name from the violence meted out to protesters, some of it sexual, by the Metropolitan Police and male bystanders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom</span> Movement to gain women the right to vote

A movement to fight for women's right to vote in the United Kingdom finally succeeded through acts of Parliament in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suffragette</span> British movement for womens suffrage

A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, derived from suffragist, in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Cobden</span> English suffragist (1851–1947)

Emma Jane Catherine Cobden was a British Liberal politician who was active in many radical causes. A daughter of the Victorian reformer and statesman Richard Cobden, she was an early proponent of women's rights, and was one of two women elected to the inaugural London County Council in 1889. Her election was controversial; legal challenges to her eligibility hampered and eventually prevented her from serving as a councillor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Fraser (feminist)</span> Scottish suffragist, feminist, educationalist and Liberal Party politician

Helen Miller Fraser, later Moyes, was a Scottish suffragist, feminist, educationalist and Liberal Party politician who later emigrated to Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Una Duval</span> British suffragette (1879–1975)

Una Harriet Ella Stratford Duval was a British suffragette and marriage reformer. Her refusal to say "and obey" in her marriage vows made national news. She bought the painting of Christabel Pankhurst by the suffragist Ethel Wright which was later donated to the National Portrait Gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janie Allan</span> Scottish suffrage activist (1868–1968)

Jane "Janie" Allan was a Scottish activist and fundraiser for the suffragette movement of the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's suffrage in Wales</span> Right to vote of Welsh women

Women's suffrage in Wales has historically been marginalised due to the prominence of societies and political groups in England which led the reform for women throughout the United Kingdom. Due to differing social structures and a heavily industrialised working-class society, the growth of a national movement in Wales grew but then stuttered in the late nineteenth century in comparison with that of England. Nevertheless, distinct Welsh groups and individuals rose to prominence and were vocal in the rise of suffrage in Wales and the rest of Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maud Arncliffe Sennett</span> English actress and suffragist (1862–1936)

Alice Maud Arncliffe Sennett also known with the stage name of Mary Kingsley was an English actress and suffragist and a suffragette, arrested four times for her activism.

Alice Cliff Scatcherd was an early British suffragist who in 1889 founded the Women's Franchise League, with Harriet McIlquham, Ursula Bright, Emmeline Pankhurst, Richard Pankhurst and Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy. She was a lifelong campaigner for women's rights in the Leeds area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gladice Keevil</span> British suffragette

Gladice Georgina Keevil was a British suffragette who served as head of the Midlands office of the Women's Social and Political Union between 1908 and 1910.

References

  1. Burton, S: "Relatively Famous: Richard Pankhurst, The Red Doctor", BBC History Magazine, February 2007, 8:2, page 22.
  2. Susan Hamilton, Frances Power Cobbe and Victorian Feminism (Springer 2006): 83. ISBN   9780230626478
  3. Maureen Wright, Elizabeth Wolstoneholme Elmy and the Victorian Feminist Movement: The Biography of an Insurgent Woman (Oxford University Press 2014): 246. ISBN   9780719091353
  4. Elizabeth Crawford (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. p. 1615. ISBN   1-135-43401-8.
  5. Mayhall, Laura E. Nym (2003). The militant suffrage movement : citizenship and resistance in Britain, 1860-1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 24. ISBN   9780195347838. OCLC   57144473.
  6. "Women's Franchise League (1889-1903) | Towards Emancipation?". hist259.web.unc.edu.