Women's Social and Political Union

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Characters Gladys Henrietta Schütze
As a young man Arnold falls in love with the suffragist Beryl, a member of the WSPU . Olga is jealously hostile and dismissive of his love, but when the Great War comes neither woman...
Cultural formation Gladys Henrietta Schütze
GHS involved herself with the Liberal Party in about 1906, and the Women's Social and Political Union soon afterwards. She worked with the Pankhursts and militant suffragettes. During World War One, prejudice against her husband's...
Cultural formation Beatrice Harraden
BH was born into the English commercial middle class. Although her novels do not engage in much detail with feminist issues, she was a keen suffragist, involved with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) .
Cultural formation Christabel Pankhurst
There is some suggestion that CP may have had lesbian relationships. She excited devotion among her female followers, and at least one—novelist Elizabeth Robins —admitted to falling in love with her. CP also spent much...
Education Dora Marsden
Though some of DM 's activities and affiliations are unclear, studying and living in Manchester was a highly formative experience for her. By then the city had established strong ties with the labour and suffrage...
Education Christabel Pankhurst
In 1904, with urging from her recently-made friend Esther Roper , CP considered studying law at Lincoln's Inn, as her father had done before her. Her application was dismissed on the grounds that she would...
Employer Constance Lytton
The Women's Social and Political Union put CL on its payroll as a paid organizer at two pounds a week plus expenses, making the appointment retrospective to the beginning of the year.
Lytton, Constance. Prisons and Prisoners. Heinemann, 1914.
311
Lytton, Constance. Letters of Constance Lytton. Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour,Editor , Heinemann, 1925.
209
Employer Mary Gawthorpe
MG became a paid organizer for the national Women's Social and Political Union . She worked for the WSPU until autumn 1911 and became one of its leading organizers and speakers.
Cowman, Krista. “A Footnote in History? Mary Gawthorpe, Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement and the Writing of Suffragette History”. Women’s History Review, No. 3/4, pp. 447 - 66.
450
“Guide to the Papers of Mary E. Gawthorpe, 1881-1990”. The Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Employer Mary Gawthorpe
MG resigned her position with the Women's Social and Political Union (she had been trying to continue working while bedridden).
Cowman, Krista. “A Footnote in History? Mary Gawthorpe, Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement and the Writing of Suffragette History”. Women’s History Review, No. 3/4, pp. 447 - 66.
450
Employer Dora Marsden
DM officially resigned from her position as a WSPU organizer and began a comparatively independent exploration of feminist issues.
Garner, Les. A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960. Avebury, 1990.
46
Family and Intimate relationships Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
EPL 's younger sisters Dorothy and Marie followed her elder's lead and became active members of the Women's Social and Political Union .
Family and Intimate relationships Anna Wheeler
Lady Constance Lytton (1869 - 1923), a suffragist active in the Women's Social and Political Union , was AW 's great-grand-daughter.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Family and Intimate relationships Sylvia Pankhurst
SP was officially expelled from the WSPU for her socialist activities, an exclusion which she fought in various ways; this cemented her split from her mother and sister .
Winslow, Barbara, and Sheila Rowbotham. Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism. UCL Press, 1996.
66-7
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Pankhurst
CP publicly announced that Sylvia Pankhurst 's East London Federation would no longer be attached to the WSPU .
Marcus, Jane, editor. “Introduction / Appendix”. Suffrage and the Pankhursts, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987, pp. 1 - 17, 306.
315
Family and Intimate relationships Dora Marsden
Gawthorpe was a former teacher from Leeds who had joined the WSPU at the age of thirteen and chosen activism in preference to marriage and family. She was a longtime suffragist and socialist, who called...

Timeline

2 November 1903
The LondonDaily Mirror began publication with a woman editor, Mary Howarth , as a penny paper for gentlewomen by gentlewomen.
December 1903
Australian feminist and suffragist Vida Goldstein became the first woman in the British Empire to run for a national parliament, standing for the Senate while two other Australian women stood for the House of Representatives...
19 May 1906
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman , newly-elected Prime Minister, received a deputation of suffragists.
Summer1906
The Women's Social and Political Union moved its headquarters to London; this relocation was emblematic of its shift away from its Independent Labour Party and working-class origins.
23 October 1906
During a demonstration at the opening of Parliament , eleven Women's Social and Political Union supporters were for the first time arrested and imprisoned: for two months in Holloway .
October 1907
Votes for Women, the official organ of the Women's Social and Political Union , began publication in London.
October 1907
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence , wanting to maintain control over the Women's Social and Political Union agenda, removed by fiat dissident members of the executive and cancelled the forthcoming annual conference.
November 1907
Charlotte Despard and Teresa Billington Greig left the Women's Social and Political Union to form the Women's Freedom League .
March 1908
Mary Louisa Gordon , who had qualified as both a physician and a midwife and had practised medicine in London since 1900, was appointed the first female prison inspector in Britain.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
21 June 1908
The Women's Social and Political Union organised a Woman's Sunday which involved (according to the Times estimate) between 250,000 and 500,000 people, mostly women. The WSPU called it Britain's largest-ever political meeting.
30 June 1908
The first act of damage was committed by Women's Social and Political Union supporters Edith New and Mary Leigh , when they stoned the windows of 10 Downing Street.
11 November 1908
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Margaret Cousins formed the Irish Women's Franchise League , a militant, non-partisan organisation which wanted women's suffrage included in the Home Rule Bill.
May 1909
The Women's Social and Political Union held a Votes for Women Exhibition at Prince's Skating Rink, Knightsbridge, London, which netted £5,607 for the suffrage cause.
18 September 1909
Women's Social and Political Union members Mary Leigh and Charlotte Marsh , imprisoned in Winson Green , Birmingham, began fasting; they were ordered by Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone to be forcibly fed.
About 9 October 1909
In response to Women's Social and Political Union militancy, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies passed a resolution stating that it would employ only constitutional
Hume, Leslie Parker. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, 1897-1914. Garland, 1982.
55
means towards achieving the vote.