Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
-
Standard Name: Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline
Birth Name: Emmeline Pethick
Married Name: Emmeline Lawrence
Used Form: Emmeline Pethick Lawrence
Militant suffragist EPL
launched and co-edited the weekly journal Votes for Women with her husband, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence
, in 1907. The journal began as the official publication of the militant suffrage organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
, but in 1912 the Pethick-Lawrences distanced themselves from the WSPU and began to publish it independently. During the first half of the twentieth century EPL
published a number of suffragist pamphlets, many of them printed versions of speeches she had previously delivered. Speeches she gave in her own defence at the conspiracy trial of 1912 were published in 1913. From 1908 to 1950, she wrote many letters to the editor on a wide variety of national and international political topics. Her autobiography, 1938, largely focuses on the militant suffrage movement and the involvement in it of herself and her husband, as well as on her pacifist activities after World War One.
Christabel wrote her account in the 1930s, after the appearance of Sylvia Pankhurst
's The Suffragette Movement, but resisted appeals to publish it. The manuscript got as far as the publisher's before she decided...
Friends, Associates
Emmeline Pankhurst
Keir Hardie
, a dear friend of EP
's after her husband's death, introduced her to Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
, a crucial figure in the revivification of the suffrage movement. Her home in Clement's Inn, in...
Dedications
Sylvia Pankhurst
SP
reflected on her life and the lives of others during the First World War in The Home Front: a Mirror to Life in England During the First World War, published this year and...
Literary responses
Sylvia Pankhurst
Save the Mothers was well reviewed. George Bernard Shaw
responded enthusiastically to the book, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
expressed her pleasure at its positive reception. Vera Brittain
also praised it, favourably comparing SP
's activism for...
Charges against the women were dropped owing to pressure from the University Chancellor, the Liberal writer and statesman Lord Morley
(now a Viscount), whose speech they had interrupted and who was said to be appalled...
Employer
Dora Marsden
By this time Marsden was earning an annual salary of £108. She resigned from the Union after one of its central committees (which included Christabel Pankhurst
, Emmeline Pankhurst
, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
) refused...
Friends, Associates
Dora Marsden
During the 1920s DM
's primary focus was her writing, which she continued mainly in isolation and under much mental and physical stress. However, she was assisted in this by Harriet Shaw Weaver
and Sylvia Beach
Travel
Constance Lytton
CL
embraced the suffrage cause on meeting Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
and Annie
and Jessie Kenney
at a holiday for working girls of the Esperance Club
, at the Green Lady Hostel in Littlehampton, Sussex.
Lytton, Constance. Prisons and Prisoners. Heinemann.
9-18
Friends, Associates
Constance Lytton
Mary Neal
, a leader in the folk-dance revival and joint founder with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
of the Esperance Club
for working girls, invited CL
to holiday with herself and some of the girls in autumn...
politics
Constance Lytton
The deputation was led by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
. CL
had thought carefully about volunteering, and when she set out that morning she left a letter for her mother (whom she had not seen since the...
Friends, Associates
Constance Lytton
From two days after her stroke until September 1918 she had the joy of a perfect nurse,Nurse Oram
.
Lytton, Constance. Letters of Constance Lytton. Editor Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour, Heinemann.
236-7
That summer CL
realised that we loved each other, and no mistake. From that...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Constance Lytton
Between the accounts of her first experience of arrest and of her first sojourn in prison comes an interlude of contact with and comfort from her sisters. Though she goes into some detail about how...
politics
Beatrice Harraden
If these actions had Christabel's sanction, she wrote, you have lost your way, lost the trail, lost the vision of the distant scene.
Crawford, Elizabeth. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866-1928. Routledge.
276
This letter marked her disillusionment with the increasingly militant tactics of...
politics
Mary Gawthorpe
It was apparently MG
who began the action, when Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
refused to meet the suffrage deputation and she sprang on one of the sacred velvet chairs, and began to speak.
Holton, Sandra Stanley. Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Routledge.
127
Timeline
September 1943: The Women's Publicity Planning Association...
Building item
September 1943
The Women's Publicity Planning Association
sponsored a mass meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, in support of the proposed Equal Citizenship (Blanket) Bill which would end all forms of sex discrimination.