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.
The Union had been founded in August 1874. This year's annual conference coincided with a court appearance of Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
, Annie Cobden-Sanderson
, and others (following their arrest on 23 October), and was therefore...
politics
Evelyn Sharp
She later wrote that she was less able to endure her two weeks in prison with equanimity than were most of the more than three hundred suffragists arrested with her.
Sharp, Evelyn. Unfinished Adventure. John Lane, Bodley Head.
140-3
She was instrumental in...
politics
Stella Benson
SB
had been a moderate until the death of the Derby Martyr, Emily Wilding Davison
, in 1913. After this she became more militant. When she moved to London in May 1914, she called...
politics
Ethel Sidgwick
The Congress, held from 28 April to 1 May, attracted 1,200 women from twelve countries, both warring and neutral, to discuss means of achieving peace. Others meeting with the delegates on the subsequent peace tour...
politics
Virginia Woolf
With the declaration of war, however, on 4 August, 1914, VW
's politics and those of the NUWSS parted company. The NUWSS supported the government, and on August the sixth resolved to suspend political activity...
politics
Charlotte Despard
Lady Constance Lytton
recorded how CD
(whose leadership qualities she warmly admired) was committed to Holloway Prison
early in 1909. She described the meeting there between Despard and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
, when the two women's...
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
Occupation
Maude Royden
Though unable to attend, she had served on the British Committee for the Congress in April of this year. Of the 180 British women who had planned to attend, only three were able to go:...
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...
Friends, Associates
Mary Gawthorpe
During her time with the WSPU, MG
worked with Christabel Pankhurst
(who was twenty-four when Gawthorpe first met her, before she had yet met Isabella Ford
), whom, like Ethel Snowden
, she knew from...
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...
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...
Others with whom she shared this or that memorable experience were the Meynells (Wilfrid
, Alice
, and Viola
), Clarence Rook
and his wife, and Henry W. Nevinson
, whom she eventually married...
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.