Women's Social and Political Union

Throughout London WSPU activists smashed shop windows with hammers.

CP , Emmeline Pankhurst , and Flora Drummond organized a rush on the House of Commons to begin at this time, infuriating members of the NUWSS by their militant WSPU tactics.

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 .

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...

Continuing the pattern begun several months previously, Marsden received high praise from Union leaders while she also continued to come under their scrutiny. She was criticised within the movement for her apparent lack of financial...

DM moved frequently during her time with the WSPU . Finances were limited and she was in high demand in Manchester, London, and such smaller districts as Southport and Blackburn. Between November...

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...

Following her split with the WSPU , DM considered joining the Women's Freedom League or the Fabian Society , but instead began to plan for a radical feminist journal that would stimulate discussion of diverse...

Through her regular journal essays and editorial decisions, Marsden not only questioned the methods and goals of established suffrage groups, primarily the WSPU , but also led discussion of such topics as auto-eroticism, monogamy...

DM was the major but not the sole driving force behind The Freewoman. The journal was launched with funds from Mary Gawthorpe , who also served for some time as its co-editor. Gawthorpe's tenure...

In one of her first major public appearances with the WSPU , DM spoke, along with leaders of the movement, at the group's rally at Heaton Park in Manchester, to mark Woman's Sunday.

DM resigned from the WSPU in January 1911, having become strongly dissatisfied with its comparatively autocratic structure and narrow focus on the the vote. She was not the only activist to form such a judgment:...

Marsden's first major collaborator was Mary Gawthorpe . The two began their friendship in about 1906 and had since frequently shared personal and professional concerns, including possible courses of action in the feminist movement.

DM was arrested for the first time when she was one of a WSPU deputation to Parliament . She was jailed for one month at Holloway Prison and her experience garnered much media attention.

DM reserved some of her harshest and most frequent criticism for suffrage groups, particularly the WSPU . She attacked the Union from the journal's first issue forward, for what she saw as a gap its...