Women's Social and Political Union

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:...

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.

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 officially resigned from her position as a WSPU organizer and began a comparatively independent exploration of feminist issues.

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...

DM published the first of her many articles in the WSPU journal Votes for Women. In this piece she covered a Union rally attended by about 50,000 in Huddersfield.

As editor Marsden received informal letters and formal reviews that showed appreciation for the journal's attempt at provocative, comprehensive coverage of pressing socio-political issues. But The Freewoman also aroused controversy and negative response. For instance...

Mary Gawthorpe resigned her co-editorship of The Freewoman after DM published there her explicit attack on the WSPU , A Militant Psychology. Gawthorpe had disagreed with Marsden's position for some time.