Asquith had opposed votes for women as early as 1882, and he remained well known as an adversary throughout his time as prime minister. He took a detached view of the women's suffrage question, believing it should be judged on whether extending the franchise would improve the system of government, rather than as a question of rights. He did not understand—Jenkins ascribed it to a failure of imagination—why passions were raised on both sides over the issue. He told the House of Commons in 1913, while complaining of the "exaggerated language" on both sides, "I am sometimes tempted to think, as one listens to the arguments of supporters of women's suffrage, that there is nothing to be said for it, and I am sometimes tempted to think, as I listen to the arguments of the opponents of women's suffrage, that there is nothing to be said against it." In 1906 suffragettes Annie Kenney, Adelaide Knight, and Jane Sbarborough were arrested when they tried to obtain an audience with Asquith.
Votes for women
H. H. Asquith
H. H. Asquith | Votes for women
Asquith had opposed votes for women as early as 1882, and he remained well known as an adversary throughout his time as prime minister. No, Asquith had opposed votes for women as early as 1882 He  had opposed votes for women as early as 1882, and he remained well known as an adversary throughout his time as prime minister Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
at the beginning of world war i great britain
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Great Britain was a leading Allied Power during the First World War
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who was the prime minister of u.k. then?
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H. H. Asquith
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which political party did he represent?
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Liberal Party
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where was he born?
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Morley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire
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who all were there in his family?
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Joseph Dixon Asquith his father,  Emily his mother. The couple also had three daughters, of whom only one survived infancy.
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what did he start his career as?
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After his graduation in 1874, Asquith spent several months coaching Viscount Lymington, the 18-year-old son and heir of the Earl of Portsmouth. He found the experience of aristocratic country-house life agreeable.
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were women able to cast their votes then?
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Offered either six weeks in prison or giving up campaigning for one year, the women all chose prison. Asquith was a target for militant suffragettes as they abandoned hope of achieving the vote through peaceful means. He was several times the subject of their tactics: approached (to his annoyance) arriving at 10 Downing Street (by Olive Fargus and Catherine Corbett whom he called 'silly women', confronted at evening parties, accosted on the golf course, and ambushed while driving to Stirling to dedicate a memorial to Campbell-Bannerman. On the last occasion, his top hat proved adequate protection against the dog whips wielded by the women.
H. H. Asquith | Votes for women
At the 1914 meeting Millicent Fawcett moved a resolution condemning Asquith for refusing to meet a delegation of any of the large number of male supporters of women's suffrage who had come to London for the event and this was seconded by Barton who nevertheless told the rally that he thought of himself as a supporter of the prime minister and refused to regard Asquith as 'a hopeless case' on the issue, although he clearly was.
William Barton (British politician) | Votes for Women
H. Asquith, replaced it with a bill extending the male suffrage. In protest against the Liberal government's suffrage policies and its harsh treatment of militants, Cobden resigned her honorary presidency of the Women's Liberal Association in Rochdale, her father's last constituency.
Jane Cobden | Votes for women, 1903–14
These incidents left him unmoved, as he did not believe them a true manifestation of public opinion. With a growing majority of the Cabinet, including Lloyd George and Churchill, in favour of women's suffrage, Asquith was pressed to allow consideration of a private member's bill to give women the vote. The majority of Liberal MPs were also in favour. Jenkins deemed him one of the two main prewar obstacles to women gaining the vote, the other being the suffragists's own militancy. In 1912, Asquith reluctantly agreed to permit a free vote on an amendment to a pending reform bill, allowing women the vote on the same terms as men.
H. H. Asquith | Votes for women
Asquith had opposed votes for women as early as 1882, and he remained well known as an adversary throughout his time as prime minister. He took a detached view of the women's suffrage question, believing it should be judged on whether extending the franchise would improve the system of government, rather than as a question of rights. He did not understand—Jenkins ascribed it to a failure of imagination—why passions were raised on both sides over the issue. He told the House of Commons in 1913, while complaining of the "exaggerated language" on both sides, "I am sometimes tempted to think, as one listens to the arguments of supporters of women's suffrage, that there is nothing to be said for it, and I am sometimes tempted to think, as I listen to the arguments of the opponents of women's suffrage, that there is nothing to be said against it." In 1906 suffragettes Annie Kenney, Adelaide Knight, and Jane Sbarborough were arrested when they tried to obtain an audience with Asquith.
H. H. Asquith | Votes for women
He opposed votes for women for most of his political career. There was also an element of party interest: Asquith believed that votes for women would disproportionately benefit the Conservatives. In a 2001 study of the extension of the franchise between 1832 and 1931, Bob Whitfield concluded that Asquith's surmise about the electoral impact was correct. In addition to his work for "The Spectator", he was retained as a leader writer by "The Economist", taught at evening classes, and marked examination papers.
H. H. Asquith | Early professional career
This would have satisfied Liberal suffrage supporters, and many suffragists, but the Speaker in January 1913 ruled that the amendment changed the nature of the bill, which would have to be withdrawn. Asquith was loud in his complaints against the Speaker, but was privately relieved.
H. H. Asquith | Votes for women
By 1914 Sylvia Pankhurst was determined that Asquith should be made aware of the feelings of working women on the vote. Rallies were held throughout East London to elect a deputation; Jessie Payne was selected. The proposal was that 'All women over the age of 21 years should have the vote.' Asquith refused the deputation and Sylvia was arrested on the resulting march to Downing Street. On her release on 18 June, Sylvia was carried, unable to walk, to the Houses of Parliament where she declared her intention to starve and thirst until the deputation was received. The working women of the East End had lobbied their MPs all week.
Jessie Payne | Deputation
The first General Election after British women won the right to vote in 1918 was almost an entirely male affair. With just days to spare before the old Parliament dissolved, legislation was rushed through that enabled female candidates to stand. Women scrambled to be nominated, but only seventeen made it onto the ballot paper. Three were in the West Midlands. Christabel Pankhurst (Smethwick) is probably the best known of them now. But, at the time, Mary Macarthur (Stourbridge), and Margery Corbett Ashby (Ladywood) were equally capable of making headline news... and often did.
David Hallam | Taking on the Men, the first women parliamentary candidates 1918
The returning officer allowed Maxwell to vote at Chorlton Town Hall. Maxwell cast her vote for Jacob Bright who supported the suffragist cause. Becker encouraged 5,346 other female heads of households to apply for their names to appear on the electoral rolls. These claims were presented at the Court of Common Pleas by Sir John Coleridge and Richard Pankhurst in "Chorlton v. Lings" on 2 November 1868. The law was not clear as the relevant legislation did not include the word "male" but instead used the ambiguous term "man". The case ruled that women could not vote in British elections.
Lilly Maxwell | Life
Chappelow might also have been in Leicester on the behalf of the WSPU who had offices at Clement's Inn, as she also sold the paper "Votes for Women" which was printed by St Clement's Press. By 1910, Chappelow was definitely living in Hatfield Peverel as she’s mentioned in the 25 November 1910 edition of the "Essex Weekly News" for her involvement in a planned raid on the House of Commons 'Miss G Chappelow, Hatfield Peverel'. The 119 suffragettes (including Chappelow), were not prosecuted after having appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court therefore were free to go. She was arrested again in 1911 for another attempted raid on the House of Commons, along with 223 other women, and in the same year her mother refused to take part in the census, scrawling 'no vote, no census'.
Grace Chappelow | Votes for women: 1908–1912
Lansbury again fought Bow and Bromley, and this time was successful. Lansbury found little support in his fight for women's suffrage from his parliamentary Labour colleagues, whom he dismissed as "a weak, flabby lot". In parliament, he denounced the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, for the cruelties being inflicted on imprisoned suffragists: "You are beneath contempt ... you ought to be driven from public life". He was temporarily suspended from the House for "disorderly conduct". In October 1912, aware of the unbridgeable gap between his own position and that of his Labour colleagues, Lansbury resigned his seat to fight a by-election in Bow and Bromley on the specific issue of women's suffrage.
George Lansbury | Campaigner for women's suffrage
He made a strong speech in support of the Bill, which lowered the voting age for women from 30 to 21 (the same age as men at the time), and which was blamed in part for the Conservatives' unexpected electoral defeat the following year, which the right of the party attributed to newly enfranchised young women (referred to derogatorily as "flappers") voting for the opposition Labour party.
William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford | Votes for young women
In April 1910 Davison decided to gain entry to the floor of the House of Commons to ask Asquith about the vote for women. She entered the Palace of Westminster with other members of the public and made her way into the heating system, where she hid overnight. On a trip from her hiding place to find water, she was arrested by a policeman, but not prosecuted. The same month she became an employee of the WSPU and began to write for "Votes for Women".
Emily Davison | Activism
Estimates at the time suggested that this proposal would have meant half a million more women than men on the electoral register, and that 70% of wage earning women at the time were currently unable to vote. Jewson's speech on the matter was her first in Parliament, and she went on to act as a teller for the vote alongside the Duchess of Atholl, the first time women had done so. The vote was returned at 288 to 72, paving the way for Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.
Dorothy Jewson | Political career
Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray your honourable House to consider the expediency of providing for the representation of all householders, without distinction of sex, who possess such property or rental qualification as your honourable House may determine.Shortly after the 1882 election effort, Taylor relinquished public work, owing to age and failing health, and retired for some nineteen years to her house at Avignon, where she had invariably spent her holidays and where she endeared herself to the people by her generous benefactions. The stress of work told on Taylor's appearance as well as on her health. At the end of 1904, Taylor returned to England, and under the care of her niece, Mary Taylor, and settled at Torquay.
Helen Taylor (feminist) | Women's suffrage
It was performed in 1907 at the Court Theatre in London. Julie Holledge, British actor and director, wrote that "Votes for Women" “heralded the beginning of a suffrage theatre” and assisted in organizing actresses and “their involvement with the women’s rights movement and their dissatisfaction with a male dominated theatre, these women had begun to develop a drama that could express the reality of women’s lives...With the emergence of the mass suffrage movement in the Edwardian era, over a thousand actresses were thrust into the fight for votes for women. Out of their struggle the first ‘women’s theatre movement of the twentieth century was born.” The characters in these plays were realistic, middle class characters fighting for or against women's suffrage.
Suffrage drama | United Kingdom
The by-election provided an opportunity for the return to Parliament of H. H. Asquith, the former Prime Minister who had lost his East Fife seat to the Unionists at the 1918 general election in the aftermath of the split in the Liberal Party between those who supported the coalition of David Lloyd George with the Conservatives and the supporters of Asquith’s independent Liberals, or ‘Wee Frees.’ Asquith had been an opponent of women’s suffrage (women over thirty were given the vote in 1918), and (30 January 1920) thought women voters “hopelessly ignorant, credulous to the last degree, and flickering with gusts of sentiment like a candle in the wind.
1920 Paisley by-election | Asquith’s return
Chappelow's friends the Rock sisters (Madeline and Dorothea), also refused to take part. 1912 was just as active as previous years, as Chappelow was mentioned again in the Essex County Chronicle for smashing panes of glass at Mansion House, home of the Lord Mayor of London. Arrested along with Madeline and Dorothea Rock and a woman named Fanny Pease, all four were imprisoned for two months, hard labour, in Holloway Prison. The Alderman did not wish to punish them in this way, but did so because he disagreed with their point of view: The Alderman said "he was sorry to punish these women in this way, but they were acting under an entirely mistaken view of the case.
Grace Chappelow | Votes for women: 1908–1912
Receiving his proxy, she thus became the first recorded legal woman voter in colonial America when she cast a vote on October 30, 1756 in an official New England Open Town Meeting, at Uxbridge, Massachusetts—as was noted in the records of the Uxbridge Town Meeting. Her vote was in favor of appropriating funds for the regiments engaged in the French and Indian War. Taft's historic vote preceded the constitutional amendment for women's suffrage by 164 years. She appeared at and may have voted at two other official Uxbridge Town meetings, in 1758 and 1765.
Lydia Taft | Place in early American history
Jessie Payne (née Avery) (1864-1933) was part of the deputation of working class female members of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) that visited Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in June 1914 seeking votes for all women.
Jessie Payne | Introduction
However, Sir Herbert Samuel, the former Liberal Home Secretary, moved a separate motion on 23 October 1918 to allow women to be eligible as Members of Parliament. The vote was passed by 274 to 25 and the government rushed through a bill to make it law in time for the 1918 general election. This bill did not specify any age restriction, unlike the voting bill. This later led to a number of incidents of women under the age of 30, who were not allowed to vote, standing for Parliament, notably the 27-year-old Liberal Ursula Williams standing in 1923.
Women in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom | Suffrage
On 19 November 1908, the suffragettes Sylvia Pankhurst, Flora Drummond and Helen Ogston visited Chelmsford as there was an upcoming Mid Essex by-election. Meeting at the Corn Exchange both Sylvia and Helen gave speeches however the crowd soon became rowdy with hecklers accosting the women, including ‘pushing the trolley they were speaking from around’. The following evening Chelmsford came to a standstill as Flora Drummond leant out of the windows of The Bell Hotel, lecturing the crowds below, whilst the National Trade Defense Association also harangued the crowds. And on 27 November there were rallies at both Shire Hall and outside the Marconi building led by the Women’s Freedom League and The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
Grace Chappelow | Votes for women: 1908–1912
It isn’t clear if Chappelow was involved with these demonstrations or whether she was even in Essex at this point, however she’d joined the WSPU by 1909 as in September of that year was in Leicester having disrupted a meeting led by the then Home Secretary Winston Churchill at the Palace Theatre. The disruption consisted of besieging the doors after Alfred Hawkins, husband of the suffragette Alice Hawkins, was thrown out of the meeting after challenging Churchill with the question: ‘Why don’t they secure the vote of the women in the country? How dare you stand on a democratic platform?’ Chappelow was imprisoned for five days.
Grace Chappelow | Votes for women: 1908–1912
Maxwell was born around the year 1800. She owned a shop in Manchester and therefore she would have been able to vote if she was a man. Her name appeared on the list of voters for Manchester. She was not the first woman to vote but in this case she was encouraged by Lydia Becker to be a test case. Records show that women had voted in Britain including maybe thirty in Lichfield in 1843. These were women who owned property and led households like Maxwell. Maxwell ran a shop that sold a range of goods from crockery to red herring.
Lilly Maxwell | Life
Initially he had not been a supporter of women's suffrage but then changed his position. In 1917, a Speakers Conference was charged with looking into giving women the vote but did not have, in its terms of reference, consideration to women standing as candidates for parliament. However, Samuel moved a separate motion on 23 October 1918 to allow women to be eligible as Members of Parliament. The vote was passed by 274 to 25, and the government rushed through a bill to make it law in time for the 1918 election.
Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel | Women's rights
The Conservatives did not contest the seat, putting their support behind Kinnear, who stood against Asquith as a Liberal Unionist. Asquith was elected with 2,863 votes to Kinnear's 2,489. The Liberals lost the 1886 election, and Asquith joined the House of Commons as an opposition backbencher. He waited until March 1887 to make his maiden speech, which opposed the Conservative administration's proposal to give special priority to an Irish Crimes Bill. From the start of his parliamentary career Asquith impressed other MPs with his air of authority as well as his lucidity of expression. For the remainder of this Parliament, which lasted until 1892, Asquith spoke occasionally but effectively, mostly on Irish matters.
H. H. Asquith | Member of Parliament and Queen's Counsel
Cicely Mary Hamilton (née Hammill, 15 June 1872 – 6 December 1952), was an English actress, writer, journalist, suffragist and feminist, part of the struggle for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She is now best known for the feminist play "How the Vote was Won", which sees a male anti-suffragist change his mind when the women in his life go on strike. She is also credited as author of one of the most frequently performed suffrage plays, "A Pageant of Great Women" (1909), which featured the character of Jane Austen as one of its "Learned Women."
Cicely Hamilton | Introduction
Josiah's untimely death opened the door for Lydia's step into America's history of women's suffrage. In Colonial America, women were not allowed to vote. Margaret Brent of Maryland Colony tried to assert property rights and to vote in 1647 on behalf of herself and Lord Calvert's estate, but this was denied by the Governor. Over a hundred years would pass before a woman succeeded in voting in an official capacity. The Uxbridge townspeople allowed Lydia, "the widow Josiah Taft", to vote, because of the landowner and taxpayer status of Josiah's estate and the fact that Bazaleel, Caleb's younger brother, was still a minor.
Lydia Taft | Place in early American history
During the war, with British suffragists abstaining from taking militant action, British statesmen such as Prime Minister H. H. Asquith began to have a change of heart regarding their right to vote. In early 1917 a clause which provided suffrage for property-holding women aged 30 years and older was debated, and in June it was attached to the bill which would later become the Representation of the People Act 1918. Suffragists who were pacifists and suffragists who were nationalistic could both congratulate themselves for winning this incremental victory. Ten years later full voting equality with men was achieved in the UK with the Representation of the People Act 1928.
Open Christmas Letter | Women's suffrage
In 1756, Lydia Chapin Taft of Uxbridge, Massachusetts became the only colonial woman known to vote, casting a vote in the local town hall meeting in place of her deceased husband. From 1775 until 1807, the state constitution in New Jersey permitted all persons worth fifty pounds who resided in the state for one year to vote; free black people and single women therefore had the vote until 1807, but not married women, as their property ownership was invariably limited.
History of women in the United States | One voter
Towards the end of the 1940s, Madden became interested in the "coupled vote", an idea promoted by George Bernard Shaw. Such a vote involved couples of candidates of a man and a woman, rather than individuals, resulting in gender equality in parliament. Madden exchanged letters with Shaw on the topic, and he encouraged her to publish a pamphlet on the subject. The pamphlet, published by the Six Point Group, is quoted at length in Dora Russell's autobiography, and in a preface to one of Shaw's plays.
Claire Madden | Career
Bissell was closely identified with the anti-suffragist movement. She wrote "The vote is part of man's work. Ballot-box, cartridge box, jury box, sentry box all go together in his part of life. Women cannot step in and take the responsibilities and duties of voting with assuming his place very largely". In 1896 Bissell published an essay called "The Mistaken Vocation of Shakespeare's Heroines," taking the form of a report of a lecture to suffragettes. The purported speaker launches an attack on the Elizabethan playwright Shakespeare for placing his female characters in unsuitable situations, where they are not allowed to demonstrate their true abilities.
Emily Bissell | Anti-suffragism
Bradley secured 394 votes (49.81%) to Hanley's 393 votes (49.68%). Cora Richardson-Hodge, Pam Webster and Evalie Bradley became the first elected women parliamentarian since the election of Albena Lake-Hodge in 1984.
Evalie A. Bradley | Career
Off the cuff and without Cabinet discussion, in a debate on a private member's bill on 20 February 1925, Joynson-Hicks pledged equal voting rights for women (clarifying a pronouncement of Baldwin's in the 1924 General Election). Joynson-Hicks' 1933 biographer wrote that the claim that Joynson-Hicks' parliamentary pledge to Lady Astor in 1925 had committed the party to giving votes to young women was an invention of Winston Churchill that has entered popular mythology but has no basis in fact. However, Francis Thompson (2004) wrote that the Baldwin Government would probably not have taken action without Joynson-Hicks' pledge. Joynson-Hicks personally moved the Second Reading of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 and was also responsible for piloting it through Parliament.
William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford | Votes for young women
In May 1870, her father sailed with his three children for the United States, arriving in Albany, New York. She was fortunate in being the object of one woman's considerate kindness and patience, in her efforts to learn the English language. In trying to read English, she noticed for the first time an article on woman suffrage in the Albany "Journal", in 1871, when Lillie Devereaux Blake addressed the assembly and asked the question: "Whom do you think, gentleman of the committee, to be most competent to cast a ballot, the mother who comes from the fireside, or the husband that comes from the corner saloon?" This was to the young discoverer a javelin that struck home, and she made inquiries why women did not and could not vote.
Henrica Iliohan | Career
This evidence of Helen Fairhurst's (née Silcock) activism runs contrary to Jill Liddleton and Jill Norris’ suggestion that after 1902, she appeared to have lost interest in women's suffrage, In December 1905, Hubert Sweeney resigned, after two years as candidate. It appeared that had he stood for Parliament in 1906, he would have lost his livelihood in London. MPs received no salary.
Thorley Smith | Hubert Sweeney's campaign
The election marked the first time women were allowed to vote, and Phillips-Gay, along with Janet Jagan and Jessica Burnham became the first three women elected to the parliament.
Jane Phillips-Gay | Career
In 1913 a group of professional men failed to get a meeting with Asquith to discuss extending votes to women. That group formed the "Northern Men's Federation for Women's Suffrage" and Agnes volunteered to be their secretary.
Agnes Brown (suffragist) | Life
In the Westminster election of 1784, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, a renowned gambler who canvassed for Charles J. Fox, himself a notorious gamester (he in fact ran a faro table in his home from 1780–81), brought the issue of gaming into the popular media’s negative portrayal of the aristocracy's involvement in politics. As a whole, the group aristocratic, gambling women were often associated with the Foxite Whigs. Lady Archer canvassed for Charles Fox as well, as did the Duchess’s sister and Lady Duncannon. In other elections, Mrs. Hobart canvassed for Admiral Lord Hood and Sir Cecil Wray. The private version of gaming practiced in the Faro ladies’ homes, furthermore, was “a crucial component of the social forum through which women entered the politics,” because women participated in both the play and political discussion with each other and any males present.
Faro Ladies | Politics
She also campaigned for equal pay for women, for state scholarships for girls as well as boys, and women-only railway carriages. At the 1924 general election, she lost her seat in Parliament to the Conservative Arthur Heneage. Although she stood again in Louth at the 1929 general election and in Aylesbury at the 1935 election she did not return to the House of Commons.
Margaret Wintringham | Political career
Three Conciliation bills were put before the House of Commons, one each year in 1910, 1911 and in 1912 which would extend the right of women to vote in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to just over a million wealthy, property-owning women. While the Liberal government of H. H. Asquith supported this, a number of backbenchers, both Conservative and Liberal, did not, fearing that it would damage their parties’ success in general elections. Some pro-suffrage groups rejected the Bills because they only gave the vote to propertied women; some Members of Parliament rejected them because they did not want any women to have the right to vote.
Conciliation Bills | Introduction
There were violent as against the public, and that was bound to bring punishment in its train. He must punish them equally as he would do a poor wandering man in the street who broke windows, and they must go to prison for two months’ hard labour."
Grace Chappelow | Votes for women: 1908–1912
Scott maintained the view that personal conservatism was a requirement to promote women's educational and political equality. She disapproved of smoking and makeup, however she did bob her hair before moving to Bryn Mawr (short hair being controversial even in the 1920s). This view was also held by the early Girton College community, because unaccompanied women in Cambridge could be thrown into Spinning House, a special prison for prostitutes and suspected prostitutes. She was a staunch supporter of rigour in women's classes, writing in a letter to Bryn Mawr President M. Carey Thomas: The word "nearly" written in small lettering above the handwritten letter.
Charlotte Scott | Women in mathematics
The January 1910 general election was dominated by talk of removing the Lords' veto. A possible solution was to threaten to have King Edward pack the House of Lords with freshly minted Liberal peers, who would override the Lords's veto; Asquith's talk of safeguards was taken by many to mean that he had secured the King's agreement to this. They were mistaken; the King had informed Asquith that he would not consider a mass creation of peers until after a "second" general election. Lloyd George and Churchill were the leading forces in the Liberals' appeal to the voters; Asquith, clearly tired, took to the hustings for a total of two weeks during the campaign, and when the polls began, journeyed to Cannes with such speed that he neglected an engagement with the King, to the monarch's annoyance.
H. H. Asquith | 1910: election and constitutional deadlock
When her husband was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Louth in Lincolnshire, she moved with him from Grimsby to Louth and remained politically active. When Thomas Wintringham died in 1921, she was selected as the Liberal candidate to replace him, and on 22 September she won the 1921 Louth by-election, becoming the first ever female Liberal MP and the third woman elected to the House of Commons. The first woman to be elected had been the abstentionist Constance Markievicz in 1918; the first to take her seat was the Conservative Nancy Astor, elected in 1919. In Parliament, she campaigned for an equal franchise; the Representation of the People Act 1918 had extended the vote to all men over the age of 21, but only to some women over the age of 30.
Margaret Wintringham | Political career
In 1908 she joined the Women's Liberals Forward Suffrage Union, a successor organisation to the Union of Practical Suffragists. In 1911, she was part of this group that met with Liberal Government leaders H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George to discuss the introduction of Votes for Women. Despite her prominence in the Liberal Party and in the Suffrage movement, she never secured a candidacy in Tavistock or any promising constituency for a Liberal candidate. She was Liberal candidate for the Portsmouth South Division of Hampshire at the 1918 General Election. She had the support of Liberal Leader H. H.
Alison Garland | Political career
If they were to gain the sympathy of anti-suffrage women and not risk alienating the men with the power to give them the right to vote, they had to cleverly gain support and empathy for their cause.
Beatrice Harraden | Theatre in the British women's suffrage movement
Whalley Range had another unusual feature for Victorian times – enfranchised women. The Poor Law Unions linked representation with taxation: anyone with an interest in real property above a certain rateable value could vote on local matters, irrespective of gender. The successor urban district councils continued this rule. In Moss Side, for instance, of the 55,000 approximate population, about 3,300 could vote. Married women could not vote, their property interests were subordinate to their husbands, but wealthy widows and single women (spinsters) could. This period of enfranchisement appears to end with incorporation. Women graduates of Oxbridge and, from 1918 seven other universities as the Combined English Universities could vote in both local and national elections, in the constituencies specifically set aside for those institutions.
Whalley Range, Manchester | Votes for Women
While Boyle did not, therefore, appear on the ballot paper, she claimed a moral victory for women's suffrage rights. The Law Lords were asked to consider the matter and concluded that the Great Reform Act 1832 had specifically banned women from standing as parliamentary candidates. The Representation of the People Act passed earlier in the year, did not change that. Parliament hurriedly passed the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 in time to enable women to stand in the general election of December 1918. The act ran to only 27 operative words: "A woman shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage for being elected to or sitting or voting as a Member of the Commons House of Parliament", and is the shortest UK statute.
Nina Boyle | Keighley by-election
During the war, a select group of parliamentary leaders decided on a policy that would expand the suffrage to all men over the age of 21, and properties women over the age of 30. Asquith, an opponent, was replaced as prime minister in late 1916 by David Lloyd George who had, for his first ten years as an MP, argued against women having the franchise. During the war there was a serious shortage of able-bodied men and women were able to take on many of the traditionally male roles. With the approval of the trade unions, "dilution" was agreed upon.
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom | Parliament expands suffrage 1918
As well as the Armistice, 1918 saw the passage of the Representation of The People Act, which gave the parliamentary vote to some women. In December, these women got their first chance to vote in a general election and on polling day Amelia Scott took part in a procession of women through Tunbridge Wells to the Town Hall.
Amelia Scott | First World War
Grannis annually attempted to register to vote, marching to the polls and declaring herself a "Female Man," with "man" used in the general sense of a human being; her efforts were rebuffed. Sometimes she filled out a ballot anyway, and handed it to a male friend or her brother, who submitted it for her. She worked at the polls as a watcher from as early as 1888. She voted legally for the first time in 1918, after many years of suffrage activism. She was 80 years old at the time, and went to the polls using a wheelchair. "I have waited long for this day, and I pray that every woman in the land may soon have the same privilege," she declared after voting.
Elizabeth Bartlett Grannis | Voting rights
In 1909, Arabella and her sister Muriel were both arrested on the charge of obstruction in London after they tried to hand a petition to the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, on this charge the sisters served 21 days at HM Prison Holloway. Arabella Scott was arrested and released several times over the following years, under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913, known by suffragettes as the Cat and Mouse Act. The Cat and Mouse Act was put into place so that suffragettes could not die in prison due to hunger strikes, instead when they became too weak they were released and then re-arrested at a later time to complete their sentences.
Arabella Scott | Campaigning for women's suffrage
Given audience late in the day, Macmillan spoke for three quarters of an hour. Press reports of the appearance described her as a "modern Portia." In Scotland, Glasgow's "The Herald" reported that she began nervously but warmed to her subject and "argued law in an admirable speaking voice". Two days later she continued to plead her case, this time in "complete self-possession", wearing a dark red outfit and hat trimmed with ermine furs. Like other suffragists in Britain and the United States, she based her case on the words "person" and "persons" in the voting statutes, arguing that such unspecific words were no basis for the exclusion of one entire sex from voting.
Chrystal Macmillan | Women's rights
The drawing is presented from Georgiana's point of view as she is able to see the other women at her level also looking down on the structure beneath. The assumption that Georgiana drew this sketch is due to her elevated social position, allowing her to travel to Westminster and acquire tickets to enter the House of Commons. This drawing is significant because it shows how women politically engaged, whether it was from listening from a ventilator in the ceiling or persuading men to vote for local leaders. Though such women as Lady Chatterton were often able to influence politics, they could only do so indirectly, still managing to make their mark on a world almost a hundred years before female suffrage was achieved in the United Kingdom.
Georgiana Chatterton | Legacy: sketches found
Sheppard had no time to rest, as the was only ten weeks away, and the newspapers were spreading rumours that an early election might be called to reduce the number of women enrolled. Along with the Temperance Union, she was highly active in encouraging women to register as voters. The main meeting venue in Christchurch was the Tuam Street Hall. One of her largest detractors was the liquor industry, which feared for its continued business. Despite the short notice, 88 percent of women had enrolled to vote by election date (28 November), and nearly 70 percent ended up casting a vote.
Kate Sheppard | 1893 general election and further women's advocacy
Her introduction to politics came from having campaigned for her father at Consett in 1918 and 1922. In 1923 at the age of 27 she was selected as Liberal candidate, in succession to her father, for the Consett Division of Durham at the 1923 General Election. This put her in an anomalous position. Since 1918, under the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, women over 21 were allowed to stand for parliament. However, in 1923 only women over the age of 30 were allowed to vote. So Williams could ask people to vote for her even though she was not allowed to vote for herself.
Ursula Williams | Politics
She had taken a hatchet to the portrait in full view of everyone; striking it "in the left breast and immediately below where the medals and decorations worn by the king are placed." She had acted response to Mrs Pankhurst’s failed attempt to lead a deputation to the King at the gates of Buckingham Palace and Edwards stated that it had taken a "lot of nerve to do such work". Since early 1913 militant suffragettes had been trying to bring the suffrage question to the attention of King George V.
Maude Edwards | Campaigning for women's suffrage
In 1832 Henry Hunt became the first MP to raise the issue of women's suffrage in the House of Commons, followed in 1867 by John Stuart Mill. Following this attempts were made to widen the franchise in every Parliament. Women gained the right to vote with the passing of the Representation of the People Act 1918 after World War I. This gave the vote to women over the age of 30. However, the Speakers Conference which was charged with looking into giving women the vote did not have as its terms of reference, consideration to women standing as candidates for Parliament.
Women in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom | Suffrage
In the first year that women were no longer prohibited from standing for election in the United Kingdom, following the passing of the Qualification of Women Act, Lawrence stood in a by-election in Belsize ward to Hampstead Borough Council following the resignation of C. S. Preston. The first women borough councillors, seven in England and one in Scotland, had been elected on November 1. Lawrence was elected on December 12, 1907 with a majority of 319 votes. She gained support from Orme and the Hampstead Women's Local Government Society, stressing that she was not a suffragette. A contemporary newspaper reported she was "strongly recommended by several members of Parliament and local aldermen and councillors".
Reina Lawrence | Career
The fact that the terms of enfranchisement were not equal to men ensured that the surviving suffragist societies still had a focus, and the first point of order was the bill to admit women as MPs. This was passed in October 1918 and seventeen women stood at the 1918 General Election. There was one female candidacy in Wales, Millicent Mackenzie, a former professor of education from the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, who unsuccessfully contested the newly formed University of Wales seat. It took until 1929 for Wales to return its first female MP, Megan Lloyd George, the youngest daughter of the former Prime Minister.
Women's suffrage in Wales | After the Peoples Act 1918
The first ballot by a woman in an American presidential election was cast on this site November 3, 1868, by Charlotte (Charley) Parkhurst who masqueraded as a man for much of her life. She was a stagecoach driver in the mother lode country during the gold rush days and shot and killed at least one bandit. In her later years he drove a stagecoach in this area. She died in 1879. Not until then was she found to be female. She is buried in Watsonville at the pioneer cemetery.
Charley Parkhurst | Legacy and honors
The play is set during British women's struggle for the vote in the early 20th century, beginning with a suffragette trying to pin a suffragette sash on the kings horse at the Derby and ending with the outbreak of World War I. It is centred on a love-affair between two fictional suffragettes, one upper-class called: Lady Celia Cain (played in the premiere by Lesley Manville) and the other working-class called: Eve Douglas (played in the premiere by Jemima Rooper).
Her Naked Skin | Plot
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies also agreed to back Bland, as he was the only candidate committed to women's suffrage, although it decided against giving him financial backing. They were concerned that he would fail to match the 28.9% of the vote which William Crawford Anderson had received as the Labour candidate in the 1911 Keighley by-election, and that this would discredit their cause. Ultimately, Bland performed well, taking 29.8% of the vote, but third place.
William Bland (politician) | Introduction
Pankhurst was told that Howey and Wentworth could not visit their house again. Wentworth sent them a long reply expressing regret at their reaction but noting that "if Mr. Asquith will not receive deputation they will pummel him again". In January 1910, Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton was imprisoned and forcibly fed at Walton Gaol. In response, Howey broke the gaol governor's windows so that she too would be jailed in support of Lytton. Lytton in turn called Howey the "most dear one of our members". In April 1910, she received national attention after leading "a WSPU demonstration through London dressed as Joan of Arc, in a full set of armour" on horseback a role also played by nineteen year old actress Marjery Bryce.
Elsie Howey | Activism
After the enactment of the Reform Act, the MP Henry Hunt argued that any woman who was single, a taxpayer and had sufficient property should be allowed to vote. One such wealthy woman, Mary Smith, was used in this speech as an example. The Chartist Movement, which began in the late 1830s, has also been suggested to have included supporters of female suffrage. There is some evidence to suggest William Lovett, one of the authors of the People's Charter wished to include female suffrage as one of the campaign's demands but chose not to on the grounds that this would delay the implementation of the charter.
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom | Background
The rupture appears to have been over what Barton regarded as a lack of courtesy to him and the women Liberals who worked for him politically rather than on any matter of policy associated with the issue of women's suffrage itself. Barton supported votes for women. In 1911 he is recorded as having voted for woman suffrage in the House of Commons, although he also voted in protest at the growing campaign of so-called organized rowdyism which the suffragettes were waging as likely to hinder the passing of favourable legislation. In 1912 and again in 1914 he was invited to speak at the annual demonstration at the Albert Hall organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
William Barton (British politician) | Votes for Women
Miss Martin therefore demanded that the three male election judges allow the women to vote. Reportedly, the voting judges were flabbergasted by Miss Martin: "Mr. Marquardt was taken with a spasm, Reber leaned stiff against the wall, and Vance fell backward into the flour barrel."
Ellen A. Martin | Introduction
However, suffrage playwrights had to have an acute awareness that “public speaking platforms defied nineteenth-century notions of women's decorum, modesty, and submissiveness and marked them as aggressive and unfeminine”. In this case, as they called for women to speak up for their right to vote, they also had to address the challenges women faced in speaking in any public setting. The playwrights used the theatrical forum to help women overcome their lack of practice and, hence, nervousness about public speaking; suffrage playwrights were able to employ highly-trained and renowned actresses to speak eloquently on behalf of their cause. In fact, as the suffragette writers were fighting to have a public voice and a venue to be heard, they also struggled to find their public voice.
Beatrice Harraden | Theatre in the British women's suffrage movement
Despite it being illegal, she both registered and voted in the 1872 presidential election. She presented (unsuccessful) suffrage petitions at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1880. In 1881 Meriwether began her lecture tour with Susan B. Anthony through the New England States where conventions were being held. Anthony wanted her to speak at these places because she was a Southern woman. As illustrative of her methods of lecturing she carried with her two cartoons, four feet by four feet, which she sketched and painted herself. The men who hated and scorned equal rights declared that no one but an ugly old maid would want to vote, one who could not secure a husband, and should a married woman advocate equal rights she must necessarily be a coarse, rough termagant, who had a feeble-minded, no-account husband.
Elizabeth Avery Meriwether | Career
Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister, opposed the enfranchisement of women. In fact, Roch was a supporter of Votes for Women. Roch comfortably held the seat.
Walter Roch | 1908 Pembrokeshire by-election
Rathbone was elected by taking second place in a two-seat constituency.
Election results of women standing for the Parliament of the United Kingdom (to 1945) | 1929 UK general election
Despite objections from the Conservatives, the women's nominations were accepted by the local returning officers. Cobden's campaign in Bow and Bromley was organised with considerable enthusiasm and efficiency by the 29-year-old George Lansbury, then a Radical Liberal, later a socialist and eventually leader of the Labour Party. Both Cobden and Sandhurst were victorious in the elections on 19 January 1889; they were joined by Emma Cons, whom the Progressive majority on the council selected to serve as an alderman. The women took their places on the inaugural council, and each accepted a range of committee assignments. Almost immediately, however, Sandhurst's defeated Conservative opponent, Beresford Hope, lodged a legal challenge against her election.
Jane Cobden | London County Council election 1889
During the debate of the bill, Lord Islington explained the apparent discrepancy that women could sit in Parliament at 21 but could not vote until they were 30: "...the age of thirty, which was prescribed for enfranchisement of women, was made not because women of a younger age were considered less competent to exercise the vote, but rather because the inclusion of women between the ages of twenty-one and thirty might lead to women-voters being in a majority on the Register, and this was considered, too drastic a departure in the realms of constitutional experiment. Therefore the embargo on any woman below the age of thirty was placed in that measure.
Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 | Age limits
An associate of Sylvia Pankhurst, Scurr joined her East London Federation of Suffragettes. She was one of the delegation of six women (Daisy Parsons, Jane Savoy, Jessie Payne, Mrs Bird and Mrs Watkins) from the East End who met with Prime Minister H. H. Asquith on 20 June 1914 following Pankhurst's hunger strike. This was just two weeks after her husband had made his fourth attempt to become an MP, unsuccessfully contesting Ipswich by-election. Scurr's plea to the Prime Minister was for the demand for suffrage coming from East London working women (and men) living in poverty, who died young, and for the widows without support.
Julia Scurr | Role in suffrage movement
In the 14 December 1918 election to the House of Commons, seventeen women candidates stood, among them well-known suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, representing the Women's Party in Smethwick. The only woman elected was the Sinn Féin candidate for Dublin St Patrick's, Constance Markievicz. However, in line with Sinn Féin abstentionist policy, she did not take her seat. The first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons was Nancy Astor on 1 December 1919. She was elected as a Coalition Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton on 28 November 1919, taking the seat her husband had vacated. As Members of Parliament, women also gained the right to become government ministers.
Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 | Effects
At the 1852 general election Scourfield was elected Member of Parliament for Haverfordwest and held the seat until 1868. In 1857 he narrowly held on to the seat by two votes over the Liberal candidate William Rees, in a contest characterised by accusations of intimidation. At the 1868 general election he was elected MP for Pembrokeshire and held the seat until his death aged 68 in 1876. He was created a baronet by Disraeli on 18 February 1876 but died the following May. He was against the Women's Disabilities Removal Bill, an early women's suffrage bill. He argued, in May 1872, that the novelist Jane Austen would be, too, were she alive.
John Scourfield | Political career
Thomson certainly made a hasty trip down to London immediately after the election for political meetings but he denied he had been asked to stand aside and no such by-election ever took place. Asquith was made a peer in 1925.
Trevelyan Thomson | The 1924 general election
Underneath is written, '14 females passed the night here. As women are not counted as voters, neither should they be counted on this census'. In November 1911, after the failure of the Conciliation Bill, anger spilled over into direct action and 223 suffragettes were arrested during a campaign of window smashing. Among the arrests were seven women with Welsh connections, including Edith Mansell Moullin, Mildred Mansell, the sister of Ivor Guest, MP, and Janet Boyd who was arrested on 19 November 1911 for breaking a window in The Strand in London. During her appearance at Bow Street Magistrates' Court on 22 November she stated “I don’t consider I was guilty, because I was doing it for a good purpose.” She was fined 10 shillings and three shillings for the damage and sentenced to seven days in prison.
Janet Boyd | Activism
Although an Anglican, she was frequently asked to preach in the local chapels of the Wrekin area, and at the 1929 general election she won the seat by nearly 3,000 votes. When the results were announced "some in the vast crowd, sang the doxology 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow' – this was caught up by a large number and swelled into a loud chorus". In 1929, there were fourteen women in the new House of Commons with just over 600 men; and the account of the 1929–31 Parliament in her autobiography is worth reading. She was always concerned with the inferior status of women in society, and always supported reforming measures and successfully introduced the Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Bill to prevent the passing of the death sentence on pregnant women.
Edith Picton-Turbervill | Life in Parliament
Her acquittal helped to establish the legality of such ballots. She was elected a life governor of St Mary's, the West London, and the Royal National Orthopaedic hospitals.
Hilda Leyel | Background and early career
Asquith who was vehemently opposed to the enfranchisement of women.
Women's suffrage in Wales | Pressure groups
Horsbrugh was elected by taking second place in a two-seat constituency.
Election results of women standing for the Parliament of the United Kingdom (to 1945) | 1931 UK general election
A feminist, in 1909 she joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), having previously worked for the Women Writers' Suffrage League and the Actresses' Franchise League. In 1909 Marshall turned Cicely Hamilton's short story "How The Vote Was Won" into a play that became popular with women's suffrage groups throughout the United Kingdom. Also in 1909, Marshall joined a WSPU deputation to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, contributing an article "Why I Went on the Deputation" to the journal "Votes for Women" in July 1909. In November 1909 Marshall appeared as the woman-soldier Hannah Snell in Cicely Hamilton's "Pageant of Great Women", directed by Edith Craig.
Christabel Marshall | Biography
After his graduation in 1874, Asquith spent several months coaching Viscount Lymington, the 18-year-old son and heir of the Earl of Portsmouth. He found the experience of aristocratic country-house life agreeable. He liked less the austere side of the nonconformist Liberal tradition, with its strong temperance movement. He was proud of ridding himself of "the Puritanism in which I was bred". His fondness for fine wines and spirits, which began at this period, eventually earned him the sobriquet "Squiffy". Returning to Oxford, Asquith spent the first year of his seven-year fellowship in residence there. But he had no wish to pursue a career as a don; the traditional route for politically ambitious but unmoneyed young men was through the law.
H. H. Asquith | Early professional career
In the early 20th century the Irish Parliamentary Party under John Redmond and his deputy John Dillon was opposed to votes for women, as was the British prime minister, Asquith. In June 1912, after a meeting of a number of women's organisations, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and Margaret Cousins with six other members of the IWFL smashed government windows in the GPO and other government buildings. They were arrested, charged, and jailed. The following month Asquith came on a visit to Dublin to address a meeting in the Theatre Royal. Frank Sheehy-Skeffington managed to gain entrance and demanded votes for women before being thrown out, while Asquith's carriage was attacked by British suffragists Mary Leigh and Gladys Evans.
Irish Women's Franchise League | History
Cobden did not follow this path. A Bill introduced in the House of Commons in May 1891 permitting women to serve as county councillors found little support among MPs of any party; women were not granted this right until 1907. Lansbury was offended by his party's lukewarm support for women's rights. In a letter published in the "Pall Mall Gazette" he made an open call to Bow and Bromley's Liberals to "shake themselves free of party feeling and throw the energy and ability they are now wasting on minor questions into ... securing the full rights of citizenship to every woman in the land".
George Lansbury | London County Council elections, 1889
The suffragettes sent Grace Roe to help with campaign. He lost to his Conservative opponent, who campaigned on the slogan "No Petticoat Government". Commenting on the result, the Labour MP Will Thorne opined that no constituency could ever be won on the single question of votes for women.
George Lansbury | Campaigner for women's suffrage
The procession marched on 17 June 1911, a few days before King George V's coronation. During 1910–12 several Conciliation Bills extending the parliamentary vote to a limited number of propertied women, were debated in the House of Commons. When the third of these was under discussion, Cobden sought the help of the Irish Parliamentary Party by reminding them of the support women had given to Ireland during the Land League agitation: "In the name of those 40,000 Englishwomen we urge you to support at every division this Bill by your presence and your vote". The bill was finally abandoned when the Liberal prime minister, H.
Jane Cobden | Votes for women, 1903–14
The suffrage movement supported the legislation. Although MPs backed the bill and passed its first and second readings, Asquith refused to grant it further parliamentary time. On 18November 1910, following a breakdown in relations between the House of Commons and House of Lords over that year's budget, Asquith called another general election, and said that parliament would be dissolved on 28November. The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) saw the move as a betrayal and organised a protest march to parliament from Caxton Hall in Westminster. Lines of police and crowds of male bystanders met three hundred female protestors outside the Houses of Parliament; the women were attacked for the next six hours.
Black Friday (1910) | Introduction
Prior to the Qualification of Women (County and Borough Councils) Act 1907, the position was in some respects equivocal. Lady Sandhurst had been elected to the Council in 1889, but her election was challenged by petition, and the Court of Appeal ruled that a woman was ineligible for election. Jane Cobden had, however, also been elected in 1889, and Emma Cons had been elected as an alderman in 1889; neither of their elections was challenged within the requisite time limit. The Court of Appeal subsequently held, however, following Lady Sandhurst's case, that any woman who cast a vote would be voting whilst disqualified from holding office, and so liable to a financial penalty for having voted.
List of members of London County Council 1889–1919 | Councillors 1907–1919
News of the women's registration appeared in the afternoon newspapers, with some of them calling for the arrest of the inspectors who had registered the women. Anthony returned to the voter registration office to ask the inspectors to stand firm and to assure them that she would cover any legal costs they might incur. Other women in Rochester began to register, bringing the total to nearly fifty. On election day, November 5, Anthony and fourteen other women from her ward went to the polling place to cast their ballots. Sylvester Lewis, a poll watcher, challenged their right to vote, thereby triggering a requirement that they take an oath stating that they were qualified to vote, which they did.
Trial of Susan B. Anthony | Vote in 1872 election
In 1906 suffragettes Knight, Annie Kenney, and Mrs. Jane Sbarborough were arrested along with Teresa Billington when they tried to obtain an audience with H. H. Asquith, a prominent member of the Liberals. Offered either six weeks in prison or giving up campaigning for one year, despite her poor health Knight chose prison, as did the other women. Annie Kenney, in her book autobiography, describes Knight as 'extraordinarily clever'.
Adelaide Knight | Arrest
He married Emmeline in 1879. Several months later, a widowed shop owner, Lilly Maxwell, mistakenly appeared on the register of voters in Manchester. She was not the first but she was a good opportunity for publicity. Becker visited Maxwell and escorted her to the polling station. The returning officer found Maxwell's name on the list and allowed her to vote. Becker immediately began encouraging other women heads of households in the region to petition for their names to appear on the rolls. Their claims were presented in court by Sir John Coleridge and Richard Pankhurst in "Chorlton v. Lings", but the case was dismissed.
Lydia Becker | Role in women's suffrage
Her Unionist opponent was an avowed anti-feminist, and her victory was greeted with special delight among women's societies such as the Six Point Group. This made her one of only eight women in the House of Commons. In Parliament, she supported the abolition of the means test for old-age pensions, making her maiden speech seconding a motion on the subject. She also actively supported the Guardianship of Infants Bill which would have given both parents equal rights to custody. She also campaigned against cruelty to animals. She lost her seat a year later, at the 1924 general election, an election in which Liberal candidates did badly across the country.
Vera Woodhouse, Lady Terrington | Political career
In 1871, the first elections were held to the Bath School Board, and Ashworth was elected, one of only seven women around the country to win a seat at the initial elections. From 1873, she sat on the executive of the Married Women's Property Committee, and she also held membership of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage and the Bristol and West of England Society. She did not address meetings, but supported the groups organisationally, financially, and by providing her home, Claverton Lodge, for speakers to rest after they had completed a tour.
Anne Ashworth | Introduction
She noted that the gallantry that her gender received was no substitute for the right to vote. In 1871 she used the phrase "When words needed saying and deeds needed doing...". In 1872 she, as BWSS President, gave a rousing speech in support of women getting the vote on the same platform as Millicent Fawcett at Birmingham Town Hall. The speeches were later published as pamphlets.
Eliza Sturge | Life
Astor had not been connected with the women's suffrage movement in the British Isles. The first woman elected to the British Parliament, Constance Markievicz, said Lady Astor was "of the upper classes, out of touch". Countess Markiewicz had been in Holloway prison for Sinn Féin activities during her election, and other suffragettes had been imprisoned for arson. However, as Astor was met as she arrived at Paddington station on the day after her election by a crowd of suffragettes, including unnamed women who had been imprisoned and on hunger strike, one said, "This is the beginning of our era. I am glad to have suffered for this." Astor was hampered in the popular campaign for her published and at times vocal teetotalism and her ignorance of current political issues.
Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor | First campaign for Parliament
In 1879 universal male suffrage had been granted to all men over the age of 21 whether they owned property or not, but women were still excluded as electors. A limited number of voting rights were extended to female voters in the 1870s. Female ratepayers were able to vote in local body elections in 1873, and in 1877 women "householders" were given the right to vote in and stand for education boards. The New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed at a conference in Wellington in February 1886. Sheppard did not attend that conference, but at the second national convention in Christchurch a year later, she arrived ready to present a paper on women's suffrage, although there was no opportunity for her to do so.
Kate Sheppard | Early engagement