Emmeline Pankhurst Statue - A crusader for Women's Rights

EMMELINE PANKHURST (14 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was one of the founders of the British suffragette movement. Her name "Mrs. Panhurst" is the one most closely associated with the struggle for women's rights in the period right before World War I.

She was born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, England to abolitionist Robert Goulden and feminist Sophia Crane, and married Richard MarsdenPankhurst, a barrister, in Salford in 1879. Richard Pankhurst wasalready a supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882.

In 1889, Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, but her campaign was interrupted by her husband's death in 1898.

In 1903 she founded the better-known Women's Social and Political Union, anorganization most famous for its militancy which began in around 1907, following the failure of a suffrage Bill in Parliament in 1906.

Members included Annie Kenney, Emily Wilding Davison (who was killedby the King's horse in the 1913 Epsom Derby as the result of asuffragette protest), and the composer Dame Ethel Mary Smyth.

Mrs. Pankhurst was joined in the movement by her daughters, ChristabelPankhurst and Sylvia Pankhurst, both of whom would make a substantial contribution to the campaign in different ways.

Her other daughter,Adela Pankhurst emigrated to Australia where she was politically active in the first Communist Party of Australia and then the fascist Australia First Movement.

At one point, Pankhurst lived in an apartment that was located at 159 Knightsbridge, London. The address still exists, but is now the Knightsbridge Green Hotel.

Pankhurst's tactics for drawing attention to the movement led to her being imprisoned several times but, because of her high profile, shedid not at first endure the same privations as many of the imprisonedworking-class suffragettes. However, one of the indiginities she suffered was being force-fed, because she often went on hunger strikes while being imprisioned.

Her autobiography, My Own Story, was published in 1914.

And then, later in 1914, World War I broke out, and Pankhurst felt that nothing should interfere with her country's efforts to win. All attempts togain votes for women were put on hold, and her efforts were instead directed to urging women to take over men's jobs, so that the men could go and fight in the war.

With support from David Lloyd George,she organised a parade of 30,000 women, using £2,000 funding from the government, to encourage employers to let women take over men's jobsin industry.

On September 8, 1914, Christabel re-appeared at theLondon Opera House, after her long exile, to utter a declaration on"The German Peril". Pankhurst toured the country, making recruiting speeches. Her supporters handed white feathers to every young man they encountered wearing civilian dress, and bobbed up at Hyde Park meetings with placards: "Intern Them All."

The British government started to implement voting rights for women, across the then United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in March1918.

While the Representation of the People Act 1918 only gave voting rights to women over 30, and that with a property qualification, while all men over 21 were enfranchised, the Suffragettes nevertheless saw it as a great victory.

In November1918, women over 21 were given the right to become Members ofParliament — meaning women could be MPs and not be allowed to vote. In 1928, women finally achieved equal voting rights to men in the UK.

Pankhurst died at the age of 69, ten years after seeing her most ardently pursued goal come to fruition. She is buried in Brompton Cemetery.