1. Women’s Suffrage in England
“Truly these Englishwomen are real fighters, for they put their all into it.”
-Minna Cauer, German Feminist 1906
-Englishwomen first demanded the right to vote in 1832 after the “Great Reform Act” was released.
-In the 1830’s and 1840’s women joined other movements like the abolition of the slave trade and the abolition of laws keeping the price of grain high in order to have a voice in political realm.
National Society for Women’s Suffrage, Edinburgh

2. Harriet Hardy Taylor Mill (1807-1858)
-Published an essay advocating women’s suffrage in a radical journal in 1851.
“What is wanted for women is equal rights, equal admission to all social privilages; not a position apart, a sort sentimental priesthood.”
-She also advocated higher education for women:
“High mental powers in women will be but an exceptional accident, until every career is open to them and until they, as well as men, are educated for themselves and for the world- not one sex for the other.”

3. The Englishwomen’s Journal
-Bessie Raynor Parkes, Leigh Smith, Mary Howitt and Anna Jameson established the Victoria Press to print the The Englishwomen’s Journal.
-Both press and journal were directed and staffed entirely by women.
-This group grew and worked with other women’s rights groups in England to form their own political network.
Bessie Raynor Parkes ( )

4. Successes for Suffragists
Lobbied Parliament into passing legislation allowing married women to control their earnings and won in 1882.
They trained students to pass the Oxford and Cambridge examinations and convinced college authorities to allow female students to attend classes. Women begin to enter Oxford and Cambridge in the 1870’s.
They campaigned to abolish the Contagious Diseases Acts and they succeeded in 1884.
All the while, they continued to work for the vote…
-Created Women’s Suffrage Committee which later became the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage.
By the early twentieth century, women had won the right to sit on town councils and school boards.

5. A Political Stalemate
Women could not get support from the liberal or conservative parties.
Conservative parties had no interest in women’s suffrage
-They upheld the tradition that women had no place in politics
The male-dominated liberal party feared women’s vote-which they assumed would not go toward themselves.

6. National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
Millicent Fawcett ( )
London, June 18, 1913

7. Suffragettes
Suffragette militancy and government repression climaxed in 1913 and 1914.
By 1913, over one thousand suffragettes had gone to prison.
Britain’s entry into World War I in August 1914 abruptly ended the suffrage struggle.

8. After World War I
Women’s work in the factories and patriotism during the war swayed public opinion toward the vote.
Englishwomen over thirty won the right to vote in 1918.
Women between the ages of 21 and 30 were considered too “flighty” and had to wait until to gain their right to vote in England.