Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the daughter Newson Garrett and Louise Dunnell, was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1847. Elizabeth's father had originally ran a pawnbroker's shop in London, but by the time she was born he owned a corn and coal warehouse in Aldeburgh. The business was a great success and by the 1850s Garrett could afford to send his children away to be educated.
When Millicent was twelve years old, her older sister, Elizabeth Garrett, moved to London in an attempt to qualify as a doctor. Millicent's visits to London to stay with Elizabeth and her other sister, Louise, brought her into contact with people with radical political views. In 1865 Louise took Millicent to hear a speech on women's rights made by the Radical MP, John Stuart Mill. Millicent was deeply impressed by Mill and became one of his many loyal supporters.
John Stuart Mill introduced Millicent to other campaigners for women's rights. This included Henry Fawcett, the Radical MP for Brighton. Fawcett, who had been blinded in a shooting accident in 1857, had been expected to marry Millicent's older sister Elizabeth Garrett, but in 1865 she decided to concentrate of her attempts to become a doctor. Henry and Millicent became close friends and even though she was warned against marrying a disabled man, fourteen years her senior, the couple was married in 1867.
For the next few years Millicent Fawcett spent much of her time assisting Henry Fawcett in his work as a MP However, Henry, an ardent supporter of women's rights, encouraged Millicent to continue her own career as a writer. At first Millicent wrote articles for journals but later books such as Political Economy for Beginners and Essays and Lectures on Political Subjects were published.
Millicent Fawcett joined the London Suffrage Committee in 1868. Although only a moderate public speaker, Millicent was a superb organiser and by the early 1880s she had emerged as the one of the leaders of the suffrage movement.
Millicent also took a keen interest in women's education. She was involved in the organisation of women's lectures at Cambridge that led to the establishment of Newnham College. Millicent's only child, Philippa, went to Newnham, where she was placed first in the mathematical tripos.
The political career of Henry Fawcett was also going well. In 1880 William Gladstone, leader of the Liberal government, appointed Fawcett as his Postmaster General. Fawcett, who introduced the parcel post, postal orders and the sixpenny telegram, also used his power as Postmaster General to start employing women medical officers.
Henry Fawcett was taken seriously ill with diphtheria and although he gradually recovered, his political career had come to an end. Henry, severely weakened by his illness, died of pleurisy in 1884. Millicent now had more time for her own political career and after the death of Lydia Becker in 1890, she was elected president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).
Millicent Fawcett believed that it was important that the NUWSS campaigned for a wide variety of causes. This included helping Josephine Butler in her campaign against the white slave traffic. Fawcett also gave support to Clementina Black and her attempts to persuade the government to help protect low paid women workers.
Although Millicent Fawcett had always been a Liberal, she became increasing angry at the party's unwillingness to give full support to women's suffrage. Herbert Asquith became Prime Minister in 1908. Unlike other leading members of the Liberal Party, Asquith was a strong opponent of votes for women. In 1912 Fawcett and the NUWSS took the decision to support Labour Party candidates in parliamentary elections.
Despite Asquith's unwillingness to introduce legislation, Fawcett remained committed to the use of constitutional methods to gain votes for women. Fawcett, like other members of the NUWSS, feared that the militant actions of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) would alienate potential supporters of women's suffrage. However, Fawcett admired the courage of the suffragettes and was restrained in her criticism of the WSPU.
Two days after the British government declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914, the NUWSS declared that it was suspending all political activity until the conflict was over. Although Fawcett supported the First World War effort she did not follow the WSPU strategy of becoming involved in persuading young men to join the armed forces.
After the war Millicent concentrated on writing books such as The Women's Victory (1920), What I Remember (1924) and Josephine Butler (1927). Millicent Fawcett died in 1929.
Forum Debates
Votes for Women
Women and Football
Men's League for Women's Suffrage
Women's History
(1) In 1939, Louisa Garrett Anderson, the daughter of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, wrote about attitudes towards girls' education in the 19th century.
Men were believed to dislike 'blue-stockings', so that parents thought the serious education of their daughters superfluous: deportment, music and a little French would see them through. 'To learn arithmetic will not help my daughter to find a husband was a common point of view. A governess at home, for a short period, was the usual fate of the girls. Their brothers might go to public schools and university but home was considered the right place for their sisters. Some parents sent their daughters to a finishing school, but good schools for girls did not exist. Their teachers were untrained and ill-educated. No public examinations accepted female candidates.
To his daughters, Newson Garrett opened up the windows of the world by sending them to boarding school… He took trouble in the choice of school. Finally it was decided that Louie and Elizabeth should go on to an 'Academy for the Daughters of Gentlemen' at Blackheath, kept by Miss Browning and her sister. After two years at Blackheath, Louie and Elizabeth left, their education considered to be at an end.
From the point of view of children, Lewes, where we settled, was a delightful place to live in. It was impossible to forget the old rambling house in the High Street and the great green Downs rising so steeply above the little town, and the wide meadows below. It had not the same appeal for my mother. Lewes was a Conservative town in those days, narrow in outlook both socially and religiously, and unfortunately not interested in education. My mother approved neither of the old-fashioned private schools nor of half-taught governesses. She tried hard to get a High School for Girls established in Lewes but was met with opposition on all sides. At Brighton there was such a school, so, in 1885, she decided to move there.
Mother forecast the time when every boy or girl would be trained for his or her vocation without regard to sex, so that it would seem equally natural to train a boy for cooking and housework and a girl for carpentry as vice versa, and the only unnatural thing would be to refuse training to any of one's children, or to consider the domestic arts as "menial work".
(2) In her book Women's Suffrage published in 1911, Millicent Garrett Fawcett criticised the passing of the 1857 Divorce Act.
In 1857 the Divorce Act was passed, and, as is well known, set up by law a different moral standard for men and women. Under this Act, which is still in force, a man can obtain the dissolution of the marriage if he can prove one act of infidelity on the part of his wife; but a woman cannot get her marriage dissolved unless she can prove that her husband has been guilty both of infidelity and cruelty.
(3) Louisa Garrett used to tell a story of a scene she witnessed at Alde House, Aldeburgh. The three women were her two daughters, Elizabeth and Millicent, and their friend, Emily Davies.
Before the bedroom fire, the girls were brushing their hair. Emily was twenty-nine, Elizabeth twenty-three and Millicent thirteen. As they brushed, they debated. 'Women can get nowhere', said Emily, 'unless they are as well educated as men. I shall open the universities.' 'Yes,' agreed Elizabeth. 'We need education but we need an income too and we can't earn that without training and a profession. I shall start women in medicine. But what shall we do with Milly?' They agreed that she should get the parliamentary vote for women.
(4) In her book Women's Suffrage published in 1911, Millicent Garrett Fawcett described the organisation of a petition on women's suffrage.
The meeting of the Women's Suffrage Society… was in the Hanover Square Rooms. I sat on the platform in front between Lord Amberley and Miss Taylor. The room was full of well-dressed people… Miss Helen Taylor made a long and much studied speech; it was good but too much like acting. Mrs. Harriet Grote's was short but natural - Mrs. Millicent Fawcett's uninteresting and Mrs Taylor was inaudible from a sore throat. It went off very well and was a great success.
(5) In her book Women's Suffrage published in 1911, Millicent Garrett Fawcett compared the tactics of the NUWSS and the WSPU.
The NUWSS and the WSPU between 1905 and 1911 adopted different election policies… The WSPU cry in every election was "Keep the Liberal out," not, as they asserted, from party motives, but because the Government of the day, and the Government alone, had the power to pass a Suffrage Bill; and as long as any government declined to take up suffrage they would have to encounter all the opposition which the militants could command… The NUWSS adopted a different election policy - that of obtaining declarations of opinion from all candidates at each election and supporting the man, independent of party, who gave the most satisfactory assurances of support.
(6) Millicent Fawcett disapproved of militant tactics but was also sympathetic to why members of the WSPU took this action. She explained her views in her book What I Remember published in 1924.
After 1903 the whole country, indeed we might almost say the whole world, rang with the doings of the Suffragettes, as the violent Suffragists came to be called. I would point out, however, that for at least two years of their activity, 1906-1908, while the suffered extraordinary acts of physical violence, they used none, and all through, from beginning to end of their campaign, they took no life, and shed no blood, either of man or beast.
(7) In her book Women's Suffrage, Millicent Fawcett explained the formation of the Anti-Suffrage Union.
The first organised opposition by women to women's suffrage in England dates from 1889, when a number of ladies led by Mrs Ward appealed against the proposed extension of the Parliamentary suffrage to women… Women anti-suffragists formed themselves into a society in July 1908 under the leadership of Mrs. Ward, and a men's society was shortly afterwards formed. These two societies were amalgamated in December 1910.
(8) Millicent Fawcett made a speech to NUWSS at the beginning of the war.
Women your country needs you… let us show ourselves worthy of citizenship, whether our claim to it be recognised or not.
Available from Amazon
Educational Websites
Standards Site, BBC History, PBS Online, Open Directory Project, Virtual Library,
Education Forum, History GCSE, Design & Technology, Learn History, Music Teacher Resource,
Freepedia, Teach It, Science Active, Geography IST, Brighton Photographers, Sussex Photo History,
Crompton History, Universal Teacher, English Teaching, English Online, History Learning Site,
History on the Net, Black History, Greenfield History, School History, Active History, I Love History,
E-HELP, Ed Podesta Blog, Macgregorish History, Historiasiglo20, Sintermeerten, ICT4LT |
News and Search
Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, New York Times,
Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Google News, Channel 4, ZDNet,
Google, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Netscape, Ask, Search,
Go, Looksmart, Dogpile, Raging Search, All the Web, Kartoo, Search Engine Watch, About
|
