My father was a man with a deeply rooted, fiery hatred of all injustice… My father’s connection with the great public movements of the day – the first Reform Bill, the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery, and the Free Trade movement – gave me very early an interest in public questions and in the history of the country.

The love of justice was a passion with him. Probably I have inherited this passion. When my father spoke to us, his children, of the great wrong of slavery, I have felt his powerful frame tremble and his voice would break. He told us sad stories of the hideous wrong inflicted on negro men and women. I say women, for I think their lot was particularly horrible, for they were almost invariably forced to minister to the worst passions of their masters, or be persecuted and die.

I asked my governess why God had made slaves, and I was promptly sent to bed. Oh, how I hated the nurses and governesses, and I stood at the gates of my home and envied the little village children. They were free. They had liberty… The village children could run about as they liked and did not seem to be troubled by those superior persons, nurses and governesses. I went to the nearest railway station and tried to buy a ticket. Needless to say, I was stopped, but I had gone so far that I could not return that night, and I spent it alone at a station inn. After that, lest I should infect my sisters with my spirit of insubordination, I was kept in solitary confinement for three or four days, and then sent away to school.

My mother bore thirteen children, of whom five died in infancy. My youngest brother was born seventeen years after me. Those were the days of large families. I never heard my mother make any complaint about this excessive childbearing. She accepted it with complete surrender and even with satisfaction.

As children we were all taken to Church as soon as we could walk and we had to sit very still indeed, because if not, we would be slapped afterwards. When we were older we had to remember and repeat the text at dinner-time, and if we failed to do this we were set to learn pieces of Scripture by heart.

(1.4) In her autobiography, The Hard Way Up, Hannah Mitchell describes her early impressions of her mother and father.

My mother was a small, bird-like woman, rather pretty, with dark hair and eyes, and a clear complexion, her slim girlish figure well set off by the pretty frocks, and she liked to wear on Sundays. She could sing like a lark, and at times was perfectly charming. But her temper was so uncertain that we lived in constant fear of an outbreak, which often lasted several days.

My father always seemed to me one of nature’s gentlemen. He had a gentle, kindly temper, was independent without being aggressive, and neither feared the rich nor despised the poor. His only weakness was his submission to my mother’s temper, which grew worse with the advent of each child. She would fall into violent passions about the merest trifles and drive us all out of the house for hours; sometimes we would have to spend the night in the barn sleeping on the hay. My father seemed totally unable to combat these storms, or even to protect us. He was always the first to leave the house when they broke out, and the last to return.

My grandmother had a board on the bed and a little chain machine that she could work for the long seams. You never saw such beautiful stitching in all your life… And the window overlooked the main road in Brierfield. And she’d look out – look at a costume, and sit down and cut it out on this board – she couldn’t move her legs. And my mother had to lift her out of bed onto a blanket.

It was a custom of my father and mother to make the round of our bedrooms every night before going themselves to bed. When they entered my room that night I was still awake, but for some reason I chose to pretend I was asleep. My father bent over me, shielding the candle flame with his big hand. I cannot know exactly what I thought was in his mind as he gazed down at me, but I heard him say, somewhat sadly, "What a pity she wasn’t born a lad."

My first hot impulse was to sit up in bed and protest that I didn’t want to be a boy, but I lay still and heard my parents’ footsteps pass on toward the next child’s bed. I thought about my father’s remark for many days afterward… It was made quite clear that men considered themselves superior to women, and that women accepted this situation. I found this view of things difficult to reconcile with the fact that both my father and my mother were advocates of women having the vote.

The picture now in my mind of those Manchester days is of the library, with flowered gold-and-brown paper and book-lined walls. Mother reading, writing or sewing on one side of the big, glowing fire. Father at the other side, deep in a book. He stretches out his fine sensitive hand, now and again, to show that he is thinking of us all and enjoying our companionship. We schoolchildren had leave to do our homework at the big table and suddenly one or another would ask: ‘Father, what is such and such?’ or ‘Who was so

and so?’ He was roused at once. Books were taken from the shelves, references and authorities were shown. The subjected was illuminated in all its ramifications.

My father is still part of me still. He imparted to me so much of his own nature that as long as his blood is still flowing in my veins, I feel he is still alive. He was a born rebel… The closest bond between my father and me was his passionate love of justice, which I inherited from him. So long as there existed within the realm of his personal knowledge any wronged individual my father could not rest inactive. My mother thought he went too far; and perhaps he did… He was often in the bad books of people in authority who believed in the status quo, and wanted peace at any price.

When the morning newspaper brought the unexpected news of my first arrest in the Suffrage Movement, my father reacted to it in precisely the same way as I should have reacted had our positions been reversed. He was proud that a child of his hand not hesitated to make a stand for the extension of democratic liberty. Later that morning he was met by one of his colleagues on the Bench with expressions of sympathy. "Sympathy, my dear fellow," he replied, "I don’t need sympathy. Give me your congratulations! I’m the proudest man in England!’

My mother was a wonderful woman. Her theory was: See the best in anyone and the worse will gradually fall away. Be kind to others, tolerant and sympathetic. We were never allowed in her hearing to say either unkind things about others or to abuse others in any way… She was ever ready to lend a patient ear to other people’s troubles, while at the same time showing a remarkable fortitude in her own.

Our home-life was happy. Our one trouble was that we had to retire much earlier than the other children of the village… I can still see our home with its bright, roaring rosy fire, and all the children, including myself, sitting on the window-sill watching the lights of the cotton factory, a few miles away, gradually going out. Those lights were our signal to retire… On Sunday evenings mother read us stories. They all seemed to be about London life among the poor.

Students came to consult him on every sort of matter – personal troubles and problems,

as well as difficulties in their work. I used sometimes to be curled up, unobserved, on the deep window seat in the study, half-hidden by the heavy curtains, when they came to talk to him. He made them talk; ‘sort out’ their problems. He said once: ‘You can’t give anybody advice as to what he should do. That is his freedom, and his responsibility. But you can help him to set out the pieces, so that he can see what his choice is.’

No one can have had a happier childhood than myself, brought up, with a younger brother and sister, in a large, old-fashioned, country house. In my youth I shared every advantage with my brother equally – from love and affection to the best possible education and opportunities, and the critical but unstinted encouragement which to the young is like sunshine to a plant.

My mother became an energetic cyclist, rebuked by her neighbours for showing inches of extremely pretty feet and ankles; regarded as highly indecorous. It was not only to the ankles that the neighbours objected. My parents were Liberals… at that period as much hated and distrusted by the gentry as Communists are today, and regarded as traitors to their class. In consequence they boycotted them… I suspect this boycott threw my energetic mother even more fervently into good works amongst the villagers, where, in the days before the welfare state, poverty was widespread.

(1.12) Selina Cooper’s daughter Mary was bullied for being the daughter of a woman known for her radical political opinions. She later recalled one incident that took place in 1913.

They used to pin things on my back… pinned on ‘suffragette’ or ‘socialist. One of my teachers… Miss Moser… says, ‘Who’s put that on Mary? Come out here! Who’s put it on?’ And none of them spoke – it was a big class. ‘That’s done it… into the schoolmaster, and you know what sort of cane he’s got.’ Miss Moser was quite friendly with my mother… Miss Cliff was friendly too… They were in the suffrage movement; they used to come to our home for meetings. So they stuck up for me.

In the pre-educational era (for women at least), we had none of the advantages which girls of the present day have. We owed much to our dear mother, who was very firm in requiring from us that whatever we did should be thoroughly done… This was a moral discipline, which perhaps compensated in value for the lack of a great store of knowledge. She would assemble us daily for the reading aloud of some solid book, and by a kind of examination following the reading assured herself that we had mastered the subject. She urged us to aim at excellence, if not perfection, in at least one thing… For two years my sister and I were together at a school in Newcastle. The lady at the school was not a good disciplinarian, and gave us much liberty, which we appreciated. In spite of the imperfectly learned lessons… the woman had a large heart and a ready sympathy.

My mother advertised and hundreds of answers were sent. She began by eliminating all those in which bad spelling occurred (a proceeding, which as a spelling reform I must now condemn), next the wording and composition were criticised, and lastly a few of the writers were interviewed and a selection was made. But alas! An inspection was made of our exercise-books revealed so many uncorrected faults, that a dismissal followed, and another search resulted in the same way. I can remember only one really clever and competent teacher; she had been educated in a good French school.

It was a school considered much above average for sound instruction; our mistresses had taken pains to arrange various schemes of knowledge; yet what miserable teaching we had in many subjects; history was learned by committing to memory little manuals; rules of arithmetic were taught, but the principles were never explained. Instead of reading and learning the masterpieces of literature, we repeated week by week the ‘Lamentations of King Hezekiah’, the pretty but somewhat weak ‘Mother’s Picture’.

Ill-health compelled me to leave at thirteen, and then began a valuable time of education under the direction of myself, during which I expended a great deal of energy in useless directions, but gained more than I should have probably done at any existing school. I had access to two large libraries; the London Institution and Crosby Hall; besides which the Medical Book Club circulated many books of general interest, which were read by all and talked over at meal-times and in the evening, when my father used often to read aloud to us.

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".

I was continually seeking to find expression for the force that was in me, trying to learn, asking to serve with my life in my hand ready to offer, and no one wanting it. I must not, I was told, pursue certain studies – they were for boys – I must not be so downright, it was unladylike. Heaven had decreed that I should be a woman and (it would be sometimes be added) a privileged woman. I must prove my gratitude by gentleness, obedience and submission.

(2.6) Elizabeth Wolstenholme believed that improvements in education would increase women’s economic independence. Elizabeth Wolstenholme explained her views in an article that she wrote in 1869 entitled the Education of Girls.

Nothing is more plainly to be seen by those who will open their eyes than three things – 1. That a very large proportion of women do not marry. 2. That of those who do marry, a very considerable proportion are not supported by their husbands. 3. That upon a very large number of widows… the burden of self-maintenance and of the maintenance of their children is thrown.

The idea of the higher education had not, when I was young, reached as far as our small seaside town. I never knew of any girl in Weston-Super-Mare who aspired to go to College or University… It was my mother’s wish that I should be sent, when fifteen years of age, for a year or two to what in those days was called a "Finishing School". She thought that my manners and my deportment needed polishing up, as no doubt they did.

We were taught to be Catholic young ladies on the lines of the education given to our grandmothers. There were no oral lessons, no demonstrations, no analysis or breaking down of problems. We sat quietly in rows of desks, learned from books, and our work was corrected by the nun who was mistress of the moment from the answers at the back of a similar book…. We had long periods of religious instruction… Friday afternoon was devoted entirely to behaviour. ‘Manners make the lady,’ we were taught, ‘not money or learning, not beauty.’ So we practiced opening a door, entering and leaving a room, bringing in a letter, a message, a tray or a gift, asking the mothers of girl friends to permit their daughters to attend a party, receiving a caller in the absence of parents, and so on!

I went to the village school when I was five…. When I was ten years of age a change came into my life. My mother announced to me that I was to work in a factory. I was to join the army of half-timers; to work in the factory half the day and attend school the other half. I received the news with mixed feelings. I was glad to escape the hated school lessons, which were a burden to me, but I had a fear of the new life… When I arrived at the factory I was met by a group of girls… who stared at me. Every new girl was critically examined by the older girls. Your clogs were examined; thick or thin made a difference; your petticoat, your pinafore, the quality, the colour, stamped you accordingly in the eyes of these girl students of ten and thirteen.

We were educated at home. Lessons were divided. Mother took scripture and music… My father taught us history, geography, mathematics and Latin. From the age of four I read everything I could lay my hands on. I remember lying on the floor reading contemporary accounts of the Indian Mutiny and the Crimean War in my grandfather’s library, where there was a complete set of Illustrated London News. He had bookshelves to the ceiling… In my father’s library the big bookcases also went up to the ceiling.

The education of boys was considered a much more serious matter than the education of girls. My parents… discussed the question of my brothers’ education as a matter of real importance. My education and that of my sister were scarcely discussed at all. Of course we went to a carefully selected girls’ school, but beyond the facts that the headmistress was a good woman and that all the pupils were girls of my own class, nobody seemed concerned. A girl’s education at that time seemed to have for its prime object the art of ‘making a home attractive’.

When I was fifteen I was sent to school in Paris. The school was under the direction of Marchef Girard… a woman who believed that girls’ education should be quite as thorough… as the education of boys. She included chemistry and other sciences in the course, and in addition to embroidery she had her girls taught bookkeeping. When I was nineteen I finally returned from school in Paris and took my place in my father’s home as a finished young lady.

The nearest school was five miles away by the shortest cut over the hill, which made daily attendance impossible… My father and uncle had taught us all to read… My uncle taught me to write and I taught the two younger ones to read and write… It was a long and difficult task as neither of them was keen on learning… My uncle bought exercise books and set lines for me to copy such as ‘Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today’.

We had no dictionary, so when I came across a word I didn’t understand, or could not pronounce properly, I copied it and listened attentively to the preachers at chapel, until one of them used the doubtful word… I cherished my new word as a pearl of great price. Perhaps the church parson, making his yearly round of a scattered parish, would call at the farm, and over a cup of tea would talk kindly to us children. I sometimes ventured to ask him a few questions about books, but my mother thought this was a reflection on her, and it usually earned me a beating.

In my youth education for girls in England was not generally accepted as essential to their background. In the middle classes the main object was for parents to bring up their daughters to be sufficiently attractive to gain a suitable husband, to produce large families and be accomplished in the art of managing servants and the entertainment of guests.

Miss Lucy Phillimore, my mother’s greatest friend, arrived to stay, and strongly disapproved of my spending my time fishing. I was sixteen years old, must really have some education, and was bundled off to St. Hilda’s School as a day girl… I was put in a class of girls of similar age and on the very first day in a thoroughly encouraging way the mistress of the scripture lesson said, ‘Well, you Octavia, as niece of the Bishop of Chichester, will know the answer to this question.’ I was introduced to Arithmetic, and moved into a class of little girls who were all superior to me in this horrible subject… It was not till we played hockey that I gained even a modicum of respect from my school associates.

Emily Davies objected to the whole position of women. She realised that their education was miserable; they were helpless in the labour market; unjustly treated by the law; they were slaves and clung to their fetters… She resented her own lack of education and pondering over the lives of other women, found them empty and aimless… Gradually ideas shaped themselves. Better education must be provided for women and she decided that the professions, especially medicine, ought to be open to them… She wanted university training and professional experience as levers to raise the whole position of women… Miss Davies’ appearance was most misleading. She did not suggest personality or power. She seemed to be rather plain, rather dim little person with mouse-coloured hair and conventional manners. She was not even ugly. Never was there a more complex disguise than Providence provided for Emily Davies until in old age character and ability printed themselves on her face.

The visit of Anne Clough to the Butlers in 1867 led to the formation of the ‘North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education for Women’, a body representing associations of school-mistresses in several large northern towns. Josephine Butler was President of this Council from 1867 to 1873, and Anne Clough was Secretary for the three first strenuous years of its existence. The first work of the Council was to organise lectures for women, which had already been begun by Mr. Stuart, to whose genius the inception of the University Extension Movement was due. Mr. Stuart’s first course on astronomy was given, in the autumn of 1867, in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, and was attended together by 550 women. These lectures were followed by other similar courses organised by the Council, and the idea rapidly spread.

Let it be distinctly understood that the choice is not between a life wholly given up to study, and a life spent in active domestic duty. The dilemma thus stated is untrue on both sides; for while on the one hand, giving to women the opportunity of a complete education does not mean that they will thereupon spend all their lives in reading, so, on the other, denying them education does not mean that they will occupy themselves in household affairs… The aim of these new colleges will not be directed towards changing the occupations of women, but rather towards securing that whatever they do shall be done well. Whether as mistresses of households, mothers, teachers, or as labourers in art, science, literature… their work suffers from the want of training.

Man is afraid of women. He proves it every day. History proves it for him – the history of politics, the history of industry, the history of social life. An examination of women’s present position and of men’s attitude towards the women’s movement shows evidence of fear at every turn. Yes, it is quite true. Man is afraid of women because he has oppressed her… There is always for him the fear that the end may come, and rebellion carries with it not merely the throwing off the yoke but alongside of it the dread of such vengeful retaliation as corresponds to the oppressor’s tyranny.

Two children are about to run a race. Says one to the other; ‘You cannot run so well as I can so I will bind your legs with a cord.’ Then as the race proceeds he cries, ‘You can’t run – you can’t run. I am cleverer and stronger than you are.’ ‘Unbind my legs’ is the answer, ‘that I may have a chance.’ But the free-limbed child capers about and says. ‘unbind you? No, indeed. You have not come as far as I have. You do not know how to run. But when you catch me I will unbind your legs.’

In all essentials this little fable is analogous with the facts in the life of woman. On the ground that she is less able than man she is penalised in the struggle, and denied the opportunity, which she most needs. Her demand for liberty is met by the reply that when she, with her additional burdens, has shown herself man’s equal according to his standard of judgement, her claim will be considered… If women really were incapable the arbitrary and artificial ring-fence which men have erected, and which they so carefully preserve, would not be needed. The fact of its erection and preservation is an acknowledgement by men that they fear women’s equal competition.

Towards the end of the meeting came our proposal ‘that a Women’s Guild be formed for the benefit of the women’s co-operators, with similar educational advantages to those given to men’. There was a stir and a hubbub. ‘Education for women!’ Let them sit at home!’ ‘Who’s to mind the children?’ etc. The chairman quieted the audience, and I rose and faced the lot. There was a lull, a scuffle of clogs, a few remarks, but I spoke out… I pointed out the injustice; said women did the actual buying… and on them depended the profits made by the stores… In spite of the interruptions I held my ground… In spite of some dissension more than half the audience voted for us.

My dear Mother… I have now something to tell you that will take some very careful understanding – you know that I am to take my degree next year and that I have worked for one year and the courses are arranged for two. Well, I thought… that it would be good for me to practise by taking the papers…. I have got my degree. I am now B.Sc. Not only have I got it, I have got it well… I got Honours in Botany and Geology… I am the only candidate with honours; the others (men only) all failed, so my name stands alone in the list. It is supposed to be impossible to take one honours in a year, to get two is nice.

Eleanor Sidgwick and Henry Sidgwick had, throughout their life together, chosen to give their time to college. She had renounced mathematical research of a very high order in order to come and assist Miss Clough in the early days. Early in their married life, which was a perfect partnership, they gave up their own home to come and live in Newnham… They enjoyed the triumph of 1881 in the passing of the Senate of the Graces admitting women to the right of sitting for Tripos examinations and being placed on the lists, the struggle for full recognition – the granting of degrees, and admission to membership of the University was entering on a long, slow phase, with no end in sight. (It was in fact to take forty years and a world war to persuade the authorities to grant degrees to women.)

Eleanor Sidgwick was principal of Newnham College in my time at Cambridge (Henry Sidgwick died in 1900). A tall, slightly bent, emaciated figure; tenuous, yet not fragile.

A white face, with snowy hair covered by a delicate fragment of lace. Then, as she passed, she smiled; the eyes went blue and the face was, suddenly, changed to a poignant beauty. How could anyone take Newnham and the fact of being there for granted, while she was there, who had helped to wring its being out of such resistance.

Newnham College was still on trial, and the authorities were uneasily conscious of the fact. Hence total separation from the masculine undergraduate population, which most of us did not feel or resent at the time, but any contemporary student must find odd, even inexplicable. Hence the timid restrictions that irked and offended students.

The procedure was to parade the principal streets on Saturday and Sunday evenings, each sex in groups or couples, until some adventurous male would make the first advance with some fatuous remark such as ‘Can I see you home, miss?’ If the girls responded, this constituted a sort of introduction. The same groups would meet for several weeks and chat together before ultimately pairing off. Sometimes it all ended with nothing definite, and the groups began to parade again… I was agreeably surprised when we walked out with them to find they attempted no familiarities, beyond taking one’s arm in the darkness, or a light kiss at parting. I began to feel more at ease, although most of the young men were much better educated than myself. But my very mixed reading, a good memory and a ready wit enabled me to hold my own so well indeed that I became known as ‘Miss Repartee’.

I am ignorant of many of the branches of feminine learning, some good, some bad, and some frivolous: e.g., neither of us know anything about the way to carry on and lead an interesting conversation with either sex… We have had next to no social intercourse with anyone – and none with well-educated young gentlemen – the people of all others to polish and refine women.

Sweet, I long so for the physical touch of your hands on mine, and to look into your eyes. To be kissed, I sometimes long so much that I take a girdle and bind it tightly, so tightly that I can hardly breathe, round my waist and then close my eyes and dream that it is your arms around me. It gives me almost the feeling. You know I have never worn corsets. I have always been scornful of women who did.

Young people must and will hold, somewhere, those endless talks which pave the way to marriage, and there can be no better place than their own homes; but a living room full of younger brothers and sisters and their contemporary friends will not serve the purpose at all... Young people need a parlour as a place for courting… Failing a parlour, lovers have to resort to a cinema where the eternal conversation is carried on uncomfortably in a whisper.

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.

It was a strange time, unsatisfactory, full of ungratified aspirations. I longed ardently to be of some use in the world, but as we were girls with a little money and born into a particular social position, it was not thought necessary that we should do anything but amuse ourselves until the time and the opportunity of marriage came along. ‘Better any marriage at all than none’, a foolish old aunt used to say.

The woman of the well-to-do classes was made to understand early that the only door open to a life at once easy and respectable was that of marriage. Therefore she had to depend upon her good looks, according to the ideals of the men of her day, her charm, her little drawing-room arts.

They have sinned against no law of Purity. They went through a most solemn ceremony and vow before witnesses. I knew of this true marriage before God - early in 1874. It would have been a legal marriage in Scotland. They blundered; but their whole action was grave and pure. The English marriage laws are impure. English law… sins against the law of purity. It is a species of legal prostitution the woman being the man’s property.

I think that the notion that the husband ought to have the headship or authority over his wife, is the root of all social evils… Husband and wife should be co-equal. In a happy marriage there is no question of ‘obedience’.

I came to know Dr. Richard Pankhurst, a lawyer… who was a supporter of woman’s suffrage… Dr. Pankhurst acted as counsel for the Manchester women who tried in 1868 to be placed on the register as voters. He also drafted the bill giving married women absolute control over their property and earnings, a bill, which became law in 1882.

About a year after my marriage my daughter Christabel was born, and in another eighteen months my second daughter Sylvia came. Two other children followed and for some years I was rather deeply immersed in my domestic affairs. I was never so absorbed with home and children, however, that I lost interest in community affairs. Dr. Pankhurst did not desire that I should turn myself into a household machine.

I will not stand in your light any longer… Think the best you can of me. I die loving you if possible more than ever – I die to save you pain and sorrow in the future – may your lines be cast in pleasanter places than in the past four years. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Yours in death, George.

To remain single was thought a disgrace and at thirty an unmarried woman was called an old maid. After their parents died, what could they do, where could they go? If they had a brother, as unwanted and permanent guests, they might live in his house. Some had to maintain themselves and then, indeed, difficulty arose. The only paid occupation open to them a gentlewoman was to become a governess under despised conditions and a miserable salary. None of the professions were open to women; there were no women in Government offices; no secretarial work was done by them. Even nursing was disorganised and disreputable until Florence Nightingale recreated it as a profession by founding the Nightingale School of Nursing in 1860.

There was a tea party… The men poured out the tea, cut the bread and butter, and washed everything up, without any feminine help and without any accidents! A party, that included the education of men… as well as the education of women, that gave one such skill and dexterity, and the other wider and truer views of life, was the party for me I felt, so I joined.

Marriage, like all other human institutions, is not permanent and alterable in form, but necessarily changes shape with the changes of social development. The forms of marriage are transitional, like the societies in which they exist. Each age keeps getting ahead of the law, yet there are always some laggards of whom the law for the time being is ahead. The main tendency of our own age is towards greater freedom and equality, and the law is slowly modifying to match…. At present the strict letter of the law denies to a married woman the freedom of action which more and more women are coming to regard not only as their just but also as their dearest treasure; and this naturally causes a certain unwillingness on the part of the thoughtful women to marry… That law and custom should alike enlarge so as to suit the growing ideal is evidently desirable… we can all of us influence custom a little, since custom, after all, is only made up of many individual examples… Easier divorce may be necessary, but the opportunity of making wiser and happier marriages is more necessary still.

The children’s mother has no legal right to a voice in deciding how they shall be nursed; how or where educated; what trade or profession they shall adopt; in what form of religion they shall be instructed.

If a father wants his child vaccinated, or if he is merely indifferent, and so does not lay an objection before the magistrate, the mother cannot prevent the child being vaccinated. If the father wishes the child to be left unvaccinated, the mother cannot legally have it done.

The late Sir Horace Davy introduced a Bill, which proposed that father and mother should be acknowledged equal guardians of their children. This just and logical reform secured only nineteen votes in the House of Commons.

My cousin took him down Clitheroe Road, where the station is… there was a thunderstorm and the baby got soaked… My cousin was only little and he couldn’t pull the pram cover down. My mother was frantic… when the baby came home he was in a pool of water… John Ruskin caught severe bronchitis… he died from bronchitic convulsions… She never talked about her dead son… After she died I found an old book… It was full of pictures of babies she cut out of newspapers. Young babies… I never saw her cutting out these pictures… She must have been gradually cutting them out all the time. Oh, there must have been about twenty. And all babies, not young children.

Drunkenness was extremely common… It seemed for many the only refuge from depression and misery. The effect of drunkenness upon the ordinary relationship of husband and wife, parents and children, was disastrous. There was a woman whose husband used to knock her about badly when in drink. But he went to the Mission Hall in the district, was converted and signed the pledge. All went well for some time until she again turned up with several bruises. "Oh, Mrs. Smith, has your husband taken to drink again?" She replied: "Oh, no, that was another lady what done that! Since my husband went to the Misson Hall, he ain’t like a husband at all – he is more like a friend!"

There was a particular point of view with regard to wife-beating. A friend of mine was once walking along the street and she passed a woman with a black eye. At the same time two other women passed, and one of them remarked: "Well, all I can say is, she is a lucky woman to have a husband to take that trouble with her." Another woman who had gone through a similar experience remarked: "Well, it ain’t pleasant to be knocked about, but the making-up is lovely."

My own adhesion to the Suffrage Cause was given largely because I saw that only through political equality may we hope to see established a true understanding and a happier relationship between the sexes.

Changes in society… have long been tending towards increasing separation between men and women, in practically all the interests of life save one. In the world of industry, of business, of thought – even in what is called society, the growing tendency has been to divide the world into two separate camps. Men who are "doing things," or want to do things, have less and less time to give to an order of beings having no share and, as it came to seem, no stake in the varies aspects – save one – of the great game of life. The conditions of modern life are more and more separating the sexes. Instead of still further dividing us, Women’s Suffrage is in reality the bridge between the chasm.

Thank you for sending me your manuscript but the theme does not please me. I think there is far too much talking about writing about these things already… Pray excuse the suggestion, but don’t you think you should wait publication until after the war, at least? There will be few enough men for the girls to marry: and a book would frighten off the few.

Far too often, marriage puts an end to woman’s intellectual life. Marriage can never reach its full stature until women possess as much intellectual freedom and freedom of opportunity within it as do their partners.

That at present the majority of women neither desire freedom for creative work, nor would know how to use it, is only a sign that we are still living in the shadow of the coercive and dwarfing influences of the past.

When I was eighteen I would have married anything that might have asked me if I thought it would have been advantageous and conducive to fun. Didn’t believe in any silly rot like love and I might have been the most amenable daughter alive.

When Charles Buxton’s letter came I was most awfully sorry and wished I had never seen the boy. I was perfectly miserable and from trying to imagine how he felt I almost felt I was a criminal. When he came and I walked along the lane with him I felt I was a beast and quite dreadfully sorry. But when he spoke of it… I suddenly felt so revolted at what it all meant from my point of view.

Some people are cut out for marriage; they are made for it and would be most happy in it. Perhaps people are made differently, but I am not cut out for it. Everybody I know would be shocked and horrified at that statement and at this: the very thought of it makes me shudder and it revolts me.

My mother kept open house for another set of women whom she began to think were oppressed, as undoubtedly they were in the eighties – shop assistants. Among them came an eager, attractive, and vividly alive girl of 16, Margaret Bondfield. She was working in one of the large draper’s shops in Brighton and was not happy. She needed sympathy and was ready to talk when she found her hostess really wanted to listen. She told her about "living in" and all that it meant – sleeping in bare, dingy, stuffy dormitories, intolerably hot in summer, miserably cold in winter; never being alone, even to wash; no place to keep one’s things except a box under the bed, fines for entering the dormitory in the daytime, nights spent with a poor consumptive girl who coughed and coughed… My mother gained not only a friend who has always remained faithful to her memory, but an insight into the conditions under which shop girls were employed.

Your mother is one of the great immortals who cannot die as long as memory lasts. She was a vivid influence in my life, the first woman of broad culture I had met, she seemed to recognise me and make me recognise myself as a person of independent thought and action… my first talk with your mother was the great event of that period of my life…. She put me in the way of knowledge that has been of help to many score of my shop mates. She lent me books on social questions, which prepared me to take my proper place in the Labour movement.

One girl began to wait and wanted to take me to my bus, to accompany me home. I took a violent dislike to her and tried to evade her. She sent me presents of jewellery which I gave back to the school porter who took them with a sympathetic grin and promised to deliver the parcel to her. Some of the girls had devoted friendships, which were both normal and healthy, as in fact I had with Joan and Phyllis. But this obsession on the part of XY, as I will call her, suddenly struck me as something ugly, alarming, unhinged. What did it mean? I was twenty-eight years old and considered myself well versed in the ways of the world. I knew about the work of Josephine Butler who had devoted her energies to the moral elevation, protection and reclamation of women from the dangers of prostitution. Dr. Martindale’s Under the Surface and Elizabeth Robin’s Where Are You Going To had further indoctrinated me about the evils of the White Slave Traffic. I was familiar with the problems of illegitimacy, abortion and ‘living in sin’, though I never remember such matters being topics of conversation in ordinary society, nor even among the medical students of my day. But of homosexuality I knew nothing

(6.4) Octavia Wilberforce described her first meeting with Elizabeth Robins in her autobiography, Octavia Wilberforce: An Autobiography of a Pioneer Woman Doctor.

In the early summer of 1909, when I was twenty-one, I met Elizabeth Robins. It was a turning point in my life… I had always read omnivorously and longed to write myself, and to meet so distinguished an author in the flesh was a terrific adventure. It was a small family luncheon at Phyllis Buxton’s house. Elizabeth Robins was dressed in a blue suit, the colour of speedwell, which matched her beautiful deep-set eyes. I was introduced as Phyllis’s friend who lives near Henfield. ‘A neighbour then?’ Said Elizabeth Robins, and with a charming grace and in an unforgettable voice asked me if I would come to tea one day and she would show me her modest little garden.

A new friend and very devoted is Octavia Wilberforce. She is interesting and far more gifted than anybody knows except me. She can go far if she makes up her mind.

Kiss me, you said tonight and my heart went out to you in a flood… At the back of my mind I shall be kissing you all your voyage across and you can’t mind that because it will only be in my mind, not the contacts you don’t like.

Margery’s mother, Marie Corbett, was an ardent Feminist, one small external sign being the fact that she regularly wore the breeches she had taken to when bicycling came in, at least a decade before war-time made them permissible. She was a woman of great drive, active in local affairs and local government and all good causes. The house was apt to swarm with people. The Corbett’s hospitality was in the best English tradition. Friends of Margery, of her younger sister Cicely – extravagantly pretty, and at the time we were at Cambridge, preparing to go Oxford and of her elder brother Adrian, then at Oxford, assembled for dances and week-end parties…. At college Margery was intensely keen on civil liberties, free trade, international good will, democracy… She spends time and energy without stint or personal ambition… She has an immense sense of duty, and must have spent a very large part of her entire life on committees and at meetings. Not to like her is and always has been impossible; she has charm and complete sincerity, and has made a success of life, in its essential relationships. She was a good daughter: she is a good wife and mother. The one boy, born during the 1914 war, when his father was in France with the B.E.F., was, as a baby, so delicate that it did not seem possible he should live; Margery insisted that he should; he has grown up a superb physical specimen.

At first he was very discouraging, to my astonishment then, but now I fancy he did it as a forlorn hope to check me; he said the whole idea was so disgusting that he could not entertain it for a moment. I asked what there was to make doctoring more disgusting than nursing, which women were always doing, and which ladies had done publicly in the Crimea. He could not tell me. When I felt rather overcome with his opposition, I said as firmly as I could, that I must have this or something else, that I could not live without some real work, and then he objected that it would take seven years before I could practise. I said if it were seven years I should then be little more than 31 years old and able to work for twenty years probably. I think he will probably come round in time, I mean to renew the subject pretty often.

Mr. Hawes advised Elizabeth to go into a surgical ward at the Middlesex Hospital for a preliminary period of six months. He could arrange this, he said. It was to test her resolution that Mr. Hawes suggested a surgical ward where conditions at that time, even in the best hospitals, were bad. Mr. Hawes knew that the sights, sounds and smells in a surgical ward would provide a searching test. In 1860 bacteriology was in its infancy and the connection between living germs and wound infection had occurred to no one. The mortality after major operations was appalling, and even in trivial cases infection might occur. For ward visits a frock-coat was worn and for the coat’s sake it was exchanged for an old one before the surgeon entered the theatre. Usually he washed his hands after operating, not necessarily before. Gloves were not worn. Sterilisation of ligatures and instruments was unknown.

The presence of a young female in the operating theatre is an outrage to our natural instincts and is calculated to destroy the respect and admiration with which the opposite sex is regarded.

I have had a letter from my mother… she speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother’s anxiety.

Elizabeth obtained a certificate of honour in each class examination; she did so well indeed that the examiner in sending her the list added, ‘May I entreat you to use every precaution in keeping this a secret from the students?’ In June trouble arose. The visiting physician asked his class a question, none of the men could answer and Elizabeth gave the right reply. The students were angry and petitioned for her dismissal. A counter-petition was sent to the committee but she was told she would be admitted to no more lectures although she might finish those for which she had paid fees.

I must decline to give you instruction in Anatomy… I have a strong conviction that the entrance of ladies into dissecting-rooms and anatomical theatres is undesirable in every respect, and highly unbecoming… it is not necessary for fair ladies should be brought into contact with such foul scenes… Ladies would make bad doctors at the best, and they do so many things excellently that I for one should be sorry to see them trying to do this one.

We dined at six (excellent dinner) delightful general talk, it was most pleasant. The talk was of Comte, George Eliot and her new book Felix Holt… on Herbert Spencer’s theory of the sun coming to an end and losing all its force…

At ten John Stuart Mill sent us and Miss Garrett home in his carriage and we had a nice talk on the way home. Her dispensary opens next week. She had much difficulty in becoming a doctor from want of facility for women to learn. She would not mind attending men but does not do it, on account of what would be said. We got home at eleven having enjoyed our day immensely.

Our hearty congratulations on the brilliant success at Paris which has at length crowned your many years of arduous work – work whose difficulties perhaps no one can estimate so well as ourselves. And while congratulating you on receiving the highest honour of your profession from one of the finest medical schools in the world, we desire to express also our appreciation of the example you have afforded to others, and the honour you have reflected on all women who have chosen medicine as their profession.

One argument usually advanced against the practice of medicine by women is that there is no demand for it; that women, as a rule, have little confidence in their own sex, and had rather be attended by a man… it is probably a fact, that until lately there has been "no demand" for women doctors, because it does not occur to most people to demand what does not exist; but that very many women have wished that they could be medically attended by those of their own sex I am very sure, and I know of more than one case where ladies have habitually gone through one confinement after another without proper attendance, because the idea of employing a man was so extremely repugnant to them.

I have indeed repeatedly found that even doctors, not altogether favourable to the present movement, allow that they consider men rather out of place in midwifery practice; and an eminent American doctor once remarked to me, that he never entered a lady’s room to attend her in confinement without wishing to apologise for what he felt to be an intrusion.

In England there is at present only one woman legally qualified to practise medicine, and I understand that already her time is much more fully occupied, and her receipts much greater, than is usually the case with a medical man who has been practising for so short a period.

On the afternoon of Friday 18^th November 1870, we walked to the Surgeon’s Hall, where the anatomy examination was to be held. As soon as we reached the Surgeon’s Hall we saw a dense mob filling up the road… The crowd was sufficient to stop all the traffic for an hour. We walked up to the gates, which remained open until we came within a yard of them, when they were slammed in our faces by a number of young men.

(7.11) In 1873 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson suggested that women should go abroad to obtain their medical qualifications. Sophia Jex-Blake wrote a letter to The Times disagreeing with this point of view.

Mrs. Garrett Anderson has selected the very worst of all the alternatives suggested when she advises Englishwomen to go abroad for medical education… Mrs. Garrett Anderson’s advice is premature in the extreme… Let me conclude that all women who wish to study medicine join the class already formed in Edinburgh, the great majority of whose members are thoroughly of one mind with me in this matter and who, having counted the cost, are like myself, thoroughly resolved to "fight it out on this line."

(7.12) In 1906 Mrs Louisa Martindale set up a dispensary for women and children in Brighton. After qualifying as a doctor, her daughter Louisa became a voluntary worker at the dispensary. Members of the Women Suffrage Society in Brighton decided to try to convert the dispensary into a hospital for women and children in the town. People involved in the campaign included Dr. Louisa Martindale, her mother Mrs Louisa Martindale, Hilda Martindale, Elizabeth Robins and Octavia Wilberforce. Hilda Martindale wrote about this campaign in her book From One Generation to Another.

My sister joined the staff, which was heavily overworked, some eight thousand patients being seen yearly. But she soon discovered that all the more serious medical and surgical cases needing in-patient treatment had to be sent to the County Hospital. As there seemed no chance of a medical woman being put on the staff of that hospital, my mother, sister and others interested in the Dispensary felt that the only solution to the problem was to take a house adjoining and open there a small hospital of twelve beds for medical and surgical cases.

The opposition to this scheme was at first very strong. It seemed impossible to get money. Everything was wanting except the patients, and they were always there with their insistent demand to get a ‘lady’ to look at them because she would ‘understand’. My mother became chairman of the committee… bringing all her organising power, her clear sense, and unshakeable faith, to the service of this building. In due course this little hospital grew to be one of the five general hospitals for women in Britain officered by women doctors.

In 1911 and my sister became the senior surgeon. Undoubtedly all the original work of establishing the hospital was due to my mother and also the breaking down of opposition and prejudice; the development of the hospital and its removal to Windlesham House came four years after her death and was due to my sister, who was recognised on all sides as the Founder of the New Sussex Hospital as it then came to be called.

The idea of women practising medicine in Great Britain distressed Queen Victoria.

Indeed in 1881 the Queen’s private physician announced that the royal patronage would be withdrawn from an international medical congress held in London if medical women were admitted, and so the women were shut out.

While women in Britain are prevented from studying for medical degrees… other European nations have taken a very different position. We have already seen the Italian Universities were in fact never closed to women, and that at Bologna no less than three women held Professors’ chairs in the Medical faculty. We have several instances of degrees granted to women in the Middle Ages by the Universities of Bologna, Padua, Milan, Pavia and others… In Germany also such instances have occurred. At the University of Paris three women are now studying in its Medical School.

Three or four doctors in surrounding villages had seen Janet at my request and they each assured me that her cough was nothing serious. They said it was magnified in her own mind by the fact that her mother had died of consumption. They were wrong. Janet herself accepted the cough as more or less normal and thought I was being unduly fussy.

I insisted on her seeing a woman doctor, Dr. Louisa Martindale, a friend of Elizabeth Robins. The X-ray confirmed that she had tuberculosis. I was enraged by the delay in not catching the trouble at an earlier stage. I took her to Brompton Hospital. ‘Too advanced for admission’. I boiled over with fury; after all, if I with only my eyes and no stethoscope had been able to diagnose all those months ago I could be a better doctor myself.

In a mood of complete despondency I grumbled to Elizabeth Robins. In my abysmal ignorance of what medical training involved, I told her that my observations and common sense had proved me right in diagnosis. ‘Why couldn’t I become qualified and be a doctor’. She turned and looked at me with flashing eyes and an expression I’d never seen in them before and burst out: ‘Now that would be a worthwhile life. My father wanted me, urged me, to be a doctor,’ and with passionate enthusiasm, ‘It’s the greatest profession in the world.’

I told my parents I wanted to study Medicine. They refused me to do this. Among other things it was "unsexing". They said they thought I had not the brains to pass the examinations, nor the physical stamina for the hard work involved in the seven years study.

One evening my mother came into my room to talk to me. ‘If you are still thinking of being a doctor, you’d better give it up at once. The whole thing is not practical. For one thing you’re too old. The profession is already overcrowded and hundreds of girls are going into it. Besides, you would have to live in London. You are too young to live in London’.

‘Just now you said I was too old, and now I’m too young,’ I remarked. I said that Dr. Louisa Martindale had told me the supply didn’t meet the demand and all the woman doctors she knew were doing well. ‘Women are so inaccurate, I don’t believe her, said my mother. ‘But as regards the living in London and training, I tell you at once, I couldn’t afford it, so that’s the end of it. I spend everything I have on making your father’s remaining years happy.’

I was hating the whole conversation, but keeping very calm and cool, my mother continued ‘Also it wants great physical strength and you aren’t at all strong. You would be wasting the best years of your youth and happiness – you would lose all your friends… You would be mixing with girls of a lower class. The majority would be much beneath you. You couldn’t possibly do anything socially, and you would ruin your chance of a woman’s only real happiness – being a mother.’

‘I feel sure you will regret it later. You would only be able to attend women… It would be a very dull life. Dorothy (Octavia’s married sister) has a most interesting life. And she has the satisfaction of knowing that she is making one man perfectly happy’, Then she went off into a lecture on the happiness to be obtained from a marriage for money.

We shook hands with Mrs Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who was white-haired and gracious, and who said something tactful about William Wilberforce’s great work for the slaves. Most of the girls were younger than I was and of varied types. Some of them by doing Medicine were following in a parent’s footstep; some had a definite urge, like myself, to be of the use to the community. These were subdivided into those who wished to be medical missionaries and those who had worked in the Suffrage movement.

The vocation of a teacher is an awful one… she will do others unspeakable harm if she is not aware of its usefulness… How can you give a woman self-respect, how can you win for her the respect of others… Watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the first dawnings of intelligence; how thoughts spring into acts, how acts pass into habits. The study is not worth much if it is not busy about the roots of things.

(8.2) After a year studying at Queen’s College, Dorothea Beale was asked to become one of the maths tutors. In 1856 Dorothea Beale applied to become Head Teacher at Casterton School in Westmoreland. Queen’s College was willing to give Dorothea Beale a good reference.

Miss Beale is a young lady of high moral and religious character, sober-minded and discreet. Her parents have been careful to avoid party views, and I have no doubt Miss Dorothea Beale is free from them. She certainly is a conscientious person, with a deep sense of her religious responsibilities. I feel certain that her influences will always be good.

The school intends to provide an education based upon religious principles which, preserving the modesty and gentleness of the female character, should so far cultivate a girl’s intellectual powers as to fit her for the discharge of those responsible duties which devolve upon her as a wife, mother and friend, the natural companion and helpmeet for man.

The true meaning of the word education is not instruction… It is intellectual, moral, and physical development, the development of a sound mind in a sound body, the training of reason to form just judgements, the disciplining of the will and affections to obey the supreme law of duty, the kindling and strengthening of the love of knowledge, of beauty, of goodness, till they become governing motives of action.

The few months during which I was under your tuition more than fifty years ago were an epoch to me. Young as I was, I ever afterwards judged teaching by the standard set by yours, and very seldom indeed, I may truly say, has it been subsequently reached. The fifty years that have since passed, full as they have been, have never effaced the impression they received, both of your teaching and of something more comprehensive than your teaching, which contact with you engendered, and which impels me to take this opportunity – late in the day as it is – to express and to thank you for.

English parents, who are apathetic and irrational enough about the education of their boys, are much more so when the education of their girls… Fashion has stamped its approval upon certain external accomplishments and graces. The period during which social triumphs can be achieved is short and fleeting… Mothers say that their little daughters must not be troubled with the halfpennies and farthings in her arithmetic, because, "it will not help her to get married"… How to deal with these difficulties in the case of parents is the standing perplexity of teachers. We must confess that we see no hope for immediate reformation. It is only by the greater extension of education itself that education will come to be rightly valued, and in this way the task of the teachers of the next generation will be far easier and pleasanter one than that of teachers of today.

I was nearing the prescribed age at which the pupil-teacher training then began… On the strength of my writing they took me in for a trial period; and I satisfied them as to my ability to learn as well as demonstrating an unsuspected capacity to control a class of forty girls only a year or two my juniors and to awaken in them new interest in their English and history, subjects which I had fed my hunger even then for years.

I had to find lodging in the neighbourhood. First I paid 7 shillings a week for a room and bought and cooked my own food… The first-year teaching certificate was achieved while I was there and the second in due course. For another £5 a year I moved to Ardwick School… I needed the extra fiver because my way of life meant a continuous expenditure on books and footwear. In those days I walked everywhere. Looking back I see myself, shabby, happy and absorbed, swinging away into town to evening classes, having already done the walk between school and lodging twice on days on which I carried my lunch, or four times when I returned to cook it for myself there.

I was making my living by teaching in a Catholic school. I had to observe the routine of the Catholic way of life. I had to teach it to children. Only by conforming could I persist in my life effort to find security… in a grim way I was compelled to endanger my soul for my day-to-day earthly salvation. I argued with myself that this was no crime, no sin… I alone was responsible for keeping myself alive.

I held myself guilty in accepting love and confidence from my mother without confessing to her that I was an agnostic, believing no longer in any church or creed, nor in a God, as she knew God.

It was a long interview, and it ranged to and fro until the position was quite clear. I could not accept the duty of imparting to the young as guidance the moral standards of the Old Testament and the authoritarian interpretations of the New Testament. I found myself compromising in such teaching, putting a gloss upon the actual stories, a humanist-ideal explanation rather than an orthodox Christian one.

There were conscience clauses in the Education Acts for the parent and children, why not one for the teacher? Could I be moved or my work in schools so re-arranged that I would no longer have to teach scripture. This was too much for the officer. His composure disappeared. I was making an extraordinary request – one unheard of – one which might create much disturbance in the community… had I forgotten the tax resistance of the non-conformists as a possible indicator of what in their turn the Roman Catholics and the Church of England might do?

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.

In 1859 Barbara Bodichon had started an office in Langham Place to act as a bureau for helping women to find paid work. By 1861 Emily Davies, Elizabeth Garrett, Sophia Jex-Blake, Louise Smith, Emily Faithfull, Anne Proctor and many others met there. It was a centre of feminism. They were comrades and worked for a great end. The need felt by women for openings to paid employment was written in the office books. Louie Smith said to her hairdresser: ‘Surely, now, hairdressing is a calling suitable for women?’ ‘Impossible, madam, he said, ‘I myself took a fortnight to learn it.’

The principle of confining political privileges exclusively to one sex, though persons of both sexes are equally affected by the course pursued in deciding political questions, is now challenged, and the case must be fairly judged on its merits. The sheer novelty of the proposal is the weakest part of the case for the petitioners; the opposition will find their most formidable stronghold in taking up the position that women have never voted in choosing members of Parliament, and therefore they ought not to do so now.

In 1866 a little committee of workers had been formed to promote a parliamentary petition from women in favour of women’s suffrage. It met in the house of Miss Elizabeth Garrett (now Mrs. Garrett Anderson) and included Mrs. Bodichon, Miss Emily Davies, Miss Rosamond Davenport Hill and other well-known women.

John Stuart Mill agreed to present a petition from women householders… On 7^th June 1866 the petition with 1,500 signatures was taken to the House of Commons. It was in the name of Barbara Bodichon and others, but some of the active promoters could not come and the honour of presenting it fell to Emily Davies and Elizabeth Garrett…. Elizabeth Garrett liked to be ahead of time, so the delegation arrived early in the Great Hall, Westminster, she with the roll of parchment in her arms. It made a large parcel and she felt conspicuous. To avoid attracting attention she turned to the only woman who seemed, among the hurrying men, to be a permanent resident in that great shrine of memories, the apple-woman, who agreed to hide the precious scroll under her stand; but, learning what it was, insisted first on adding her signature, so the parcel had to be unrolled again.

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.

I carefully watched the proceedings and policy pursued by such great unions as the Miners, Cotton Spinners and Engineers, who all pressed for State interference with the object of improving their industrial conditions. I was compelled to recognise the power

of Parliament… Those well-organised industries had the ballot-box as a lever to raise their standard of life, but the women workers, however well they combined, had no such lever to help them in their demand for the redressing of their grievances.

I was deeply interested in the work of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and so I decided to take a job with the organisation. I became editor of the NUWSS’s newspaper, The Women’s Franchise, and I learned by experience how to select, produce and edit material… I also organised petitions, deputations and processions.

In the 1860s mother began reading widely, and learnt how Mary Wollstonecraft had vindicated the rights of women in burning words, how Caroline Norton had struggled for her rights over her children, and how Emily Davies and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson showed what determination was needed by young women who wished for academic or professional education. She read Barbara Bodichon’s Englishwomen’s Journal, which discovered and exposed the obstacles to the employment of educated women, and she learnt about Florence Nightingale and her work on the vast problem of nursing and sanitary administration. In the 1860s women realised that the only way to civil rights, higher education, and equal status lay through the parliamentary franchise… My mother became friends with Marie Corbett of Danehill, a remarkable woman who not only threw herself heart and soul into the cause, but also educated her daughters (now Mrs Margery Corbett Ashby and Mrs Cicely Corbett Fisher) to take the leading place they have in public life.

The overwhelming victory of the Liberal Party at the polls in January 1906 gave them fresh hope but many of the most ardent women political workers were disillusioned; amongst these was my mother…. Henceforth she worked chiefly for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, which was carrying on the work of organisation amongst those women who believed that the cause of freedom could be won without violence.

Women demand our immediate enfranchisement on the same terms as men because we have, by long and painful experience, proved the absolute impossibility of securing any further redress of the many legal wrongs from which we still suffer, and because we fully realise the great danger of further careless, mischievous, and unjust legislation, greatly imperilling the well-being of women.

Lady Frances Balfour gave a talk on Women’s Suffrage. Lady Balfour told the meeting that as the law stood women were classed with paupers, felons and lunatics as being unfit to exercise the franchise… She went on to speak of the great struggle women had in the matters of education, the difficulty they had in getting into the medical profession and taking part in local government… One of the arguments used against women having the vote was that they could not fight, therefore they had no right to a voice in these matters dealing with wars, but this was ridiculous, for who was it who suffered most in time of war? Women, because they lost their husbands and sons.

Rebellion is the necessary result of injustice. It may not always achieve its purpose, or be intended to do so, but a conviction of injustice endured must precede articulate rebellion. Nor is it always certain that injustice will be followed by rebellion – it would be very much better for the world if this was the case. But where the victims of aggression or custom are ignorant and disunited the opportunities for reasoned and effective revolt are practically reduced to nothing…

For these feelings of revolt there was little outlet in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Women whose work was chiefly confined to private and domestic channels

were honeycombed with unrest, vague, spasmodic, and entirely unorganised. The spirit was willing; but there seemed no way of action clearly defined… At the beginning of the twentieth century more and more women came to realise the great possibilities of electoral power… They turned their attention to the winning of the parliamentary vote.

1. That in the opinion of your petitioners the continued denial of the franchise to women

is unjust and inexpedient. (b) In the home, their position is lowered by such an exclusion from the responsibilities of national life. (c) In the factory, their unrepresented condition places the regulation of their work in the hands of men who are often their rivals as well as their fellow workers.

The suffragettes tried to present a petition… We simply went to the House of Commons in February last to assert our citizens’ rights. We did not obstruct anybody, but the police obstructed us. I was given a month’s imprisonment… We went again and again and we were not arrested, which shows we have gained some ground.

On June 21^st an impressive historical and symbolical pageant, organised by the National Union of Suffrage Societies, marched through crowded, cheering streets from the Embankment to the Albert Hall. Under the chairmanship of the President, Mrs. Fawcett, a mass meeting was held of such size and enthusiasm as men of long political experience declared had seldom being equalled… A week later came the monster demonstration in Hyde Park, under the auspices of the Women’ Social and Political Union. The Times said of it: "Its organisers had counted on an audience of 250,000. The expectation was certainly fulfilled, and probably it was doubled, and it would be difficult to contradict anyone who asserted that it was trebled… The Daily Chronicle said: "Never, on the admission of the most experienced observers, has so vast a throng gathered in London to witness an outlay of political force."

The past subjection of women has so chastened women, so trained her to think of others rather than of herself, that after all it may have acted more as a blessing rather than a curse to the world? May it not bring her to the problems of the future with a purer aim and a keener insight than is possible for a man?

Mary Gawthorpe was a winsome merry creature, with bright hair and laughing hazel eyes, a face fresh and sweet as a flower, the dainty ways of a little bird, and having with all a shrewd tongue and so sparkling a fund of repartee, that she held dumb with astonished admiration, vast crowds of big, slow-thinking workmen and succeeded in winning to good-tempered appreciation the stubbornness opponents.

I am going to say ‘No, no. No vote, no information’, I am not going to tell whether I am a wife or a widow, whether I have had children or not, or the ages of those in my household, until I am a citizen.

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.

One reason why I am a convinced suffragist is that the mothers (even as wage earners) take the greater share of the responsibility in the upbringing of their children; therefore, they ought to have the greater means, not the less, to enable them to do justice to the rising generation.

The men threw rotten eggs and tomatoes and all sorts of things… we sheltered in a café. Mrs. Aldersley went out and came back crying – covered with eggs and tomatoes… My mother went out, and she said, ‘I’m stopping here, whatever you throw, so go and fetch all the stuff you’ve got to throw, because,’ she says, ‘this blooming village would never have been known about but for three women – the Brontes.’

(10.10) In her book My Part in a Changing World, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence described how the police were sometimes violent towards the women suffragists.

Police had been drafted in from the East End of London. They knew nothing about the suffrage agitation and were accustomed to dealing with drunks and roughs. Also large and well-nourished bullies had been imported into the district. They may have been police in plain clothes. An order had evidently been given that the police were not to arrest; the alternative was a six-hours’ battle between unarmed women who attempted to stand their ground, and police who fought with methods of torture. Women were lifted and thrown to the ground and kicked – they were deliberately beaten on the breasts and were subjected to such terrible violence that a short time afterwards two of them, Mrs. Mary Clarke and Miss Henria Williams, died suddenly from heart attacks. Fifty women were laid up with the injuries they had received… Dr. Jessie Murray collected evidence regarding the methods of violence used… This evidence was classified under: (1) Unnecessary violence. (2) Methods of torture, i.e. bending thumbs backwards, twisting arms, pinching, gripping the throat and forcing back the head with violence, forcing fingers up nostrils, and so on. (3) Acts of indecency.

There was a tremendous crowd, which showed signs of hostility. The Chairman, Leonard Hall, had not finished his opening remarks when the trouble began… There was a concerted rush… most of our assailants were young men… The mob played a sort of Rugby football with us. Seizing a woman they pushed her into the arms of another group who in their turn passed her on… Two youths held on to my skirt so tightly that I feared it would either come off or I should be dragged to earth on my face… I gave one a blow in the face, which sent him reeling down the slope… An older man on the fringe of the gang was shouting indecent suggestions… I ran after this man and hit him on the jaw with my umbrella. I stood still, expecting an assault, but he ran off. I was soon surrounded by other young men. At last a group of men fought their way to me, having to beat off our assailants with their bare fists in order to get us out. The crowd followed yelling like savages. Someone opened the door of their house and drew us inside. We were glad to take shelter, but the crowd seemed so dangerous, booing and yelling round the door and windows, that I feared they would break in and wreck the place. One may ask ‘Where were the police?’ but anyone who has ever championed an unpopular cause will know how far the roughs are allowed to go before they are checked.

Lady Helen Brassey and Lady Idina Sackville were the hostesses. Mrs. Uniacke said that surely no one can be satisfied with the world around us today. A great deal wants doing. Women want the right to influence public morals. They understand the difficulty of rearing children with healthy minds and bodies. Men now decide at what trades women shall work. Why cannot women decide?

(10.13) In her book My Part in a Changing World, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence argued that groups of young men often tried to disrupt suffrage meetings.

It was mainly from young men, and often entirely from students, that opposition came… We had one meeting in the Town Hall in Birmingham. University students came

en masse in order to prevent the audience from hearing the speakers. They kept up a stampede for over an hour, stamping, yelling and singing. Christabel stood on the platform apparently amused at their antics, and every now and then addressed the youths as if they were children, while she turned her main attention to the reporters, who thronged the press table, and was able to get her whole speech over to them. A box of mice was emptied on the table beside her. She took them gently into her hand and let them run up and down her bare arms and spoke to the thoughtless boys of the cruelty of frightening small and helpless creatures for the sake of fun.

I have often heard the ‘sarcastic’ remark applied to the factory worker oh she is only a factory girl; thus giving the impression to the World that we have no right to aspire to any other society but our own. I am sorry to say that we are not fully awakened to the facts that we contribute largely to the nation's wealth, and therefore demand respect, and not insult. For in many a Lancashire home are to be found heroines whose names will never be handed down to posterity; yet it is consoling to know that we as a class contribute to the world.

In 1901 children in industry was not a small problem. In the textile factories in the United Kingdom over 32,000 children from 12 years of age were being employed on the half-time system; in addition, many thousands of children of 13 years upwards, were employed full-time – 60 hours a week – as industrial workers, in non-textile factories and workshops. The number of children engaged in their own homes on some of the sweated trades of those days could not be counted. The illegal employment of children in factories was also prevalent. The hours of employment permissible under the Factory Acts in 1901 were long. Women and girls over 14 years could be employed 12 hours a day and on Saturday 8 hours. In addition, in certain industries, and dressmaking was one, an additional 2 hours could be worked by women on 30 nights in any 12 months.

Workrooms were often overcrowded, dirty, ill-ventilated, and insufficiently heated. The employment of little errand girls, usually only 14 years of age, soon attracted by attention. Their work was very varied – running errands, matching materials, taking out parcels, cleaning the workrooms, and often also helping in the work of the house. To be at the beck and call of all employed in a busy workshop was arduous and fatiguing. They could work legally from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and often were sent out from the workshop a few minutes before 8 p.m. to take a dress to a customer living some distance away, which resulted in their not reaching home until a late hour. It was not surprising that the young persons in those workshops often looked weary and overdone; but there were plenty of girls to take their place, so they would not give in.

The Socialist movement, the Labour movement, call it which you will, and the Women’s movement, are but different aspects of the same great force which has been, all through the ages, gradually pushing its way upwards, making for the reconstruction and regeneration of Society.

Some unions excluded women, and others admitted them, mostly in order to prevent them from being blacklegs to men. ‘The women must be got in because they undersell us, they injure us’ – it was the old story of Rousseau and the sole object of women’s education being to make women useful to men, over again. I was thinking of leaving the Trade Union movement altogether for the antagonism between men and women was widening and I could see no way of interesting women in the movement. Women resent this spirit of antagonism between them and men.

A premium is sometimes put on impropriety of conduct on the women’s part by the foreman. That is, a woman who will submit or respond to his course jokes and language and evil behaviour receives more work than the woman who feels and shows herself insulted by such conduct, and wishes to preserve her self respect. The pittance earned by some of these women is earned at the expense of more than only hard toil. Even when this coarseness is confined to language only, it causes deep suffering to some of the women. They feel, they know, that because they are women and therefore regarded as helpless and inferior, they are spoken to as men are not spoken to, and the sting enters their souls.

Certainly trade unions will never flourish amongst women, until on election days the female union voice can make itself heard alongside the male union voice… It has always been so with men; and men and women are wonderfully alike… That the improved status a vote would give these women would be a large factor in raising their wages there cannot be the smallest doubt. In the language of the girls themselves about it. They don’t dare put on a man same as they do on us; not they! ‘Of course not,’ said a male trade unionist, ‘you see men have a vote.’

Trade unionism could not do for the unskilled trades and the sweated industries what it could do for other trades, and they must look to the law for protection. Surely the time was coming when the law, which was the representative of the organised will of the people, would declare that British workers should no longer work for less than they could live upon.

Fundamentally all social and political questions are economic. With equal wages, the male worker would no longer fear that his female colleague might put him out of a job, and ‘men and women will unite to effect a complete transformation to the industrial environment… A woman needs economic independence to live as an equal with her husband. It is indeed deplorable that the work of the wife and mother is not rewarded. I hope that the time will come when it is illegal for this strenuous form of industry to be unremunerated.

A very large majority of the women visited in their homes are kindly, industrious, reasonable, self-respecting persons and good citizens. The husbands in the main deserve the same praise… Parental affection seems to be the ruling passion of nearly all these fathers and mothers; they work hard with amazing patience in the hope of making their children happy… What is wrong is not the work for wages of married women, but the underpayment.

Sweated labour may be defined as (1) working long hours, (2) for low wages, (3) under insanitary conditions. Although its victims include men as well as women, women form the great majority of sweated workers. The chief difficulty is combating this evil abuse is that nearly all sweated work is done in the homes of the workers. During the recent strike of Jam makers in Bermondsey the wages of the girls only just sufficed to provide them with food, and left no margin whatsoever for the purchase of clothes, for which they were entirely dependent on gifts from friends… Chief among these evils of sweated labour is the exploitation of child labour. Children of six years and upwards were employed after school hours, in helping to add to the family output and even infants of 3, 4 and 5 years of age work anything from 3 to 6 hours a day in such labour as carding hooks and eyes to add a few pence per week to the wages of the household.

Selina Cooper explained that she started work when she was only ten years of age and for eighteen years was employed as a weaver. She said women needed to do on a collective basis what they could not do individually for themselves. As an industrial worker, and since as a wife and mother, she realised how much legislation concerned her… women had expert knowledge to enable them to deal with great reform. Take the housing problem, a woman was far more likely to detect anything lacking in a house than a man was. They needed women’s idea of economy and her grasp of detail.

(11.12) In her article, Women’s Liberty and Man’s Fear, written in 1907, Teresa Billington Greig attempted to explain why men tried to deny women equal opportunities.

All the best-paid work is in the hands of men, and women are rigidly shut out. From all the higher posts in the lesser trades, and from all the chief trades and their subsidiary industries, women are rigorously excluded. When I was quite young I desired to be an engineer. I was almost as happy among the wonders of machinery as among flowers. The theories of impact, of momentum, of tension – the arrangements of levers, pulleys, planes and screws to make machines, were things to conjure with, with me. But as I was a woman such mechanical talent as I possessed had to be wasted. No department of engineering, theoretical or practical, was open to me. As the desire of women to practise as doctors was opposed, as the would-be women lawyer today is thwarted, so is the would-be women engineer, surveyor, or architect, so is the woman who desires to enter any of the better organised departments of industry.

In how many instances does the hard-working father, and more especially the mother, of a poor family remain slaves throughout their lives… toiling to live, and living to toil; when, if their offspring had been limited to two or three only, they might have enjoyed comfort and comparative affluence? How often is the health of the mother, giving birth every year to an infant and compelled to toil on… how often is the mother’s comfort, health, nay, even her life thus sacrificed? Many women cannot give birth to healthy, living children. Is it desirable – is it moral, that such women should become pregnant?

I say that this is a dirty, filthy book, and the test of it is that no human being would allow that book on his table, no decently educated English husband would allow even his wife to have it…the object of it is to enable a person to have sexual intercourse, and not to have that which in the order of providence is the natural result of that sexual intercourse. That is the only purpose of the book and all the instruction in the other parts of the book leads up to that proposition.

I wrote a pamphlet entitled The Law of Population giving the arguments which had convinced me of its truth, the terrible distress and degradation entailed on families by overcrowding and the lack of necessaries of life, pleading for early marriages that prostitution might be destroyed, and limitation of the family that pauperism might be avoided, finally giving the information which rendered early marriage without these evils possible. This pamphlet was put in circulation as representing our views on the subject.

We continued the sale of Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy for some time until we received an intimation that no further prosecution would be attempted, and on this we at once dropped its publication, substituting for it my Law of Population.

War, infanticide, hardship, famine, disease, murder of the aged, all these are among the positive checks which keep down the increase of population among savage tribes. War carries off the young men, full of vigour, the warriors in their prime of life, the strongest, the most robust, the most fiery – those in fact, who, from their physical strength and energy would be most likely to add largely to the number of the tribe. Infanticide, most prevalent where means of existence are most restricted, is largely practised among barbarous nations, the custom being due, to a large extent, to the difficulty of providing food for a large family.

Men, women, and children, who would be doomed to death in the savage state, have their lives prolonged by civilisation; the sickly, whom the hardships of the savage struggle for existence would kill off, are carefully tended in hospitals, and saved by medical skill; the parents, whose thread of life would be cut short, are cherished on into prolonged old age; the feeble, who would be left to starve, are tenderly shielded from hardship, and life’s road is made the smoother for the lame; the average life is lengthened, and more and more thought is brought to bear on the causes of preventable disease; better drainage, better homes, better food, better clothing, all these, among the more comfortable classes, rem