Emmeline Pankhurst

Paula Bartley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135120962
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

In this well-structured, fluent and lively account, Paula Bartley uses new archival material to assess whether Pankhurst should be seen as a heroine or a tyrant, a conservative or a progressive.

Emmeline Pankhurst was the most prominent campaigner for the women's right to vote and was transformed into a popular heroine of the early twentieth century. Early in life she was attracted to socialism, she grew into an entrenched and militant suffragette and ended up as a Conservative Party candidate.

This new biography examines the guiding principles that underpinned all of Emmeline Pankhurst's actions, and places her achievements within a wider social and political context.

Part I

A POLITICAL APPRENTICESHIP 1858–1903

1

SHAPING A LIFE 1858–80

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Emmeline was born on July 15th 1858, a hot summer's day in which temperatures reached an extraordinarily un-British and swelteringly high 85°F. ¹ As with most things surrounding her life, even this has become a matter of dispute since she, her daughters and most of her biographers would have it that she was born on July 14th. Of course, one day's difference in celebrating a birthday is generally of no consequence but with Emmeline it had significance in its association with Bastille Day. On July 14th 1789 revolutionaries had attacked the Bastille, a state prison whose high and massive walls were the embodiment of autocracy and repression. The storming of the Bastille had heralded a new age of freedom, justice and humanity, and Bastille Day became hugely symbolic to radicals like Emmeline. In later life, she was to use the symbol to great effect in her likening of the suffragette struggle against an intransigent government with the French revolutionaries’ fights against tyranny. In 1909, when presented with a replica medal struck to commemorate the winning of the Bastille, she announced that she had always been proud of the fact that she had been born on July 14th. She ‘had always thought that the knowledge that her birthday had been the anniversary of the final taking of that monument of tyranny had had an influence upon her whole life.’² In creating her own birthday, she had also forged an image of herself as a natural revolutionary. And today, each year on July 14th sympathisers and family congregate around her statue at Westminster to commemorate her birthday and to honour her memory.

Emmeline was born at home in Swan Street, Moss Side, Manchester, into a middle-class radical family. She was the eldest daughter of a wealthy Manchester calico manufacturer, Robert Goulden, and his wife, Sophia Jane Craine.³

There were strong Manx connections. Emmeline Goulden's mother was born in Lonan, Isle of Man, in 1833, a member of an old-established family that could trace its ancestry back to the early fifteenth century. The name originated from MacCiarain and was of Scottish origin. Some of her ancestors had clearly been in trouble with the authorities: in 1422 Donald McCraine was tried for baiting the Lieutenant Governor's men in Kirk Michael, and in 1658 William Craine was sentenced to have his ears cut off and fined £10 for slander.⁴ However, the later Craines, reputable yeomen, were well respected on the island and not really given to radical politics. Although it is often stated that Emmeline's mother was the daughter of a Manx farmer, this was not the case. In fact, Sophia Jane's father, William Craine, was a shoemaker by trade, who subsequently took over and managed a boarding house with his wife, also called Jane, first at North Quay and then later at Christian Road, Douglas, on the Isle of Man.

Manx inhabitants, proud of their radical heritage, claim that Emmeline's militancy should be attributed – in part – to her Manx blood. Speaking years later to an American audience, she herself stated that the suffrage idea came naturally to her since her mother had enjoyed the franchise in her own country.⁵ The Isle of Man was (and still is) independent from Britain with its own parliament and the right to formulate its own domestic policies. Manx women enjoyed superior legal and political rights and participated more fully in public life than English women. It is said that one key event in Manx history precipitated this: in 1098 two rival chieftains, one from the north of the island and one from the south, fought for supremacy at a place called Santwat. After a long and bloody battle the northern chieftain won – allegedly because the northern women had turned out in force to help their menfolk on the battlefield. But the Isle of Man was always a strong sea-faring nation and women were used to being left alone to manage domestic and political affairs. Moreover, there was a powerful Gaelic tradition in the island which encouraged women to take a full part in public life, and the religious ethos of Methodism, which was strong in the island, accorded women a greater role in the church than most other religions.

More importantly, and as a consequence of their political, religious and cultural heritage, Manx single and propertied women gained the vote in 1881, thirty-seven years before their English counterparts – the first country in the world to grant the vote to women. Of course, this radical reform was neither a foregone conclusion nor an historical accident but the result of a combination of tradition, Manx pride and the effects of campaigning by suffragists. The House of Keys, the Isle of Man equivalent of the House of Commons, was elected for the first time in 1866 so voting was new to all of the electorate. Since it was a small community, the Isle of Man had a significantly more personalised system of voting and was less dependent on political parties than the mainland. (In Britain at the time the two main parties – the Liberals and Conservatives – were against votes for women for different reasons. The Conservatives in general were ideologically opposed to any extension of democracy, while the Liberals feared that a limited franchise would benefit the Conservatives too much.) On the Isle of Man not only was each candidate well known but each voter was too; there would be no political surprises if women were enfranchised.

A proposed Isle of Man Suffrage Bill (1880) attracted the attention of the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage, which took a keen interest in these issues, and, in turn, provided an impetus for the local movement. In 1880 Lydia Becker and Mrs Alice Scatcherd, friends of Emmeline's parents and of her future husband Richard Pankhurst, visited the island to address a number of meetings. These meetings were described as ‘crowded’, ‘large and influential’ and attended by ‘ladies of the better class’.⁶ Manx suffragists and their supporters adopted the tactics of the Manchester campaigners by holding meetings, obtaining favourable press coverage, signing petitions and questioning candidates about their views on female suffrage. At a large public meeting on November 1st 1880, in which various members of the House of Keys were present, a resolution was passed unanimously that the franchise be extended to women. On November 3rd, just as the House of Keys was preparing to consider the suffrage bill, an editorial in one of the island's chief newspapers, Mona's Herald, called for the inclusion of women electors on the grounds that there should be no taxation without representation. And so on November 5th 1881, when the House of Keys debated the issue, there were few arguments against votes for women and the motion was carried by 16 votes to 3. Over 700 women, consisting of between 5 and 10 per cent of the electorate, were enfranchised by this measure. Women's suffrage had arrived, paradoxically, on the Isle of Man. Neither Emmeline Pankhurst nor her mother were directly involved in the campaign but when, in 1981, the Isle of Man Post Office Authority issued a stamp to commemorate the centenary of Island women being given the vote, both Emmeline Pankhurst and Sophia Jane Goulden were featured prominently.

Sophia Jane met and married Robert Goulden, a young man from Manchester, England. In her youth, Sophia Jane Craine had been an ‘unusually good-looking young lady’ with a ‘bright and attractive personality.’⁷ Robert most probably fell in love with his future wife while lodging with the Craine family. The Isle of Man was a popular resort for northern factory workers who flocked to its many lodging houses for their annual holiday, and Robert may have been one of them. Equally, he may have visited the island to sell his calico to sail makers.⁸ Robert and Sophia Jane married on September 8th 1853 at the romantic setting of Kirk Braddan Church on the Isle of Man. She was 18 and he was 24.

There is a mystery surrounding Emmeline's father's family background. It is sometimes believed that Robert Goulden was from an Irish background. It is equally conceivable that Robert Goulden, although baptised, may have been of Jewish origin. Traditional rabbinical scholars maintain that the Gouldens of Manchester were Jewish, but there is no trace of Robert in remaining records. Robert Goulden's parents were certainly from a humble background. His mother had been a fustian cutter while his father had been press-ganged into the navy. Emmeline's paternal roots were equally radical. Her grandmother was active in the Anti-Corn Law League and her grandfather narrowly escaped injury at a franchise demonstration in St Peter's Fields, Manchester, where an unarmed crowd of about 80,000 men, women and children were attacked by the cavalry. This unprovoked and brutal attack – 11 people were killed and over 400 injured – shocked the public. The event, quickly dubbed ‘Peterloo’, popularised suffrage reform and gave an heroically romantic status to people like Emmeline's grandfather.

Robert and Sophia Goulden had six sons and five daughters.⁹ The eldest son of the family died when he was 2½ years old but ten survived: Walter, Emmeline (later Pankhurst), Edmund, Mary (later Clarke), Herbert, Effie (later Bailey), Robert, Ada Sophia (later Bach), Alfred Harold, and Eva Gertrude (later Brown). Robert Goulden was a self-made man. At the time of his wedding he was a mere errand boy,¹⁰ but he later graduated to become a manufacturer, first in partnership and finally as managing director of his own business. Later in his life he entered into a further partnership with Mr John Hody James and between 1867 and 1887 the two men managed the Seedley Printworks. It would appear that Robert Goulden was very much the junior partner, for whereas Hody James lived in Seedley House, a large mansion standing in its own grounds, the Gouldens lived in Seedley Cottage, an altogether more modest accommodation.

The house in Seedley in which Emmeline lived for most of her childhood was surrounded by countryside and the district was one of the most secluded and desirable areas within the suburbs of Manchester.¹¹ Indeed, Seedley was the prime residential location for a large section of the business community of Manchester and boasted many city dignitaries amongst its inhabitants. However, by the end of the nineteenth century Seedley had changed out of recognition: the combined expansion of Salford and Manchester more than doubled the number of dwellings. Such rapid expansion meant that the new houses were smaller, designed to appeal to the tastes and the pockets of artisans and workers rather than to the rich business classes. The new streets surrounding Seedley Printworks were named in honour of the Arctic explorer Nansen and included Greenland, Iceland and Norway Streets – the district was commonly known as the ‘North Pole’. One street name, oddly out of place, was Goulden Street, established to commemorate Robert's contribution to the local community.

The Goulden family typically spent their holidays at 9 Strathallan Crescent, a rather charming white stuccoed building on the sea-front of Douglas Bay, Isle of Man, which was owned by Emmeline's step-grandfather. Her grandfather, William Craine, had died in 1866 and in 1874 her grandmother re-married at St Tomas's Church, Douglas; her second husband was a mariner called John Morrison. In 1878 the house was bought by Emmeline's father and was used as a holiday home. In 1892 Emmeline's father died, and her mother left Manchester and returned to the Isle of Man to live at the house for another 40 years. There is photographic and oral evidence to suggest that Emmeline Pankhurst, and her children, continued to visit the Isle of Man. The historian Patricia de Ban remembers her own father meeting Christabel Pankhurst there, and Richard Pankhurst recalls his mother, Sylvia, talking about her visits to the Isle of Man.¹²

Her parents throughout her early childhood undoubtedly fostered Emmeline's theatricality, her commitment to suffrage and her emancipatory politics. Both of her parents were committed to social reform, so much so that, even as a young girl, Emmeline was exposed to radical politics and taken to meet the foremost intellectuals of the time. Her parents were members of Manchester's radical elite, which meant that she was surrounded in her childhood by left-wing intelligentsia including Jacob and Ursula Bright, Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy … and, of course, her future husband Richard Pankhurst. While it is often assumed that it was Richard Pankhurst who formed Emmeline's politics, proper credit must be given to the oblique influence of her parents, to her early childhood and to her later education – both formal and informal – in Paris for shaping her radical beliefs.

Emmeline's father took a keen interest in public matters. For five or six years he was Liberal representative for the Seedley Ward on Salford Town Council. One of his obituary notices affirmed that, although he was a favourite with the working class, he also took part in several agitations for the benefit of the ratepayers of Salford. A strong supporter of Cobden and Bright, Robert Goulden was especially active on the Council at the time of the cotton famine. During the American Civil War between 1860 and 1865 he helped to sustain the neutrality of Britain and campaigned for the emancipation of the slaves. When Henry Ward Beecher visited Britain in 1863 to promote American Union, Robert Goulden was appointed to the Welcoming Committee and read the address that Henry Beecher was asked to present to Abraham Lincoln on his return.¹³ Emmeline was introduced to these emancipatory politics at an early age. She recalled having been mesmerised by Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was read to her as a bedtime story by her mother. (Harriet Beecher Stowe was Henry Ward Beecher's sister.) This powerful melodramatic novel, although subjected to heavy criticism by twentieth-century readers, was extremely popular during Emmeline's childhood. It revealed the sufferings caused by slavery by describing how the hero of the story, the uncomplaining and pious Uncle Tom, was sold to a brutal cotton plantation owner who finally beat him to death. Her parents not only read such improving stories to their daughter but they encouraged her to do something practical about the injustices that touched her compassion. Theirs was a doctrine of Deeds as well as Words. Before long, young Emmeline set about raising money to relieve the poverty of the emancipated slaves.

Robert Goulden was a political activist who enjoyed the lighter side of life; he was no tortured, dreary politician with an unhealthy dislike of entertainment. On the contrary, he was a promoter of the Manchester Athenaeum, a member of the Dramatic Reading Society and considered a ‘fine elocutionist with much dramatic power’.¹⁴ At one time he purchased the Prince of Wales Theatre in Salford for use as a concert hall but in 1882 transferred the building to his son Edmund to use as a theatre.¹⁵ Under Edmund's management the theatre's repertory featured an unusually heavy emphasis on Victorian melodrama and became known locally as the ‘blood tin’. Blood-curdling plays like ‘Murder in the Red Barn’ and ‘The Face at the Window’ were performed, as well as the popular drama ‘From Mill Street to Mansion’ in which the mill owner's son entices the local mill girl to come with him to his strangely isolated mansion.¹⁶ There is no doubt that Emmeline inherited her considerable dramatic flair from her father – she loved the theatre and visited it whenever she had time to do so.¹⁷

EARLY POLITICAL INFLUENCES

Emmeline's early views on Irish politics were formed in her childhood. In her autobiography she recalled being affected by the Fenian Revolt in Ireland and the subsequent reaction of the British government towards it. In 1867, when she was under 10 years of age, the leaders of the Fenian rebellion had killed a police officer while trying to escape from a prison van. Three of the leaders, Allen, O'Brien and Larkin, were hanged publicly for murder in Manchester. Emmeline remembered passing the prison on the way home from school and witnessing the remains of the gallows through a gap in the wall. Shaken by this experience, she later identified it as a formative influence. Indeed many of her political views, and in particular her suffragette activities, were affected and shaped by her awareness of Irish politics.

In her autobiography, Emmeline also states that: ‘I had always been an unconscious suffragist. With my temperament and my surroundings I could scarcely have been otherwise.’¹⁸ Her mother first introduced her to women's suffrage. The suffrage movement in Manchester was very active in the 1870s and her mother, although not a subscriber to the Manchester suffrage society, was obviously sympathetic, ordering the Women's Suffrage Journal each week.¹⁹ Emmeline, now aged 15, was taken to the first-ever suffrage meeting that was held at the Free Trade Hall in February 1874. She would have recognised her parents’ friends on the platform: Jacob Bright chaired the meeting and Lydia Becker, Rhoda Garrett, Miss Ashworth and Miss Sturge were the main speakers. In terms of audience numbers, it was a huge success and the hall was full. Unfortunately, according to the Manchester Criti...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Routledge Historical Biographies
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Principles Before Politics
• Part 1 A Political Apprenticeship 1858–1903
• Part II The Suffragette Story 1903–14
• Part III Life After the Vote 1914–28
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index