Suffragettes' Fight for Voting Rights

1. …In fact, the Suffragettes started off relatively peacefully.  It was only in 1905 that the organisation created a stir when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney interrupted a political meeting in Manchester to ask two Liberal politicians (Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey) if they believed women should have the right to vote. Neither man replied. As a result, the two women got out a banner which had on it "Votes for Women" and shouted at the two politicians to answer their questions. Such actions were all but unheard of then when public speakers were usually heard in silence and listened to courteously even if you did not agree with them. Pankhurst and Kenney were thrown out of the meeting and arrested for causing an obstruction and a technical assault on a police officer. Both women refused to pay a fine preferring to go to prison to highlight the injustice of the system as it was then. A

2. On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful - the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down - about a pint of milk... egg and milk is sometimes used. An account by Mary Leigh who was forced-fed in September, 1909. B

3. C

4. Some Female Employment Figures - 1901 Number of Women Job Domestic Servants 1,740,800 Teacher 124,000 Nurse 68,000 Doctor 212 Architect 2 D

5. Women do not have the experience to be able to vote. But there are other problems as well: the way women have been educated, their lack of strength, and the duties they have. I women did gain the vote, it would mean that most voters would then be women. What would be the effect of this on the government? I agree that there are some issues upon which the votes of women might be helpful. But these cases do not cover the whole of political life. What is the good of talking about the equality of the sexes? The first whiz of the bullet, the first boom of the cannon and where is the equality of the sexes then? From a speech made in 1912 by Lord Curzon, a Conservative leader. E

6. By 1903, some women became so frustrated that men wouldn’t give them the vote that they decided to form a new organisation. They were called the SUFFRAGETTES and they were prepared to use violent ands aggressive methods to get what they wanted. However, the Suffragettes hoped that whatever tactics they used, no one would be physically hurt except perhaps themselves. The leader of the Suffragettes was a woman called EMMELINE PANKHURST. A modern day historian’s view F

7. G

8. H