My Own Story
Glossary
A
- Annie Kenney
- A working-class mill-worker who became one of the WSPU's most prominent organizers, notable as one of the few leading suffragettes not from a wealthy or professional background, and a trusted lieutenant to both Pankhursts throughout the militant campaign.
- Related: The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union), Christabel Pankhurst
B
- Black Friday (November 18, 1910)
- A WSPU deputation to Parliament that was met with police violence, including reported physical and sexual assault of the women involved — a pivotal escalation that convinced Pankhurst and the WSPU leadership that peaceful deputations were no longer viable and that stronger militant tactics, including window-breaking, were necessary.
- Related: Militancy, Window-Breaking Campaign, Herbert Henry Asquith
C
- Charles Stewart Parnell
- The Irish Home Rule leader whose parliamentary bloc opposed all Government candidates, including the pro-Home Rule Dr. Pankhurst, contributing to his defeat in the 1885 Rotherhithe election and giving young Emmeline Pankhurst an early, formative lesson in the ruthlessness of parliamentary politics.
- Related: Dr. Richard Pankhurst (Husband)
- Christabel Pankhurst
- Emmeline's eldest daughter and the WSPU's chief strategist, who directed much of the union's escalating campaign from exile in Paris after 1912 to avoid arrest, coordinating militant actions in Britain from across the Channel while her mother bore the brunt of imprisonment at home.
- Related: Emmeline Pankhurst (Narrator), The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union)
D
- David Lloyd George
- The Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Prime Minister, a frequent target of WSPU disruption at his public meetings, whose ambiguous record on suffrage — sometimes sympathetic in private, unreliable in Cabinet — exemplified for Pankhurst the untrustworthiness of Liberal politicians on the question of votes for women.
- Related: Herbert Henry Asquith, Winston Churchill
- Dr. Richard Pankhurst (Husband)
- Emmeline's husband, a barrister and Liberal parliamentary candidate who stood, unsuccessfully, for Rotherhithe in 1885, defeated in part by Parnell's Home Rule forces opposing all Government candidates. His early support for women's suffrage and radical politics shaped Emmeline's own political education before his death.
- Related: Emmeline Pankhurst (Narrator), Charles Stewart Parnell
E
- Emily Wilding Davison
- A militant suffragette associated with the movement since 1906, first arrested for attempting to burn a Parliament Street letter box, who died after running onto the Epsom race course in June 1913 and catching the bridle of the King's horse during the Derby — an act of protest that became one of the suffrage movement's most enduring and debated symbols of sacrifice.
- Related: Militancy, Letter-Box Attacks
- Emmeline Pankhurst (Narrator)
- The author and narrator, founder and leader of the WSPU, who recounts her transformation from a young Manchester suffragist campaigning alongside her husband Dr. Pankhurst into the militant movement's most defiant and repeatedly imprisoned figure, culminating in her account of the campaign's most extreme years up to the outbreak of the First World War.
- Related: The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union), Dr. Richard Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst
- Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
- A key early WSPU leader and treasurer, working alongside her husband Frederick Pethick-Lawrence to manage the union's finances and strategy, before the couple's eventual split from Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst over tactics in 1912.
- Related: The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union), Christabel Pankhurst
F
- Forcible Feeding
- The Home Office's response to suffragette hunger strikes in prison: physically restraining prisoners and feeding them by tube, over their explicit refusal, a practice Pankhurst and the WSPU publicized as torture in order to turn public opinion against the Government.
- Related: Hunger Strike, Holloway Prison, The 'Cat and Mouse Act'
H
- Herbert Henry Asquith
- The Liberal Prime Minister throughout most of the events Pankhurst narrates, repeatedly targeted by WSPU protests and deputations for his government's refusal to grant women's suffrage, and portrayed by Pankhurst as the chief obstacle whose Cabinet's broken promises fueled each new wave of militancy.
- Related: The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union), Black Friday (November 18, 1910), David Lloyd George
- Holloway Prison
- The London women's prison where Pankhurst and many WSPU members were repeatedly incarcerated, and where the union's demand to be treated as political offenders rather than ordinary criminals — including refusing searches and demanding contact with fellow prisoners — became a recurring site of confrontation with prison authorities.
- Related: Hunger Strike, Forcible Feeding, The 'Cat and Mouse Act'
L
- Letter-Box Attacks
- A later stage of WSPU militancy in which suffragettes destroyed thousands of pieces of mail across London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, and other cities using fire and corrosive chemicals, part of Pankhurst's explicit strategy of striking at 'property,' the thing she believed governments cared about most.
- Related: Militancy, Window-Breaking Campaign
M
- Militancy
- Pankhurst's term for the WSPU's escalating direct-action tactics: heckling politicians, chaining themselves to railings, breaking windows, arson, letter-box attacks, and hunger strikes, deployed against a Government Pankhurst argues would never grant women the vote through petition and patience alone.
- Related: The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union), Window-Breaking Campaign, Hunger Strike
- Mrs. Drummond
- A WSPU leader nicknamed 'the General' for her role organizing marches and demonstrations, among those the Government issued summonses against and whose headquarters were raided during the union's final, most embattled years before the war.
- Related: The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union)
- Mrs. Stanton Blatch
- An American suffrage leader, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose early married life had been spent in England and who chaired Pankhurst's landmark Carnegie Hall lecture in October 1909, embodying the transatlantic exchange between the British and American suffrage movements.
- Related: Pankhurst's American Lecture Tours
P
- Pankhurst's American Lecture Tours
- Pankhurst's several trips to the United States beginning in October 1909, including a landmark lecture at Carnegie Hall, where she found an increasingly organized and energized American suffrage movement and connected with figures like Mrs. Stanton Blatch, using her transatlantic fame to raise funds and support for the WSPU's British campaign.
- Related: Emmeline Pankhurst (Narrator), The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union)
S
- Sir Edward Carson
- The Ulster Unionist leader who threatened to establish a rival government in Ulster rather than accept Irish Home Rule, and whom the WSPU directly approached to ask whether his proposed Ulster government would extend the vote to women — testing the consistency of a rebellion mounted in the name of political liberty.
- Related: The Ulster Crisis
T
- The 'Cat and Mouse Act'
- Pankhurst's and the press's name for the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act of 1913, which let the government release hunger-striking prisoners weakened by fasting, only to re-arrest and re-imprison them once they recovered — a policy Pankhurst treats as a cynical evasion of the moral crisis forcible feeding had created.
- Related: Hunger Strike, Forcible Feeding, Holloway Prison
- The Conciliation Bill
- A cross-party compromise women's suffrage bill introduced in Parliament, which the WSPU suspended militant action to support, only to see it repeatedly stalled and ultimately abandoned by the Asquith Government — a pattern of raised hope and betrayal that Pankhurst cites as justification for renewed and escalated militancy.
- Related: Herbert Henry Asquith, Militancy
- The Hunger Strike
- The tactic adopted by imprisoned suffragettes, refusing all food as a form of protest and self-assertion after being denied political-prisoner status, which Pankhurst calls 'that terrible weapon with which we had repeatedly broken our prison bars' and which forced the Government into the escalating cycle of forcible feeding and early release.
- Related: Forcible Feeding, Holloway Prison
- The Suffragette (Newspaper)
- The WSPU's official newspaper, which the Government sought to destroy through repeated raids on the union's headquarters during its final embattled years, alongside efforts to arrest its editors and leading contributors including Christabel Pankhurst in absentia.
- Related: The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union), Christabel Pankhurst
- The Ulster Crisis
- The escalating threat of armed resistance by Sir Edward Carson and his followers against Irish Home Rule, which Pankhurst discusses as a pointed contrast: while men openly drilled with arms and threatened civil war over Ulster's status with comparatively little censure, suffragettes were imprisoned and force-fed for far less violent acts of civil disobedience.
- Related: Sir Edward Carson
- The Window-Breaking Campaign
- The WSPU's escalated property-destruction tactic, targeting government and commercial buildings' windows across London and other cities, adopted after the failure of peaceful deputations and Black Friday convinced the leadership that only attacks on property would force the Government's attention.
- Related: Black Friday (November 18, 1910), Militancy, Letter-Box Attacks
- The WSPU (Women's Social and Political Union)
- The organization Pankhurst founded in Manchester in 1903 with the motto 'Deeds, not Words' — the vehicle for the militant wing of the British suffrage movement, distinguished from other suffrage societies by its single-minded focus on political equality and its willingness to break the law to achieve it.
- Related: Militancy, Christabel Pankhurst, The Suffragette
W
- Winston Churchill
- A Liberal Cabinet minister and frequent target of suffragette heckling and protest, whose government offices dealt directly with the policing and imprisonment of militant suffragettes during the years Pankhurst chronicles.
- Related: Herbert Henry Asquith, David Lloyd George