The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910
Glossary
"
- "Suffragette"
- The term coined by the press to distinguish militant campaigners from the older, constitutional "suffragists," adopted by Pankhurst as the title of this history despite its originally mocking intent, reflecting the movement's embrace of a combative public identity.
- Related: Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Militant Tactics
A
- Annie Kenney
- A former mill worker from Oldham, sent to work as a "half-timer" at age ten, who becomes one of the WSPU's most prominent organizers. Her arrest with Christabel Pankhurst in 1905 is described in vivid detail: "a little, slender, fragile figure" who "stood there above them all" amid a hall's uproar.
- Related: Christabel Pankhurst, Militant Tactics
B
- Bow Street Police Court
- The London court where many arrested suffragettes, including the WSPU's three leaders in October 1908, were tried; excited crowds are described besieging its doors during the highest-profile prosecutions covered in the book.
- Related: Holloway Prison, Deputation
C
- Cabinet Council
- The regular meeting of Government ministers that WSPU deputations repeatedly attempted to intercept outside Downing Street, forcing confrontations with police assembled specifically to protect the Prime Minister and his colleagues from the women's approach.
- Related: Deputation, Mr. Asquith
- Christabel Pankhurst
- The author's elder sister and the WSPU's chief strategist, whose arrest alongside Annie Kenney in October 1905 — for demanding an answer to a suffrage question at a Liberal meeting — is presented as the inaugurating act of militant tactics.
- Related: Emmeline Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Militant Tactics
- Clement's Inn
- The WSPU's headquarters in London, described as home to "those active inventive brains" who were "ever devising new stratagems and new surprises" to keep pressure on the Government despite arrests and censorship.
- Related: Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
- Conciliation Bill and Committee
- A cross-party effort formed in 1910, largely through the work of Mr. H. N. Brailsford and chaired by the Earl of Lytton, to unite Liberals, Conservatives, Irish Nationalists, and Labour members behind a single, negotiated women's suffrage bill — and the truce in militant action the WSPU observed while it was pending.
- Related: Mr. Asquith, General Election of 1906
D
- Deputation
- A delegation of women who present themselves, usually at the House of Commons or a Minister's residence, to demand an audience on the suffrage question — repeatedly refused, and repeatedly resulting in arrest, as when Mrs. Pankhurst wrote to Mr. Asquith that a deputation "could accept no refusal and must insist upon their constitutional right to be received."
- Related: Women's Parliament, Mr. Asquith, Militant Tactics
E
- Emmeline Pankhurst
- The author's mother and founder of the WSPU, described as having been "inspired by stories of the early reform movements" from girlhood. She becomes the movement's central leader and its most frequently arrested figure, repeatedly imprisoned for organizing deputations to Parliament.
- Related: Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Christabel Pankhurst, Deputation
F
- Forcible Feeding
- The prison authorities' response to the hunger strike, first carried out at Winson Green Gaol, Birmingham, in September 1909 — restraining prisoners and feeding them by force through a tube. The practice provoked public protest from figures like Mr. Keir Hardie and denunciations from medical experts, and the resignations of WSPU sympathizers Mr. Brailsford and Mr. Nevinson from their newspaper posts in protest.
- Related: Hunger Strike, Winson Green Gaol, Mr. Keir Hardie
G
- General Election of 1906
- The election that brought the Liberal Party to power under Campbell-Bannerman and gave the WSPU its first national stage, as the union targeted Liberal candidates at their own campaign meetings to press the suffrage question before the incoming government.
- Related: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. Churchill
H
- Heckling
- The practice of interrupting political meetings with pointed questions, described in the book as "a recognised institution" in Scotland that even a reluctant Prime Minister was obliged to honor by replying — the tactic from which the WSPU's confrontational campaign grew.
- Related: Militant Tactics
- Holloway Prison
- The London prison where most arrested suffragettes, including Mrs. Pankhurst on repeated occasions, served their sentences. It is the site of the hunger strikes' beginnings and, in Chapter 16, of a reported "mutiny" among the imprisoned women and the removal of the grille separating them from visitors.
- Related: Hunger Strike, Grille
- Hunger Strike
- The tactic of refusing all food in prison to demand treatment as a political prisoner rather than a common criminal, originated by Miss Wallace Dunlop and quickly adopted by other imprisoned suffragettes. Its spread forced the authorities' hand, leading directly to the introduction of forcible feeding.
- Related: Miss Wallace Dunlop, Forcible Feeding, Holloway Prison
L
- Lady Constance Lytton
- An aristocratic suffragette repeatedly arrested and, notably, disguised herself as "Jane Warton, seamstress" — cutting her hair and dressing plainly — to test whether working-class prisoners were treated more harshly than titled ones. The experiment confirmed her suspicion: as Jane Warton she was subjected to forcible feeding that her rank had previously spared her.
- Related: Forcible Feeding, Holloway Prison
M
- Militant Tactics
- The WSPU's escalating repertoire of confrontation — heckling ministers, forcing deputations to Parliament, window-breaking, hunger strikes — that the book tracks year by year as it grows in intensity from a single interrupted question in 1905 to mass arrests and forcible feeding by 1909-1910.
- Related: Deputation, Hunger Strike, Heckling
- Miss Wallace Dunlop
- The suffragette credited with originating the hunger strike as a prison tactic, demanding to be treated as a political prisoner. Her example was followed within days by fourteen more women held in the punishment cells.
- Related: Hunger Strike, Holloway Prison
- Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence
- Frederick and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, key WSPU leaders and editors of the movement's newspaper; Mrs. Pethick Lawrence is repeatedly shown raising funds for the campaign ("nine thousand pounds was immediately subscribed") and is herself arrested alongside Lady Constance Lytton.
- Related: Votes for Women, Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
- Mr. Asquith
- The Liberal Prime Minister through most of the book's later chapters, the WSPU's principal antagonist and the repeated target of deputations and interrupted meetings. He alternates between vague promises of future "facilities" for suffrage legislation and refusals to receive the women's delegations.
- Related: Deputation, Conciliation Bill
- Mr. Churchill
- Winston Churchill, a Liberal minister repeatedly targeted by WSPU protesters at his campaign meetings and public appearances, including a disguised Annie Kenney's confrontation of him during the 1906 election campaign in Manchester.
- Related: Militant Tactics, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
- Mr. Herbert Gladstone
- The Home Secretary responsible for prison policy during much of the campaign, cross-examined at the 1908 trial of the WSPU's three leaders and later charged in the narrative with authorizing forcible feeding.
- Related: Forcible Feeding, Holloway Prison
- Mr. Keir Hardie
- A Labour Member of Parliament and one of the suffrage movement's staunchest parliamentary allies, whose public protest against forcible feeding at Winson Green Gaol is presented as adding respected outside pressure to the WSPU's own campaign.
- Related: Forcible Feeding, Conciliation Bill
- Mrs. Baines
- A suffragette whose trial and imprisonment, along with the reported "mutiny" at Holloway Prison, mark the escalating clashes between the WSPU and prison authorities documented in Chapter 16.
- Related: Holloway Prison, Mrs. Leigh
- Mrs. Despard
- A leading figure of the Women's Freedom League following the 1907 split, arrested during the League's own campaign of deputations and protests documented alongside the WSPU's parallel efforts in the book's middle chapters.
- Related: Women's Freedom League
- Mrs. Drummond
- A WSPU organizer whose imprisonment left "a great blank in the work of the Union," though she predicted correctly that other women would volunteer to continue the campaign in her absence.
- Related: Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
- Mrs. Leigh
- A suffragette subjected to forcible feeding at Winson Green Gaol who later brought a legal action against the Home Secretary and the prison's governor and doctor over her treatment — one of several court cases the WSPU pursued to publicize prison conditions.
- Related: Winson Green Gaol, Forcible Feeding
S
- Selina Martin and Leslie Hall
- Two suffragettes whose reported ill-treatment at Walton Gaol, Liverpool, becomes one of several prison-abuse cases the book documents in detail as evidence of the authorities' escalating harshness toward hunger-striking prisoners.
- Related: Forcible Feeding, Hunger Strike
- Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
- The Liberal Prime Minister called to form a government after Mr. Balfour's resignation in December 1905, whose refusal to receive suffrage deputations in Edinburgh and elsewhere sets the pattern of official resistance the WSPU spends the book confronting.
- Related: Mr. Asquith, Deputation
T
- The Grille
- The metal screen separating the Ladies' Gallery from the floor of the House of Commons, symbolic of women's exclusion from political life; its removal is reported in Chapter 16 alongside the account of unrest inside Holloway Prison.
- Related: Holloway Prison
- The November 18th Deputation (1910)
- A mass deputation of 450 women, including elderly pioneers like Dr. Garrett Anderson and Mrs. Hertha Ayrton, marching on Parliament after Mr. Asquith announced its dissolution; the day ended with women "torn apart, felled to the ground, struck again and again" and 115 women and four men arrested — the violent episode with which the book's narrative closes.
- Related: The Truce, Deputation, Mr. Asquith
- The Pantechnicon Van Stratagem
- One of the WSPU's inventive tactics for reaching Cabinet Ministers under close police guard, in which women concealed themselves inside a furniture-moving van to gain unauthorized entry near Downing Street — emblematic of the union's resourcefulness in circumventing official barriers.
- Related: Deputation, Clement's Inn
- The Truce
- The suspension of WSPU militant action during 1910 while the Conciliation Bill was under negotiation, ended when the Government failed to provide parliamentary time for the Bill and the union resumed deputations, culminating in the violent November 18th confrontation outside Parliament.
- Related: Conciliation Bill and Committee, Deputation
V
- Votes for Women
- The WSPU's newspaper and the movement's central slogan, used throughout the book both as the title of the campaign's press organ and as the rallying cry chanted at meetings and deputations.
- Related: Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence
W
- Winson Green Gaol
- The Birmingham prison where forcible feeding was first inflicted on suffragette hunger strikers in September 1909, becoming a national scandal after Mrs. Leigh brought a legal action against the Home Secretary and the prison's governor and doctor over her treatment there.
- Related: Forcible Feeding, Mrs. Leigh
- Women's Franchise League
- An earlier suffrage organization the Pankhurst parents helped found in 1889, in which Sylvia and Christabel, then seven and nine years old, took part by writing notices and distributing leaflets — the family's suffrage involvement predating the WSPU by over a decade.
- Related: Emmeline Pankhurst, Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
- Women's Freedom League
- A breakaway organization formed in September 1907 after "differences of opinion in regard to questions of organisation and policy" split the WSPU's governing body, led in the book's account by Mrs. Despard and continuing to pursue militant tactics alongside, and sometimes in tension with, the original union.
- Related: Mrs. Despard, Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
- Women's Parliament
- A series of mass suffrage meetings held by the WSPU, numbered sequentially through the book (the Third, the Seventh, the Ninth, and so on), timed to coincide with the real Parliament's sessions and typically followed by a deputation to the House of Commons that ended in arrests.
- Related: Deputation, Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
- Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)
- The militant suffrage organization founded by Emmeline Pankhurst, whose escalating campaign of heckling, deputations, arrests, and hunger strikes forms the spine of this history. The author, Sylvia Pankhurst, was both a member and the daughter of its founder, giving the narrative its insider's vantage point.
- Related: Emmeline Pankhurst, Militant Tactics, Clement's Inn