HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-01-23T12:00:42.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Lilian Lenton, the 'Elusive Pimpernel': the courageous and daring suffragette who took direct action
items: From china cups to letter bombs: how suffragettes got out the message of votes for women
items: Your guide to the Pankhursts, the pioneering family who fought for Votes for Women
items: What was the Cat and Mouse Act? The reason why suffragettes were force-fed
items: Suffragettes history facts: 10 things you might not know about the Votes for Women campaigners
items: 8 famous suffragettes and votes for women campaigners
items: Emily Davison: the suffragette who stepped in front of the king's horse
items: Women’s history podcasts: episodes not to miss
items: Muriel Matters: the well-spoken women’s rights hero
items: How the battle for female suffrage in Britain was won

Lilian Lenton, the 'Elusive Pimpernel': the courageous and daring suffragette who took direct action
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T12:00:42.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Amazing lives
subject: The Suffragettes
description: Some suffragettes marched with banners, or printed and distributed propaganda pamphlets. Others took more direct action. Diane Atkinson tells the story of one activist who employed arson to spark awareness of the burning issue of women’s suffrage
encoded: Recalling her career as a suffragette arsonist and Houdini-like escapologist in interviews later in her life, Lilian Lenton lit up as if a fire had been started in her heart. “To say I enjoyed making fires sounds rather awful,” she later admitted. “But it really was lovely to find that you’d been successful – that the thing really had burned down and that you hadn’t got caught. There it was blazing, and there we were in the glare of the lights…” Listen | Deeds Not Words: the suffragette story Lilian Ida Lenton was one of the youngest, yet most militant, of suffragettes in the three years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. Her career was daring, dangerous and dramatic, reported in newspapers around the country. The new half-penny dailies, with their half-tone photographs and full spreads, often featured her pyrotechnic activities. Lilian was 5ft 2ins tall in her stockinged feet, with brown hair and eyes – a “tiny, china-like figure, but wiry and… wily”. She soon gained a romantic nickname, ‘The Elusive Pimpernel’, for her effective disguises and her ability to elude the policemen and detectives who guarded the places where she was kept under house arrest while released from prison on licence. With her tiny stature, she easily passed as a child, a delivery boy or a little old lady. Becoming a suffragette Born in Leicester in 1891, Lilian was the eldest of the five children of Isaac, a carpenter and joiner, and Mahalah, who had worked in a hosiery factory before her marriage. Lilian trained as a dancer, but was then inspired by hearing Emmeline Pankhurst speak about women’s suffrage. As soon as she was “21 and my own boss”, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Lilian was first arrested on 4 March 1912, one of about 200 detained during a campaign of window-smashing. Frustrated at the government’s refusal to give women the vote, and outraged at the force-feeding of suffragettes in prison, activists shattered hundreds of windows in Whi…

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From china cups to letter bombs: how suffragettes got out the message of votes for women
type: item
date: 2024-09-19T10:23:45.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The Suffragettes
description: The suffragettes crafted a brilliant PR campaign, driven by everything from branded marmalade to marching bands. But did their quest for publicity eventually backfire? Ellie Cawthorne investigates an Edwardian battle for hearts and minds
encoded: Whining kittens, cackling geese, wizened crones, toothless old bags: the portrayals of activists on anti-suffrage postcards circulating at the beginning of the 20th century are brutally unflattering. “Suffragettes were often portrayed as desiccated spinsters who’d never been kissed, and whose sexual frustration made them bitter and twisted and led them to attack society,” says historian Diane Atkinson. “They were shown as careless, selfish women who abandoned their families and responsibilities in pursuit of politics.” One postcard shows a bawling baby in the middle of an almighty tantrum. The caption underneath reads: “Mummy’s a Suffragette.” As Atkinson explains, such images transmitted a clear message to anyone who saw them: “Suffragettes were bad mothers. They were bad wives. They were bad people.” Before they could convert anyone to their cause – in short, ‘votes for women’ – the suffragettes had to convince the public that they were not bitter old crones or shrieking banshees. What they needed was a rebrand – and, as we explore in our new podcast series, Deeds not Words, the campaigning suffragettes were masters at getting their message out there. Whether through headline-grabbing stunts, creating a dynamic and memorable public image for their movement, or even their pitch-perfect merchandise campaign, the suffragettes knew how to make a statement. Deeds Not Words: the suffragette story Find out more about the dramatic story of the suffragette campaign over six episodes Listen on the podcast Building ‘brand suffragette’ As those sneering postcards demonstrate, the suffragettes’ fight to reclaim their public image would be an uphill battle. However, according to historian Fern Riddell, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) – the organisation at the heart of the movement – was “absolutely fantastic at running a PR campaign”. She adds: “Advertising and mass media had really started to emerge in the 19th century, and the suffragettes were quick to capitali…

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Your guide to the Pankhursts, the pioneering family who fought for Votes for Women
type: item
date: 2024-07-16T11:10:36.000Z
creator: Emma Slattery Williams
subject: Edwardian
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
subject: The Suffragettes
description: One family, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, would lead the charge towards equality and votes for women. Find out more about the accomplishments of the founder and leader of the WSPU, and her pioneering daughters
encoded: Who was Emmeline Pankhurst? Emmeline Goulden was born in 1858 to parents who fiercely supported reform and activism. She accompanied her mother to suffrage meetings and her grandfather had witnessed the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Emmeline attended schools in both Manchester and Paris and soon noticed the stark differences between her education and that of her brothers – they studied business, the sciences and mathematics, while she was taught how to cook and look after the home. This would light a fire within her; a burning desire to one day see women treated as equal to men. Emmeline married likeminded lawyer Dr Richard Pankhurst in 1879 – he was a radical and a supporter of women’s rights, free speech and educational reform. Together they had five children: Christabel, Sylvia, Adela, Henry Francis Robert (Frank) and Henry Francis (Harry). The younger brother was named after the elder, who died of diphtheria at the age of four. The Pankhursts moved from Manchester to London in 1886, and it was while there that Emmeline became interested in the experiences of working-class women. She followed with great interest the Match Girls’ strike of 1888. Girls and women worked up to 14 hours a day in match factories for low pay, suffered ill health caused by the chemicals they used, and were threatened with fines for talking or going to the toilet without permission. More than a thousand women walked out on a strike that lasted for three weeks – the protest was one of several that inspired Emmeline. By 1889, Emmeline had helped to form the Women’s Franchise League in London – its main goal was to secure married women’s right to vote in local elections. The Pankhursts returned to Manchester in 1893 and it was then that Emmeline began establishing herself as an activist. Deeds not Words: the suffragette story Member exclusive | With their radical demands for votes for women, the suffragettes shook up Edwardian Britain. Their campaign for equal rights would see them not just ral…

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What was the Cat and Mouse Act? The reason why suffragettes were force-fed
type: item
date: 2024-07-10T09:47:17.000Z
creator: Professor June Purvis
subject: Edwardian
subject: First World War
subject: Period
subject: The Suffragettes
description: June Purvis considers the power of the hunger strike and the importance of this radical form of protest to the suffragettes' political arsenal
encoded: “They fed me five weeks by the nose and at the end of that time my nose what they called ‘bit’ the tube, and it would not pass into the throat even though they bent it and twisted it into all kinds of shapes. Instead, it went up to the top of my nose and seemed to pierce my eyes… Then they forced my mouth open by inserting their fingers and cutting my gums… and the lining of my cheeks… when I was blind and mad with pain they drove in two large gags. Then the tubes followed and they pressed my tongue down with their fingers and pinched my nose to weaken the natural, and also the purposeful, resistance of my throat.” This was how imprisoned suffragette Mary Richardson described one of the many times she was forcibly fed in 1914, after going on hunger strike. Her fate was that of many members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in October 1903 to campaign for the parliamentary vote for women in Britain. The WSPU, with its slogan ‘Deeds, not words’, became the most notorious of the women’s suffrage groupings, some one thousand of its members being imprisoned from 1905 to the outbreak of the First World War, in August 1914. A women-only organisation, the WSPU sought not just to end the discrimination that barred all females from their democratic right to elect a government but also to press for wider social reforms that would bring equality within the law, education and employment. Read more | How the battle for female suffrage in Britain was won Prior to the general election of 1906, which the Liberals were expected to win, the suffragettes engaged in non-violent actions to press their cause – such as assertive questioning of leading members of the Liberal Party and deputations to parliament. When a Liberal government was returned and Herbert Asquith, a renowned opponent of women’s suffrage, became prime minister in 1908, the fight for women’s enfranchisement became much harder. Banned from Liberal Party meetings, the suffrage…

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Suffragettes history facts: 10 things you might not know about the Votes for Women campaigners
type: item
date: 2024-06-13T10:12:24.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Edwardian
subject: First World War
subject: General Modern
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Historical people
subject: The Suffragettes
subject: Trends-News
description: Dr Jacqui Turner from the University of Reading reveals some lesser-known facts about the political movement
encoded: Passionate about women's rights, in 1903 the suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) split from the suffragists of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) to follow the militant agenda 'deeds not words'. In the years that followed, these women took radical steps to force a change in the laws in Britain for women. But how much do we really know about the suffragettes? Read more | What was the difference between the suffragists and the suffragettes? 1. Women did not get the vote on the same terms as men in 1918 Many people assume that, as a direct result of women’s war work during the First World War, they were given the vote on equal terms to men. However, they were not. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 was primarily needed to resolve the issue of soldiers returning from service in the First World War who were not entitled to the vote, as they did not meet existing property qualifications. The 1918 act abolished almost all property qualifications for men over the age of 21 and gave the vote to women over 30 – but only if they met minimum property qualifications or were married to a man who did. Women could also vote as part of a university constituency if they were a university graduate. The age differential was to ensure that, following the loss of men in the war, women did not become the majority voters. After the act was passed, women made up 43 per cent of the electorate. Women were not given the vote on the same terms as men until a decade after the act was passed: on 2 July 1928, the Second Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Actwas passed into law. In a cruel twist of fate, Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the militant WSPU, died on 14 June 1928, some 18 days before equal suffrage rights were granted. Deeds not Words: the suffragette story Member exclusive | The suffragettes' campaign for equal rights would see them not just rallying crowds with speeches and marching on the streets, but setting fire to…

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8 famous suffragettes and votes for women campaigners
type: item
date: 2024-06-13T08:32:28.000Z
creator: Ellie Cawthorne
subject: 20th Century
subject: Edwardian
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: The Suffragettes
description: The Pankhursts and Millicent Fawcett were leading figures of the suffrage movement whose names are often invoked and remembered today. Here we take a closer look at eight other people who supported the campaign for women’s right to vote…
encoded: Lady Constance Lytton The aristocrat in disguise As the daughter of the Viceroy of India, Lady Constance Lytton (1869–1923) was born into a life of immense privilege. But her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement saw her swap palaces for prison cells. Lytton was converted to the cause after meeting suffragettes while campaigning for prison reform. Soon she was speaking across the country and petitioning her influential political connections on behalf of the Pankhursts. In 1909, Lytton was imprisoned in Holloway but was swiftly released when officers learned of her illustrious family background. In order to avoid similar special treatment on later arrests, Lytton adopted the alias Jane Warton, disguising herself as an “ugly London seamstress” during activities that might land her in prison, such as pelting MPs’ cars with stones. Lytton’s dedication to the cause ran so deep that she even attempted to carve the words ‘Votes for Women’ into her skin while in prison. However, after carving a letter ‘V’ over her heart, she was prevented from completing the job by prison doctors. In 1914, she published a book about her experiences of incarceration and force feeding, reflecting: “When the ghastly process was over, I tapped on the wall and called out... ‘No surrender’ and there came the answer past any doubt… ‘No surrender’.” Deeds not Words: the suffragette story Member exclusive | The suffragettes' campaign for equal rights would see them not just rallying crowds with speeches and marching on the streets, but setting fire to politicians’ homes and planting bombs in public places. Find out more in our podcast series: Deeds Not Words. Listen to all episodes now Sophia Duleep Singh The publicity-grabbing princess Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (1876–1948) didn’t fit the standard profile for a street-fighting political activist. Descended from Sikh royalty that had once ruled in northwest India, Sophia was a goddaughter of Queen Victoria and a fixture of the royal court. …

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Emily Davison: the suffragette who stepped in front of the king's horse
type: item
date: 2024-06-03T13:40:00.000Z
creator: Professor June Purvis
subject: 20th Century
subject: Edwardian
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: The Suffragettes
description: In June 1913, suffragette Emily Davison was fatally injured after stepping in front of the king's horse during the Epsom Derby. Her death was a landmark event in British political history and became a milestone in the struggle for women's suffrage – but, asks June Purvis, was it an act of suicide?
encoded: On 4 June 1913, at the Epsom Derby, the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison was standing by the white rail near Tattenham Corner. A flag in the colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was tied around her body. As a group of horses fast approached, Davison ducked under the railing and tried to grab the reins of King George V's horse, Anmer. With great force, Anmer knocked her over, rolled on his back, and kicked her furiously. The jockey, Herbert Jones, fell with the horse but managed to free himself and soon recovered from his cuts and bruises. Emily Davison was not so lucky. She had sustained a fractured skull, severe concussion and internal injuries. She was taken to Epsom Cottage Hospital, where surgeons attempted to relieve pressure on her brain. She never recovered and died four days later. The Derby incident, reported by all the main newspapers, captured by Pathé news and relayed around the world, has become a defining moment in British political history. Emily Davison has been perpetuated in popular memory as an unbalanced, suicidal fanatic. But was she? And was her death an accident, as the coroner of the day concluded? Who was Emily Wilding Davison? Emily Wilding Davison was born on 11 October 1872 in Blackheath. Hers was a comfortable, middle-class upbringing. Yet, following the death of her father, her family’s finances went into decline. So, when she was 19, the high-spirited, athletic and academically able Davison was forced to leave her studies at Royal Holloway college and take employment as a governess. Davison had soon saved enough money to pay for a term at St Hugh’s Hall, a women’s college recently founded in Oxford, and came out with a first-class degree in English language and literature. She went on to read for a London University degree, graduating with honours. With employment opportunities for university-educated women severely limited, Davison did what was expected of her and became a schoolteacher and, once again, a governes…

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Women’s history podcasts: episodes not to miss
type: item
date: 2023-03-14T12:45:17.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: The Suffragettes
description: For Women's History Month, we’ve put together a list of HistoryExtra podcast episodes you can listen to featuring inspirational historical women and their achievements
encoded: Looking for a new podcast recommendation? In Women's History Month, learn more about remarkable women through history and their stories with these fascinating episodes from the HistoryExtra podcast... Madame Restell: the abortionist who shocked and fascinated 19th-century New York Jennifer Wright discusses the dramatic life of Madame Restell, a New York businesswoman who made millions – and horrified many – by selling abortions and birth control in the 19th century Sirens, succubi & sex symbols: a history of female monsters Sarah Clegg explores how and why historical myths have portrayed women as monstrous beings – from seductive, child-killing monsters to mermaids, sirens and vampires Medieval women: everything you wanted to know Eleanor Janega busts popular myths surrounding women in the Middle Ages, revealing how society was more open-minded than we might initially expect Female spies who forged the CIA Nathalia Holt discusses four women who undertook life-threatening missions and harnessed crucial intelligence in the early days of the Central Intelligence Agency Breastfeeding: a cultural history From ancient baby bottles to the perceived moral dangers of wetnursing, Joanna Wolfarth investigates what we can learn from changing attitudes to breastfeeding through history How six women programmed the world’s first modern computer During the Second World War, six talented mathematicians were brought together to make history. These women had one mission: to program the world’s first and only supercomputer. Speaking with Rachel Dinning, Kathy Kleiman explores the vital but overlooked role the “Eniac 6” played in the history of computing during and after the Second World War Njinga: queen, warrior, diplomat Luke Pepera tells Kev Lochun about the dramatic life and reign of Queen Njinga, the formidable 17th-century ruler of Ndongo and Matamba, in modern-day Angola Women who served in WW2 Tessa Dunlop explores the lives of the last surviving women who served in Britain’s a…

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Muriel Matters: the well-spoken women’s rights hero
type: item
date: 2023-03-07T08:53:10.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The Suffragettes
description: How did an Australian elocutionist become a champion of the British women's suffrage movement? Robert Wainwright explores the surprising career of a very vocal activist
encoded: When Muriel Matters arrived in London in October 1905, she had little money but a handful of letters of introduction and dreams of becoming a West End star. At 28 years old, Muriel had achieved modest success as a comedic actor, and recognition as an orator – a propopent of the art of elocution – having trained alongside Lionel Logue, who later helped George VI overcome his stutter (as dramatised in The King’s Speech). Indeed, she went on to become one of the most famous women in England – though not as an actor but as a pioneering thinker, social reformer and activist. Read more | 100 women who changed the world Muriel had been inspired as a teenager by the fight for women’s suffrage in South Australia, which in 1894 had given women the rights of voting and standing for election. In London, she was viscerally drawn to rowdy meetings and “drinking in rebellious sentiments”, as she would write. She was soon persuaded that her extraordinary skills and persuasive talents would be wasted if used solely for a stage career. “My chances of success on the stage seemed assured, and yet daily the conviction grew that it was not for this that I had been drawn 16,000 miles...” she wrote. “I was a born agitator.” Read more | The gender pain gap: perceptions of women's health through history The women’s suffrage movement in Britain had fractured into three main groups. The Women’s Freedom League, led by Charlotte Despard, filled a niche between the suffragist and the later, sometimes more militant, suffragette camps. It was here that Muriel found her political home. One executive member discussed Muriel after her first speech: “Who was she? She had told us in her speech that she was an Australian, but for the rest we knew nothing … we debated how we could best use her gifts – her enthusiasm, her eloquence, her wonderful, magical voice – for the cause.” For three months in spring 1908 Muriel travelled from town to town, speaking in halls and fields, addressing the thousands who fl…

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How the battle for female suffrage in Britain was won
type: item
date: 2023-01-24T12:53:51.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: The Suffragettes
description: Did suffragette violence hasten victory? How critical to the campaign were the Pankhursts? And why did many women not want the franchise? Four expert historians – Jad Adams, Julia Bush, June Purvis and Fern Riddell – answer the big questions on female suffrage
encoded: Can the passing of the Representation of the People Act in 1918 – which, for the first time, gave some women the vote – be attributed to the suffrage campaign, the First World War, or other factors? Julia Bush: The suffrage campaign and the First World War both contributed to the timing and specific content of the 1918 act. However, it was probably inevitable that a century of democratisation, accompanied by growing government involvement in education and social welfare reform, would eventually encompass votes for women. Long-term, peaceful pressure from the organised suffrage campaign helped move this change slowly forward. The war, combined with prewar suffragette militancy, initially delayed suffrage legislation. But by 1917–18 it was generally accepted that serving soldiers had earned the right to vote. As a result, when legislation was passed in 1918, it enfranchised all men over the age of 21, and also gave the vote to women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification. Older women were included less because of their war work than because politicians hoped they would provide conservative ballast within the new mass electorate, reinforcing the stability of a society threatened by war and the spectre of Bolshevism. Jad Adams: The act was part of a wave of national enfranchisements that started in 1893 with New Zealand and which was largely completed by Switzerland in 1971. Britain was no pioneer. Seven countries had enfranchised women before Britain, and at least another seven enfranchised in the same year, 1918. The most important common factor in the enfranchisements of women was the re-evaluation of national identity in the face of catastrophes such as war, revolution or independence struggles. Old ideas had to be rejected and the nation reformed. This is what happened in Britain in the wake of the sacrifices of the First World War, with the granting of universal male suffrage and a limited franchise for women. June Purvis: Some historians claim that i…

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