Emmeline: The Women's Suffrage Campaign

In 1884, Emmeline came to a realization that a favorable majority in the House of Commons did not insure success. Even though the Liberal party was in power in 1884, its appeal to include women’s suffrage amendment in the County Franchise Bill, a law that extends voting rights to farm laborers, was refused to be submitted to unbiased consideration of the house by Prime Minister William E. Gladstone. Gladstone believed that “women’s work and politics lay in service to men’s parties.” He disrupted the suffrage organization by substituting it with the Women’s Liberal Associations, in which the organization promised that by allying women’s work to men’s parties, women would soon earn the right to vote. The Federation received numerous blinded

Her arrival was welcomed by a strike of women working in the Bryant and May match factories for better working condition, in which she joined enthusiastically. The strike was a success, and women received an improved working condition. In 1890, Emmeline had her last children in London, and due to her hectic days of taking care of five children, she was less active in the suffrage movement. Yet, by the following year, when the Women’s Franchise League was formed, dedicated in pursuing a new suffrage bill, Emmeline could not resist, and joined the association. However, as difficult as it was for women suffrage movement, the organization was not fruitful, and the Pankhurst also ended their London residency in 1893 as they moved back to Manchester. A year after their return, Emmeline was elected for the unsalaried Board of Poor Law Guardians, and as she came into office, she gained acknowledgement of how the law was harshly administered . For instance, the inmates were being poorly fed, little girls around seven to eight years of age were on their knees scrubbing the stones along the corridors with the same thin cotton clothes for both winter and summer, and pregnant women in the workhouse were doing the hardest kind of work. The poor children were treated like paupers, with poor education, which lied in a totally opposite condition to the wealthy little ones. Pregnant women were forced to be separated from their two-week old infants, or if they choose to be together, they would have no money, no home, and no place to go. To worsen the situation, Emmeline realized that the existing law could not do all the work, new law should be implemented, and it became clear to her that hope was limited until women received the right to vote. Nevertheless, these poor children, women, and inmates conditions improved to a certain extent after Emmeline took office