Key Dates for the Vote

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester in 1858, and she spent much of her life campaigning for women's votes. In 1918, the right to stand for Parliament, along with the vote, went to women over the age of 30, partly in recognition of what women had contributed to the war effort in the First World War.

Much had changed for women before then. Up to 1870, a wife's earnings, property and money passed straight to her husband on marriage. Acts of Parliament from that year on changed this, letting wives keep their own earnings and property.

Abroad, the Boer War in South Africa came to an end in 1902, after going on for over three years. Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865, the writer whose poems and novels presented the Empire as a force for good.