Pankhurst and the Vote
A global power1714 to 1901
Before women could vote, they first had to be free to own anything in their own name. A pair of Acts of Parliament changed that: from then on, a wife could keep what she earned and owned in her own name, rather than see it pass automatically to her husband the day she married.
Organised campaigning followed. Emmeline Pankhurst, who was born in Manchester, founded the Women's Franchise League in 1889 to press for married women to be given the vote in local elections, a narrow demand and a first step forward.
The same years brought conflict abroad and literary honour at home. The Boer War was fought in South Africa against settlers from the Netherlands, a people the British called the Boers, testing confidence in the future of the Empire. In 1907, Rudyard Kipling received the Nobel Prize in Literature, honoured for poems and novels that portrayed British rule abroad as something to take pride in.
What to remember
| The setting up of the Women's Franchise League | 1889 Campaigned to win married women the vote in local elections, an early step toward suffrage. |
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| Kipling being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature | 1907 Kipling's poems and novels, including The Jungle Book, portrayed the Empire as a force for good. |
| The Acts of Parliament of 1870 and 1882 | giving wives the right to keep their own earnings and property Before them, a married woman's earnings and property automatically belonged to her husband. |
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| The Boer War | a war in South Africa against settlers from the Netherlands, called the Boers 1899 to 1902; it made the discussions about the future of the Empire more urgent. |
| Emmeline Pankhurst | Manchester Born in 1858; she founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. |
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| Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907 | Rudyard Kipling |
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