Europe in the Belle Époque, 1871–1914525and Maria Deraismes, the founders of the French
League for the Rights of Women, favored programs like
Otto-Peters’, concentrating upon civil and legal rights.
The strongest movement developed in Britain.
Women in England and Wales won the vote and eligi-
bility for office at the local level in 1869, and they
pressed, with growing militancy, for full political rights
for the next fifty years. Between 1870 and 1914 approx-
imately three thousand women were elected to local
boards and councils in Britain, but these offices were
chiefly on school boards and social agencies dealing
with infant mortality or unsanitary housing—positions
considered a natural part of “women’s sphere.” British
women, led by Lydia Becker and Millicient Garrett
Fawcett, organized the first large suffrage movement
and won support in the House of Commons. Though
they obtained majorities—but not the support of either
major party—in the House of Commons, the conserva-
tive majority in the House of Lords blocked the reform.
The women’s suffrage movement in Britain became
one of the most radical movements in Europe in the
early twentieth century. Fawcett, the widow of a radical
M.P. who shared many of his parliamentary duties be-
cause of his blindness, presided over the unification of
several suffrage leagues into a National Union of
Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897. It grew from six-
teen founding societies to more than four hundred in
- Even during this period of rapid growth, militant
suffragists formed new organizations to attempt more
radical tactics than Fawcett used. They were dubbed
“suffragettes” by a newspaper hoping to ridicule the
movement, but militants accepted the label and made it
famous. The most famous suffragettes, Emmeline
Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia,
founded the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) in 1903 and led it to violent tactics (against
property, not people) such as smashing store windows.
Emmeline Pankhurst decided that they “had to do as
much of this guerilla warfare as the people of England
would tolerate.” That decision had dreadful results:
When arrested, she (and several other strong women)
infuriated the government by going on a hunger strike.
When hunger strikers suffered declining health, the
government chose to force feed them (see document
26.5). This sequence of events culminated in the noto-
rious Cat-and-Mouse Act of 1913—suffragist prisoners
would be released until they recovered.
Despite the remarkable example of the WSPU,
moderation characterized the struggle for women’s suf-
frage in most of Europe. Large suffrage movements had
developed by 1914, but they did not adopt WSPU tac-
tics. A few militants, such as Auclert and Pelletier in
France, briefly attempted violent demonstrations but
found no support. Instead, the movements in France,
Germany, Italy, and Russia chose campaigns of re-
spectable moderation. Their organizations grew large
by 1914 (the French Union for Women’s Suffrage had
twelve thousand members in seventy-five regional
chapters), but none won the vote.DOCUMENT 26.5
Sylvia Pankhurst Describes the
Treatment of Suffragette Prisoners:
Force-Feeding
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) was the daughter of a
wealthy Manchester cotton magnate who married a radical
lawyer and joined the first labor party. Her two daughters,
Christabel (1880–1958) and Sylvia (1882–1960), joined
her in a life of political activism. In the following excerpts
from her memoirs, Sylvia Pankhurst talks about the treatment
of suffragette prisoners.The government was not slow to take advantage of
the new tactics to inflict harsher punishments....
These women should not be permitted to termi-
nate their imprisonment by the hunger strike, as
thirty-seven had already done.... The Home
Secretary ordered the medical officer to feed them
forcibly by means of a rubber tube passed through
the mouth or nose into the stomach.... Mrs.
Leight had been handcuffed for upwards of thirty
hours, the hands fastened behind during the day
and in front with the palms outward at night.
Only when the wrists had become intensely
painful and swollen were the irons removed.
On the fourth day of her fast, the doctor had
told her that she must either abandon the hunger
strike or be fed by force. She protested that
forcible feeding was an operation, and as such
could not be performed without a sane patient’s
consent; but she was seized by the wardresses
and the doctor administered food by the nasal
tube. This was done twice daily, from 22 Septem-
ber till 30 October. All her companions were
forcibly fed.
Pankhurst, Sylvia. The Suffragette Movement.London: Long-
mans, 1931.