It is commonly stated that Emmeline Goulden was born on 14 July 1858,^1 but
her birth certificate records the following day as the date of birth, at Sloan
Street, Moss Side, Manchester. Perhaps she was born around midnight and her
parents, Robert Goulden, a cashier, and his Manx-born wife, Sophie Jane (née
Craine), decided after the birth was registered some four months later, that the
14th was the appropriate date. Perhaps Emmeline herself created the myth
many years later; as a young woman she developed a passion for all things
French and 14 July was the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in Paris
in 1789, an event that marked the beginning of the French Revolution. Perhaps
Emmeline’s birth certificate became lost and she had not seen the recorded
date; after all, during the years when she was the leader of the WSPU, she lived
like a nomad, without a permanent home, and it would have been difficult to
keep family papers under such circumstances. But one thing is certain:
Emmeline believedshe was born on the auspicious 14th and it is highly likely
that her parents told her so. As she said in 1908, ‘I have always thought that the
fact that I was born on that day had some kind of influence over my life ... it
was women who gave the signal to spur on the crowd, and led to the final
taking of that monument of tyranny, the Bastille, in Paris.’^2
The eldest girl in a family of ten children, Emmeline was a lively and preco-
cious child, the rebellious streak in her nature being enhanced by stories about
how her parental grandfather had narrowly escaped death at the Peterloo fran-
chise demonstration in Manchester in 1819 and, with his wife, had taken part
in demonstrations in the 1840s against the Corn Laws which imposed duties on
imported foodstuffs. Emmeline could read by the incredibly early age of three.
The young child also learnt, with a similar ease, how to play the piano at sight
but would never practise and it was reading that was her favourite pastime, tales
of a romantic and idealistic nature, such as John Bunyan’s The pilgrim’s progress
and The holy war, being especially popular.^3
The rich, industrial city of Manchester, at the heart of the manufacturing
North, was a city of contrasts, with the poor living in overcrowded, insanitary
tenements and the more affluent in spacious detached and semi-detached
houses. Manchester was also at the forefront of dissenting politics during this
nancy kaufman
(Nancy Kaufman)
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