period, a time of ‘heart-stirring struggles for constitutional liberty and the
freedom of the human mind and personality’.^4 Robert Goulden, being on the
side of liberation in these matters, was an ardent supporter of the abolitionists
in the American Civil War and prominent enough to be appointed to a
committee which welcomed to Manchester the anti-slavery campaigner, Henry
Ward Beecher, visiting England on a lecture tour. Sophie Goulden was an aboli-
tionist too and frequently explained the evils of slavery to her growing family by
reading to them Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s cabin. Almost fifty
years later, Emmeline could still vividly recall the thrill of listening, at bedtime,
to her mother telling the story of the beautiful Eliza who fled for freedom over
the broken ice of the Ohio River. She also recollected how one of her earliest
memories was of the time she accompanied her mother to a large bazaar, held to
raise money to relieve the poverty of the emancipated black slaves and,
entrusted with a lucky bag, she collected pennies from willing supporters of the
cause. ‘Young as I was – I could not have been older than five years – I knew
perfectly well the meaning of the words slavery and emancipation.’^5 Such fund-
raising events, together with the stories of oppression and liberation, made a
permanent impression, Emmeline believed, on her character, awakening in her
‘the two sets of sensations to which all my life I have most readily responded:
first, admiration for that spirit of fighting and heroic sacrifice by which alone
the soul of civilisation is saved; and next after that, appreciation of the gentler
spirit which is moved to mend and repair the ravages of war.’ Such sentiments
were further fired by her admiration for Thomas Carlyle’s History of the French
Revolution, a book she discovered when about nine years old and which she
insisted ‘remained all my life a source of inspiration’.^6 As Holton has elabo-
rated, Carlyle’s view of history as an unpredictable process, where individuals
were confronted with a choice of ensuring a better world in the future, or of
allowing society to degenerate into chaos, a view where revolt could be glori-
fied, not simply justified, was of the greatest importance for understanding
Emmeline’s future role in the campaign for women’s enfranchisement and what
may be termed her ‘romantic outlook’.^7
Robert Goulden prospered in his employment and became a partner and
manager of a new cotton printing and bleach works at Seedley, on the outskirts
of Salford. His growing family moved to a big white house, Seedley Cottage,
surrounded by large gardens and meadows that separated it from the factory
nearby. Although Emmeline enjoyed the delights of the countryside, she lived
close enough to the poor to gain an insight into the appalling social conditions
and hardships under which they laboured. Neither were holidays spent on the
Isle of Man, where her parents owned a house in Douglas Bay, entirely carefree
for Emmeline. While she joined in the swimming and rowing, country walks
and visits to her grandmother and uncle, as the eldest girl in a large family,
maturity was forced upon her early as she helped to look after her four younger
sisters and five brothers.^8 Such a situation was not unusual, even in comfortable
middle-class homes where a nursemaid was employed, as Carol Dyhouse has
CHILDHOOD AND YOUNG WOMANHOOD