complained that they were expected to stay at home, dusting the drawing-room
or arranging the flowers, while their brothers were being prepared for useful
occupations, including the family business. Their mother confided that she
feared her tall, upstanding sons might marry imprudently and urged her daugh-
ters to make the home attractive for them. On one occasion, when Mrs.
Goulden ordered Emmeline and Mary to fetch their brothers’ slippers, the spir-
ited young women defiantly remarked that if she was in favour of women’s
rights she did not show it at home.^30 Emmeline found such scenes particularly
rankling since, as she later explained:
I was always anxious to have outside work; as a girl I felt strongly the
necessity of women being trained to some profession or business which
should enable them to be self-supporting. It is important that they
should avoid the degradation of forced dependence upon husbands and
male relatives, not only for subsistence, but for every little private call.
Women are the better and happier for occupation; it raises them
socially and intellectually.^31Eager to be doing something useful in the world, Emmeline went with her
parents to an important political meeting addressed by Richard Pankhurst.
There had been much debate as to whether Britain should join forces with
Turkey in its war with Russia, a position that Dr. Pankhurst, a pacifist leading
the peace group in Manchester, had strongly opposed. Standing with her
parents on the outside steps awaiting Richard’s arrival, the first Emmeline saw
of him was his ‘beautiful hand’ opening the door of his cab as the vehicle pulled
up.^32 When he stepped out to be greeted by the waves and cheers of the crowd,
her heart leapt. Richard Pankhurst, now forty-four years old, had resolved to
stay single all his life, in order to devote himself to public life. But he noticed
the strikingly beautiful and elegant young woman, at least half his age, and
decided to woo her. The second son of Henry Francis Pankhurst, an auctioneer,
and Margaret Marsden, he had been brought up as a Baptist dissenter and evan-
gelical liberal. Richard had attended Manchester Grammar School and Owens
College (later Manchester University) and although a brilliant scholar, had
been barred from Oxford University because of his Nonconformity.
Nevertheless, he greatly distinguished himself at the University of London from
which he graduated in 1858, the year of Emmeline’s birth, with a Bachelor of
Arts, a Bachelor of Law in 1859, and a Doctor of Law, with the gold medal, in
- After practising as a solicitor, he had been called to the Bar at Lincoln’s
Inn in 1867 and then returned to Manchester to join the northern circuit.^33
Regarded as a political extremist, he was affectionately known in Manchester as
‘our learned Doctor’ or ‘the Red Doctor’.^34
On 8 September 1879 Richard Pankhurst wrote formally to Emmeline, ‘Dear
Miss Goulden, There is, as you know, now in action an important movement
for the higher education of women. As one of the party of progress, you must be
CHILDHOOD AND YOUNG WOMANHOOD