46 J. Purvis, Using primary sources when researching women’s history from a feminist
perspective, Women’s History Review, 1, 1992, pp. 273–306, suggests that we may identify
three main categories of primary sources which, while not offering a neat but somewhat
arbitrary classification, nonetheless distinguish groups of texts that share characteristics in
common. ‘Official texts’ includes state, bureaucratic, institutional and legal texts, official
reports of societies and institutions, memoranda and official letters. ‘Published commen-
tary and reporting’ covers accounts of events that might be written or constructed
without the direct help of the participants and includes novels, films, photographs, adver-
tisements, the writings of key political, social and literary figures, and newspapers. The
approach in ‘personal texts’ is in terms of a person’s subjective experience, and such texts
include letters, diaries, autobiographies and life histories.
1 CHILDHOOD AND YOUNG WOMANHOOD
(1858–1879)
1 See E. S. Pankhurst,Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 7 and C. Pankhurst,Unshackled, p. 16. After
her death, the Suffragette Fellowship regularly celebrated her birthday on the 14 July. Ray
Strachey in her entry on Emmeline inThe dictionary of national biography 1922–1930, ed. J.
R. H. Weaver (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 652–4, gives 4 July 1858 as the
date of birth, presumably a printing error, and the same error is repeated in the entry by A.
Rosen,Biographical dictionary of modern British radicals, Vol. 3: 1870–1914, L–Z, eds J. O.
Baylen and N. J. Gossman (New York and London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1988), pp.
631–5. Butler,As they saw her, p. 10, is one of the few biographies to state the date of birth
as 15 July. Emmeline’s name is spelt ‘Emiline’ on her birth certificate. Whether this was an
error made by the registrar, or whether her name was originally spelt this way, I have been
unable to ascertain.
2 Votes for Women(hereafter VfW), 31 December 1908, p. 230.
3 E. S. Pankhurst, TSM, pp. 53–4; E. S Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 7; E. Pankhurst,
My own story, p. 3.
4 E. S. Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 9.
5 E. Pankhurst, My own story, p. 1.
6 Ibid., p. 3.
7 Holton, In sorrowful wrath, pp. 13–14.
8 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 16; E. S. Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 9.
9 C. Dyhouse, Girls growing up in late Victorian and Edwardian England(London, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 11.
10 E. Pankhurst, My own story, p. 5.
11 For the claim that by the middle of the nineteenth century there had emerged in Britain
a particular family form amongst the middle classes that stressed separate spheres for men
and women – men to be placed in the public world of business, commerce and politics,
women in the private sphere of the home, as wives and mothers, financially dependent
upon their husbands, see L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family fortunes: men and women of the
English middle class 1780–1850(London, Hutchinson, 1987). For a critique of this claim
see A. Vickery, Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and
chronology of English women’s history, Historical Journal, 36, 1993, pp. 383–414.
12 E. S. Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 7.
13 Dyhouse, Girls growing up, Chapter 2; J. Purvis, A history of women’s education in England
(Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1991), Chapter 4.
14 E. Pankhurst, My own story, p. 6.
15 Ibid., p. 8. Emmeline does not state the name of the sister but I have assumed that it was
Mary since she was the closest to Emmeline in age, being born on 12 December 1861, and
therefore most likely to be dressed in the same style as the eldest girl.
16 C. Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 16.
NOTES