Suffrage Days

This is a history of the suffrage movement in Britain from the beginnings of the first sustained campaign in the 1860s to the winning of the vote for women in 1918. The book focuses on a number of figures whose role in this agitation has been ignored or neglected. These include the free-thinker Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy; the founder of the women's movement in the United States, Elizabeth Cady Stanton; the working class orator, Jessie Craigen; and the socialist suffragists, Hannah Mitchell and Mary Gawthorpe. Through the lives of these figures Holton uncovers the complex origins of the movement and associated issues of gender. Introduction 1 FROM ‘SURPLUS WOMAN’ TO INDEPENDENT PERSON Elizabeth Wolstenholme and the early women’s Movement 2 ‘THE REVOLT OF THE WOMEN’ Sexual subjection and sexual solidarity 3 A ‘STRANGE, ERRATIC GENIUS’ Jessie Craigen, working suffragist 4 ‘THE GRANDEST VICTORY’ Married women and the franchise 5 AMONG THE ‘INSURGENT WOMEN’ Hannah Mitchell, socialist and suffragist 6 ‘A MERRY, MILITANT SAINT’ Mary Gawthorpe and the argument of the stone 7 WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AMONG THE BOHEMIANS Laurence Housman joins the movement 8 ‘ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA’ Alice Clark, liberal Quaker and democratic suffragist 9 MEN, WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AND SEXUAL RADICALISM, 1912–14 10 WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR 11 LAST WORDS Women’s suffragists and women’s history after the vote