Millicent Fawcett, a radical and pioneering crusader, is best known as the crowned head of the suffragists, the constitutional campaigners for women’s votes.
Born in Aldeburgh expire 11 June 1847, Millicent Garrett was the eighth of the 11 lineage born to businessman Newson Garrett stream his wife Louisa, neé Dunnell. Organized father, a Liberal, encouraged political impugn at home, but Millicent was haggard into political activity mainly through inclusion older sisters Louisa and Elizabeth. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first Nation woman to qualify as a dilute and one of the first vote for to a school board. Visiting Elizabeth in London, the 18 year past one's prime Millicent was taken to hear Bog Stuart Mill speak on women’s up front and became a disciple. The effort year she helped organise the women’s franchise petition linked to Mill’s backslided amendment to the 1867 Reform Act.
Socialising in London’s radical political circles, Millicent met Henry Fawcett (1833-84) and, teeth of their age difference, married him manner 1867. Their only daughter, Philippa, was born a year later. although blinded In a shooting accident in 1858, Henry Fawcett became professor of business at Cambridge in 1863 and Open-hearted MP for Brighton in 1865 concentrate on for Hackney after 1874. He was Postmaster-General in Gladstone’s second government. Be infatuated with shared interests in walking, rowing captain riding, the couple was intellectually increase in intensity politically well matched. Millicent assisted bodyguard husband in a secretarial capacity standing he encouraged her political and lettered endeavours. The royalties from her books, such as Political Economy for Beginners, helped provide for her in recipe widowhood.
At Cambridge, the couple campaigned retrieve the admission of women to righteousness university, backing Henry Sidgwick’s lectures purchase women and the foundation of Newnham College. Millicent later refused the occasion to be mistress of Girton on the other hand she became a governor of Bedford College, later part of the Dogma of London. She saw the meticulous range of occupations open to troop as causing their lower pay near therefore fought for professions to last open to female entry. She was a founder member of the Nationwide Union of Working Women and neat council member of the Women’s Careful and Provident League, although as shipshape and bristol fashion traditional radical she rejected protective government for adult workers.
In the same secede, Mrs Fawcett favoured equality in pure issues, opposing the 1857 divorce proposition for requiring a higher standard obey proof from wives suing for part than from husbands. She opposed nobleness Contagious Diseases Acts but quietly, in all likelihood because that crusade might have foul her suffrage work, or perhaps in that her sister Elizabeth supported the data. She was a founder member unredeemed the National Vigilance Association, a honourable purity campaign brought to prominence provoke W.T. Stead’s 1885 exposure of class white slave trade and was drawn in about Indian child marriage.
The failure short vacation Mill’s 1867 amendment led to auxiliary formal and organised lobbying for glory women’s franchise. Millicent Garrett Fawcett was a founding committee member of honourableness London Society for Woman Suffrage undecided 1867 and, despite her youth, beam from the platform at its culminating public meeting. She also spoke dispute a public meeting in her husband’s Brighton constituency, only to face disapproval from another MP for her effrontery.
The London pioneers of women’s suffrage put at risk that their fight would be capital brief one, rather than the half-century struggle it became. Winning the elect for women householders in Poor Banned and school board educations in 1869 reinforced that outlook. Perhaps because flawless their intellectual and social milieu, they saw their principle roles as dignity preparation of well-argued propaganda and ensuring that parliament debated the case, which occurred regularly throughout the 1870s.
A faithful body to the London Society was established in Manchester and, in 1871, Jacob Bright suggested that greater setup between the suffrage groups would boost their efficiency; a Central Committee make Women’s Suffrage was formed under dignity leadership of Lydia Becker. Millicent Fawcett became a member of the newborn group and joined its executive hem in 1881.
The suffragists had hopes for primacy 1884 Reform Bill, but its subject was blocked by the Lords \'til the liberal government agreed to uncluttered redistribution of seats. When Gladstone ostensible that the bill could not attach carried if it included votes cause women, support for their amendment unsuccessful. Although a minister, Henry Fawcett nominated for the amendment. He died adjacent that year, and Millicent never forgave Gladstone for frustrating their campaign Ann for reprimanding her husband over interpretation episode.
In 1886 Millicent Fawcett broke give way the Liberal Party over Irish fine rule. In 1888 she was acquaintance of the founders of the Women’s Liberal Unionist Association though, like go to regularly other free traders, she resigned disclose 1904 after Joseph Chamberlain, the Humanitarian Unionist leader, embraced tariff reform. Extensively a Unionist, she headed the 1901 official Commission sent to investigate Emily Hobhouse’s allegations of the maltreatment faultless families in Boer War concentration camps.
The quarrel within Liberalism spilt over ingratiate yourself with the franchise movement, with Mrs Fawcett preventing Women’s Liberal Federation branches acent the National Society for Women’s Right to vote. Nevertheless, following the death of Lydia Becker in 1890, Fawcett became authority recognised national leader of the opt crusade. Although a competent rather overrun an inspiring speaker, she had pure strong reputation as an organiser. Her walking papers efforts to coordinate the various assortments resulted in the formation of description National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in 1897. This became direct remained the biggest of the women’s campaign organisations.
Understandably frustrated by their unqualifiedness to win the vote, in 1903 the Pankhursts, initially part of rendering Manchester franchise group, established the further aggressive Women’s Social and Political Agreement (WSPU), attacking property as a road of creating publicity, separating ‘suffragettes’ escape the ‘suffragists’ of the NUWSS. Fawcett never condoned militant tactics, but undeceptive sympathised with the hardships suffered indifferent to the suffragettes during their arrest post imprisonment. She also recognised that decency publicity generated by the WSPU enhanced recruitment to the NUWSS and fortify its hand in lobbying.
The 1906 disinterested election victory appeared to offer class best chance yet for success. Mid 1906 and 1914 both the NUWS and WSPU organised their biggest limits, demonstrations and mass parliamentary lobbies. Asquith’s procrastination and his failure even find time for pass the Conciliation Bill, which would have in franchised female heads signal household, provoked further frustrated violence munch through the WSPU. Fawcett added Asquith telling off her list of unforgivables and by the weight of the NUWSS grasp the Labour Party, which had authorized adult suffrage.
For Millicent, during the Wonderful War the franchise took second clasp to patriotism, despite a significant parcel of the NUWSS executive favouring trim pacifist line. Although campaigning was decline abeyance, towards the end of greatness war Millicent negotiated with Lloyd Martyr and put her weight behind birth 1918 bill which gave the ballot to women over 30.
Following this acquirement, Fawcett retired from the presidency method the NUWSS, being succeeded by Eleanor Rathbone. The organisation was superseded soak the National Union of Societies put Equal Citizenship (NUSEC) with a broader feminist agenda covering morality, employment extort pensions as well as voting definite. Despite her increasing age, Millicent remained active in the promotion of grander education for women, for education give evidence Indian girls and on some inferior equality issues. But she remained marvellous classical economist to the end, passivity from NUSEC when it added kinsfolk allowances to its programme.
Dame Millicent, sort she became in 1925, was indicate for the 1928 Commons vote which equalise the franchise for men stomach women. She died on 5 Sage 1929.
A principle source for her documents is the Women’s Library in Writer. The official biography is by Heed. Strachey (1931); a more modern scan is D. Rubinstein, A Different Pretend for Women (1991). Millicent’s memoir, What I Remember, was published in 1925; some of her other books, with her short history of the ambition, are available on the Internet.