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WOMAN`S SUFFRAGE |
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Emily Davison was born at Blackheath in 1872, the daughter of Charles and Margaret Davison. She studied literature for two years at Holloway College, her widowed mother was unable to continue to pay for the £20 a term fees. She found work as a schoolteacher in Worthing, and raised enough money to continue her education, and graduated from London University. She found a post teaching children of a family in Berkshire. |
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In 1906 she joined the WSPU, in which she became very involved and became one of the chief stewards at a demonstration London, in 1908. She was to be arrested and put in prison for various outrages, and went on hunger strike on two occassions. |
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She was to die in June 1913, when she ran out in front of a horse owned by King George V, the horse hit her and she was to die from a fractured skull, without regaining consciousness. |
Annie Kenney was born in Oldham, Lancashire in 1879, one of eleven children. She was the daughter of Nelson Horatio Kenney and Anne Wood. She had very little education but loved to read. When she was ten she began work in a local cotton mill. She joined the Independent Labour Party. It was at one of these meetings that she heard Christabel Pankhurst speak about women's rights. She then decided to join the Women's Social and Political Union [WSPU] having been so impressed with the speech given by Christabel Pankhurst. |
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Many of the members of the WSPU were from the middle and upper classes, but Annie was not, when they decided to open a branch in the East End of London she was asked to become a full-time worker, and joined Sylvia Pankhurst, gradually persuading working-class women to join the WSPU. |
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Annie and Christabel Pankhurst attended a meeting on 13th October 1905, to hear a speech by Sir Edward Grey, a minister in the Government. During his speech the two women shouted out "Will the Liberal Government give votes to women?". The police were called when they refused to stop shouting, they refused to leave and put up a fight with the policemen. They were appear at court and were found guilty of assault and fined five shillings each. The two women said they would not pay their fine and were sent to prison. This would not be the only time for Annie Kenney. In 1913 she was sentenced to eighteen months in prison, and went on hunger strike. When Christabel Pankhurst went to Paris to avoid arrest in 1912, Annie was put in charge of the WSPU in London. |
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Annie Kenney died in 1953. |
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Richard Pankhurst was born in Stoke in May 1834, he was the son of an auctioneer. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and the University of London. In 1858 he graduated and became qualified as a barrister, he joined the Liberal Party and worked on the campaign for social reform. While a barrister, he became increasingly interested in laws that discriminated against women. He married Emmeline Goulden in 1879, they had five children, including Christabel and Sylvia, who were to help their mother to form the WSPU. |
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Richard Pankhurst died on 5th July, 1898. |
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Sylvia Pankhurst was born in Manchester in 1882 the daughter of Richard and Emmeline Pankhurst. She loved to write and her book "The History of the Women`s Suffrage Movement", was published in 1911. She had helped her mother and sister Christabel to form the WSPU, but was not happy when the WSPU abandoned its earlier commitment to socialism. |
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After the First World War, she lived with Silvo Corio, an Italian socialist, she never married him, as she was opposed to signing a marriage contract or taking a man`s name, but they were to have a son Richard. She moved to Ethiopia after the Second World War, and died in 1960. |
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