Emmeline Pankhurst and her husband Richard Pankhurst believed that women should have the same rights as men. In 1889, Emmeline founded the Women’s Franchise League, which fought to allow married women to vote in local elections. In October 1903, she helped found the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union or WSPU. Emmeline’s daughters Christabel and Sylvia were both active in the cause. British politicians, the press and the public were astonished by the demonstrations, window smashing, arson and hunger strikes of suffragettes, as the women who fought for their rights were called. Like many suffragettes, Emmeline was arrested on numerous occasions over the next few years, and went on hunger strike herself, resulting in violent force-feeding.
When World War I broke out in 1914, Emmeline turned her energies to supporting the war effort. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act gave voting rights to women over 30. After the war, Emmeline was chosen as the Conservative candidate for an East London seat, but her health failed before she could be elected. She died on 14th June in London, a few weeks after the Representation of the People Act establishing voting equality for men and women was passed. Emmeline Pankhurst was born a Victorian Englishwoman, but she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back.