Larry Harnisch at the Daily Mirror dug up this gem, a 1909 story from the Los Angeles Times about prominent Chicago-area women’s rights advocates pushing back the time they served Thanksgiving dinner in order to go see the British suffragist Emiline Pankhurst:
“…one of the women voiced the sentiment that ‘every suffragist is a militant suffragist at heart’.” Well, obviously, if you’re willing to postpone Thanksgiving dinner, no matter what this woman says:
Those British suffragists must have been something if stoning legislators was part of the discussion.
Comments 12
Jess — November 25, 2009
The stoning idea doesen't supprise me at all. From what I can gather from the various turn-of-the-century news clippings i go through at work, violence and projectiles were surprisingly not uncommon for very millitant sufragettes. One woman even threw a dead cat at a politician, according to one article. How Pythonesque...
edward — November 25, 2009
The British suffragists were really hardcore for their time, and I'm not surprised about the stoning politicians, either.
Roxsie — November 26, 2009
Edward, there were two main groups in the history of British Women's Suffrage, The militant faction or Suffragettes and the pacifist faction of Suffragists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette
And yes the Suffragettes really were something, in order to fight for middle class white women's right to vote they chained themselves to railings, whipped MP's, went on hunger strike in prison and were force fed (by a hosepipe down the gullet resulting in deaths if it went down the wrong pipe), Emily Wilding Davidson threw herself under the king's horse at a race and was killed. They smashed windows, destroyed property and generally set back the cause of women's suffrage in Britain. Yet today they are celebrated campaigners for women's rights ignoring how limited they wanted the vote to be and that when WWI started they all supported the war effort showing how feeble their commitment to winning votes was.
RedPickle — November 27, 2009
To Roxsie - I think you're being unfair. I don't agree that they set back the cause of suffrage. Before the suffragettes most politicians publicly ridiculed women's suffrage as a ridiculous idea, but during the suffragette campaigns the sentiment became more "well, suffrage is something we'll have to consider, but those women go too far".
Also, Sylvia Pankhurst and her group were among the most militant, but she did not support the war and campaigned hard for working class women to get the vote. Also, after women's universal suffrage came in, she continued on other campaigns, including against racism and British colonialism.
Roxsie — November 29, 2009
Actually if you look at sources from the time it was more a case of "these damn women are too emotional and stupid to vote and there's the proof" it was the Suffragists working through persuasion and conventional channels which led to women getting the vote.
And again it must be remembered that the Suffragettes were for White Middle Class and above votes.
Sylvia Pankhurst was an unusual case and should be treated as such, her correspondence with Lenin was quite interesting.
Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet, plus a #TimesTen Kickstarter status update — November 27, 2013
[…] Oldie but goodie: Suffrage postpones Thanksgiving feast. […]
Thanksgiving! | soanstolaf — December 2, 2014
[…] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/11/25/delay-thanksgiving-dinners-to-see-suffragette/ […]
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