‘Raided!!’ London headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union
The headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant strand of the women’s suffrage movement, were constantly vulnerable to police raids. As militancy in the movement...
View ArticleAlice Hawkins, suffragette and working woman
Today marks 90 years since the passing of the 1928 Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act, which finally allowed men and women to vote on equal terms. It came ten years after the 1918 act...
View ArticleSuffragette outrage and prayers at St Paul’s
Westminster Abbey. St Martin in the Fields. St George’s Hanover Square. St John the Evangelist, John Smith Square. Spurgeon’s Tabernacle. These and other church buildings were among those targeted by...
View ArticleThe 1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage: peaceful protest and local disorder
On 26 July 1913 – in a year more often associated with Suffragette militancy and the death of Emily Wilding Davison – 50,000 suffragists and supporters of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage...
View ArticleWomen’s place in Parliament
Women’s participation in politics has been a hot topic this year: organisations across the country have marked the centenary of the Representation of the People Act which enfranchised significantly...
View ArticleBook-women after the Great Fire of London
The disaster of the Great Fire of London was keenly felt by those who had lost everything to the blaze in early September 1666. Among them were the women who worked the capital’s streets distributing...
View ArticleThe ‘Victory’ election: the 1918 General Election
At The National Archives we have been proud to put women at the centre of much of our programming this year. But the commemorations are not over yet! It’s 100 years since the 1918 General Election: the...
View Article‘Plucky Pioneers’: the 1918 General Election
On December 6 1918 the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) publication ‘The Common Cause’ declared: The good feminist should now be trying to get good feminists returned to Parliament....
View ArticleLGBTQ+ history: Maud Allan and ‘unnatural practices among women’
It is safe to say that no lawsuit of modern times has attracted such universal and painful interest. Maud Allan was a much-celebrated dancer on the West End stage in the early 20th century. She...
View ArticleMistaken identity: Elizabeth Burley and the Contagious Diseases Acts
Let those who have never seen a ship of war, picture to themselves a very large and very low room with 500 men and probably 300 or 400 women of the vilest description shut up in it, and giving way to...
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