page_title: Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
section_title: Timeline
hierarchical_section_title: Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom / Timeline
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Eine Frauenrechtlerin wird verhaftet auf der Straße von zwei Polizeibeamten in London in 1914English: A suffragette arrested in the street by two police officers in London in 1914. The Daily Mirror identifies this as the arrest of Dora Thewlis in March 1907 (see File:1907 arrest of Dora Thewlis.jpg), but it doesn't look like the same woman or the same clothing. The Mirror image and this show that it took place outside Buckingham Palace, so it was probably part of this. Also see "Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: Buckingham Palace, 21 May 1914".
context_page_description: Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom was a movement to fight for women's right to vote. It finally succeeded through two laws in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union.
  The outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914 led to a suspension of party politics, including the militant suffragette campaigns. Lobbying did take place quietly.
context_section_description: 1818: Jeremy Bentham advocates female suffrage in his book A Plan for Parliamentary Reform. The Vestries Act 1818 allowed some single women to vote in parish vestry elections
  1832: Great Reform Act – confirmed the exclusion of women from the electorate.
  1851: The Sheffield Female Political Association is founded and submits a petition calling for women's suffrage to the House of Lords.
  1864: The first Contagious Disease Act is passed in England, which is intended to control venereal disease by having prostitutes and women believed to be prostitutes locked away in hospitals for examination and treatment. When information broke to the general public about the shocking stories of brutality and vice in these hospitals, Josephine Butler launched a campaign to get it repealed. Many have since argued that Butler's campaign destroyed the conspiracy of silence around sexuality and forced women to act in protection of others of their sex. In doing so, clear linkages emerge between the suffrage movement and Butler's campaign.
  1865: John Stuart Mill elected as an MP showing direct support for women's suffrage.
  1867: Second Reform Act – Male franchise extended to 2.5 million
  1869: Municipal Franchise Act gives single women ratepayers the right to vote in local elections.
  1883: Conservative Primrose League formed.
  1884: Third Reform Act – Male electorate doubled to 5 million
  1889: Women's Franchise League established.
  1894: Local Government Act (women who owned property could vote in local elections, become Poor Law Guardians, act on School Boards)
  1894: The publication of C.C. Stopes's British Freewomen, staple reading for the suffrage movement for decades.
  1897: National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies NUWSS formed (led by Millicent Fawcett).
  1903: Women's Social and Political Union WSPU is formed (led by Emmeline Pankhurst)
  1904: Militancy begins. Emmeline Pankhurst interrupts a Liberal Party meeting.
  February 1907: NUWSS "Mud March" – largest open air demonstration ever held (at that point) – over 3000 women took part. In this year, women were admitted to the register to vote in and stand for election to principal local authorities.
  1907: The Artists' Suffrage League founded
  1907: The Women's Freedom League founded
  1908: in November of this year, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, a member of the small municipal borough of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, was selected as mayor of that town, the first woman to so serve.
  1907, 1912, 1914: major splits in the WSPU
  1905, 1908, 1913: Three phases of WSPU militancy (Civil Disobedience; Destruction of Public Property; Arson/Bombings)
  5 July 1909: Marion Wallace Dunlop went on the first hunger strike – was released after 91 hours of fasting
  1909 The Women's Tax Resistance League founded
  September 1909: Force feeding introduced to hunger strikers in English prisons
  1910: Lady Constance Lytton disguised herself as a working-class seamstress, Jane Wharton, and was arrested and endured force feeding that cut down her life span considerably
  February 1910: Cross-Party Conciliation Committee (54 MPs). Conciliation Bill (that would enfranchise women) passed its 2nd reading by a majority of 109 but H. H. Asquith refused to give it more parliamentary time
  November 1910: Asquith changed the Bill to enfranchise more men instead of women
  18 November 1910: Black Friday
  October 1912: George Lansbury, Labour MP, resigned his seat in support of women's suffrage
  February 1913: David Lloyd George's house blown up by WSPU despite his support for women's suffrage.
  April 1913: Cat and Mouse Act passed, allowing hunger-striking prisoners to be released when their health was threatened and then re-arrested when they had recovered. The first suffragist to be released under this act was Hugh Franklin and the second was his soon-to-be wife Elsie Duval
  4 June 1913: Emily Davison walked in front of, and was subsequently trampled and killed by, the King’s Horse at The Derby.
  13 March 1914: Mary Richardson slashed the Rokeby Venus painted by Diego Velázquez in the National Gallery with an axe, protesting that she was maiming a beautif
caption: A suffragette arrested in the street by two police officers in London in 1914
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