Millicent Fawcett
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Dame Millicent Fawcett DBE (June 11, 1847 – August 5, 1929) was a British suffragist (as opposed to a suffragette, who were usually militantly violent) and an early feminist.
She was born Millicent Garrett in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and in 1867 she married the economist Henry Fawcett, who was a Radical MP for Brighton. As a suffragist, she took a moderate line, but was a tireless campaigner, concentrating much of her energy on the struggle to improve women's opportunities for higher education. In 1871, she co-founded Newnham College, Cambridge. She later became president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS), a position she held from 1897 until 1919.
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[edit] Life
Fawcett came from a liberal family, and along with her sisters was given a good education. When she was twelve, her sister Elizabeth went to study medicine in London, later becoming the first female doctor in Britain. On a visit to her sister in 1865, Millicent met John Stuart Mill, the noted philosopher of liberalism concerned with women's rights and female suffrage. He in turn introduced her to the man who would become her husband, the Liberal MP Henry Fawcett.
Fawcett was blind, and as a result Millicent acted as his secretary, often sitting in on meetings in order to transcribe them for him. As a result, she gained a knowledge of the political world. They had a daughter together, Philippa Fawcett, who was born in 1868. She also worked as a tutor at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution. [1]
From the 1870s, Millicent campaigned for female suffrage, with her husband's backing. In 1884, Henry Fawcett died, and Millicent began to concentrate on politics. After the death of Lydia Becker, she became the leader of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the main suffragist organisation in Britain. She held this post until 1919, a year after the first women had been granted the vote. After that, she left the suffrage campaign for the most part, and devoted much of her time to writing books, including a biography of Josephine Butler.
She was knighted in 1924, and died five years later, in 1929. Her memory is preserved now in the name of the Fawcett Society, and in Millicent Fawcett Hall, constructed in 1929 in Westminster as a place that women could use to debate and discuss the issues that affected them. The hall is currently owned by Westminster School and is the location of its drama department, incorporating a 150-seat studio theatre.
[edit] Political Activities
Fawcett was a moderate campaigner, distancing herself from the militant and violent activities of the Pankhursts and the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She believed that their actions were in fact harming women's chances of gaining the vote, as they were alienating the MPs who were debating whether or not to give women the vote, as well as souring much of the general public towards the campaign. When Emily Wilding Davison, for example, threw herself in front of the King's horse at the 1913 Derby, while hospitalized she had to be protected from a large group of people who wanted to lynch her for her actions.
Fawcett also campaigned for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which reflected sexual double standards. The Acts required that prostitutes be examined for sexually transmitted diseases, and if they were found to have passed any on to their customers, they were imprisoned. Poor women could be arrested, and could also be imprisoned for refusing consent to the examination, which was invasive and could be painful. The prostitutes' infectious male customers were not subject to the Acts. The Acts were eventually repealed as a result of Fawcett's and others' campaigning.
When the First World War broke out, while the WSPU ceased all of their activities to focus on the war effort, Fawcett's NUWSS did not. This was largely because as the organisation was significantly less militant than the WSPU, it contained many more pacifists, and general support for the war within the organisation was weaker -- the WSPU, in comparison, was called jingoistic as a result of its leaders' strong support for the war. While Fawcett was not a pacifist, she risked dividing the organisation if she ordered a halt to the campaign, and the diverting of NUWSS funds to the government, as the WSPU had done. The NUWSS continued to campaign for the vote during the war, and used the situation to their advantage by pointing out the contribution women had made to the war effort in their campaigns.
Fawcett is considered instrumental in women gaining the vote in 1918.
[edit] Works
- 1870: Political Economy for Beginners
- 1872: Essays and Lectures, with her husband
- 1875: Tales in Political Economy
- 1875: Janet Doncaster, a novel
- 1895: Life of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria
- 1906: Five Famous French Women
- 1912: Women's Suffrage
- 1920: The Women's Victory
- 1924: What I Remember (Pioneers of the Woman's Movement).; ISBN 0-88355-261-2
- 1927: Josephine Butler
- Women's Suffrage: a Short History of a Great Movement. ISBN 0-9542632-4-3
[edit] See also
- Mary Wollstonecraft, who published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792
- Josephine Butler and Lydia Becker, early proponents of non-violent methods.
- Emmeline Pankhurst, a proponent of militancy.
- Charlotte Despard and Sylvia Pankhurst, leaders of movements midway between the NUWSS and the WSPU in militancy.
- History of feminism
[edit] References
- ^ (2002) Birkbeck, University of London Continuing Education Courses 2002 Entry. Birkbeck External Relations Department, 5.
