Millicent Fawcett’s story lacks the drama of Emmeline Pankhurst’s. When news reached them of the assassination of one of their heroes, the American President Abraham Lincoln, Milly remarked that the death was a greater loss than the demise of any crowned head in Europe, a sentiment that caused Henry to fall instantly in love. To her, the peaceful methods of the NUWSS were complacent. How did they get the message across Wrote thousands of letter to MP's, organised rallies and march… Millicent led the faction opposed to change. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first female British doctor, was an elder siste… Throughout World War I she dedicated her organization to “sustaining the vital forces of the nation.” After the war she was made a Dame of the British Empire. Soon Millicent feared that their violence would alienate many potential supporters and would provide the government with the ideal excuse not to grant the suffrage to women, whom they could now so easily brand as wild and irresponsible – and therefore unfit to vote. Millicent Fawcett Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, GBE(11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English suffragist (one who campaigned for women to have the vote) and an early feminist. The family would live at Snape during the winter and at Aldeburgh in the summer. (Ten years afterward, British women received the vote on a basis of full equality with men.) She was a fierce opponent of Gladstone and after the 1886 Liberal split over Home Rule for Ireland she became a Liberal Unionist and therefore did not want to make common cause with women’s bodies like the Women’s Liberal Federation. Her father was part of the Garrett family of Leiston who ran a successful engineering business. This included some working class men. Millicent was a leading suffragist who played a great role in gaining women the vote and she was a campaigner for equal rights for women and she led the biggest suffrage organisation, the non-violent National Union of Women’s Suffragist Societies (NUWSS). This included helping Josephine Butler in her campaign against the white slave traffic. Since women as well as men had to pay taxes, women should have a say in how those taxes were spent. Millicent believed in ‘a grand freemasonry between different classes of women’ and the NUWSS often employed working-class speakers. But in the words of Melanie Phillips, she was ‘a class act’, not an inspiring orator perhaps but always a composed and persuasive one. A year later their only child, Philippa, was born. She also co-founded the Newnham College, a women’s-only college in Cambridge University. But she did not play second fiddle. Welcome to Millicent Fawcett’s Biography! As a suffragist Millicent Fawcett was a constitutional campaigner for the vote. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Meet extraordinary women who dared to bring gender equality and other issues to the forefront. Henry Fawcett fully sympathised with his wife’s views on the suffrage and was in favour of an amendment tabled by William Woodall to the 1884 Reform Bill which would have enfranchised around 100,000 wealthy women. In the case of Millicent, it was a combination of things. She knew that men had received the vote in stages, and that indeed many men still could not vote. Her arguments in favour of votes for women were really quite simple. Millicent Garrett Fawcett was a leading suffragist and played a huge role in securing the vote for women in 1918. Unlike the Pankhursts, Milicent Fawcett's NUWSS did not cease their activities at the outbreak of war. Inevitably the cause of female suffrage was enhanced, for no woman had ever been given such an important role in wartime. She did not call for universal suffrage for women, since the government would find it much less easy to veto a more limited franchise. She was born Millicent Garrettin Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Yet the Third Reform Act of 1884, which enfranchised agricultural labourers, did not give the vote to a single woman. The evidence was stacking up that women should be allowed to vote, and the size of the NUWSS was growing. The Suffragettes used more militant tactics. She was fortunate that her father was a wealthy merchant and shipowner, and fortunate that her parents were remarkably free of the dominant ideology of male supremacy which saw the feminine as the second-best. Churchill claimed an inevitable place in the 1970s, and then Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. The first Liberal, Lloyd George, only got a plinth in 2007. Millicent Fawcett began campaigning for women’s equality in 1866, and was instrumental in achieving first votes for women in 1918. Fawcett admired the Suffragettes but did not believe in civil disobedience. For over 20 years, she led the country’s largest suffrage organisation, the NUWSS, playing a key role in the successful campaign that led to women’s universal suffrage in 1928. The family would live at Snape during the winter and at Aldeburgh in the summer. Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, née Garrett, (born June 11, 1847, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Eng.—died Aug. 5, 1929, London), leader for 50 years of the movement for woman suffrage in England. The claim of women to representation depends to a large extent on those differences. She was deeply offended by the Edwardian advocates of free love. 1897 diffeent groups came together under Millicent Fawcett. Millicent Fawcett and her peaceful ‘suffragist’ movement marched, held public rallies and did much of the dull but important letter-writing, signature-gathering and committee-organising needed to garner public support. ‘If Mr Asquith desired to revive a violent outbreak of militancy,’ noted Mrs Fawcett, ‘he could not have … done more to promote his end.’ Her own patience was running thin; that of some women had worn out altogether several years earlier, when the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) had been founded. She did not stop lecturing for long over the next 60 years.She expressed her new purpose most simply in a speech she made in Birmingham’ Town Hall in 1872: To promote the improvement of the condition of women is a great and noble cause to devote one’s life to. Plus she believed what the British press were saying about the camps. Approximately 58% of the adult male population was able to vote by 1900. Unlike the Pankhursts, Milicent Fawcett's NUWSS did not cease their activities at the outbreak of war. Certainly a growing number of MPs believed that women, or at least some women, should be allowed to vote. Many women who were denied the right to vote were in similar circumstances to these men, being rate-payers and subject to the same laws of the land. Finally, in 1897, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) was inaugurated, a landmark in the history of the suffrage movement in Britain. Women bring something to the service of the state different from that which can be brought by men.’ The end result of extending the franchise would be an elevation of the tone of public life. A breakthrough seemed to have been made in December 1911, but at the last minute Prime Minister Asquith broke his promise and denied women the vote. She campaigned in favour of the enactment of the Married Women’s Property Bill and in favour of the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Two months later she attended the first meeting of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage and joined its executive committee. Newson had acquired his own wealth as a merchant, owning a small fleet of trading ships. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Above all, she had the cause of women to promote. Admittedly she seems today a somewhat remote figure. © Copyright 2021 History Today Ltd. Company no. The Fawcett Society is: “The UK’s leading charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights. Fawcett was also an author. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Millicent-Fawcett, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Millicent Garrett Fawcett - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. She also published a textbook, Political Economy for Beginners, which went into ten editions and several languages, and also two novels. Below are my three blog posts. From left to right, Lady Frances Balfour (1858 - 1931), Millicent Fawcett (1847 - 1929), Ethel Snowden (1880 - 1951), Emily Davies (1830 - 1921) and Sophie Bryant (1850 - … The groups united under the leadership of Millicent Fawcett, who was the president of the society for more than twenty years. The Fawcett Society's story begins with Millicent Fawcett, a suffragist and women's rights campaigner who made it her lifetime’s work to secure women the right to vote. She had no wish to attack men, either physically or intellectually. She regularly contributed to the journals of the day and also produced several biographies. Newson had acquired his own wealth as a merchant, owning a small fleet of trading ships. The organisation was democratic and non-militant, aiming to achieve women's suffrage through peaceful and legal means, in particular by introducing Parliamentary Bills and holding meetings to explain and promote their aims. Above all, she insisted that the tactics of the NUWSS should be law-abiding and constitutional. Millicent Garrett Fawcett was a leading suffragist and played a huge role in securing the vote for women in 1918. There was a growing sense … Nor should it be thought that Mrs Pankhurst immediately initiated violent tactics: often she merely accepted what her followers began. Millicent Fawcett was an important character in the fight to win women the right to vote for who represented them in Parliament. A breakthrough came in 1893. In 1868 Millicent joined the London Suffrage Committee, and in 1869 she spoke at the first public pro-suffrage meeting to … She was impressed by Mills practical support for women’s rights on the basis of utilitarianism – rather than abstract principles. She was the daughter of Louisa Dunnell and Newson Garrett. In this regard she advocated a moderate approach, rejecting entirely the violent and confrontational methods of Emmeline Pankhurst and her followers, by then beginning to agitate forcefully. Many men were won over by its arguments, and she welcomed their support. In the summer of 1913, now aged 66, she took an active part in a mass demonstration which Asquith praised because it was law-abiding. The thrust of Millicent Fawcett’s advocacy was education for girls. He died quite suddenly in November 1884, leaving Millicent a widow of 34. These were simple arguments, and to her mind irrefutable. In March 1919 Millicent Fawcett, aged almost 72, retired from the presidency of the NUWSS, which now became the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, giving way to the much younger Eleanor Rathbone. With theft myself ’, or so its opponents dubbed it months later she attended the first woman ever be. 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