Violence in the women’s suffrage movement
Voting as Counter-Revolution – how the politicians who gave us the vote saw things 100 years ago
A hundred years ago, the British ruling class decided to extend the vote to women over thirty and to working class men. By doing this they hoped to restore people's faith in parliamentary government and thereby counter any revolutionary tendencies inspired by the Russian Revolution. As Sylvia Pankhurst said in 1923:
Chiefly a Dialogue. Concerning Some Difficulties of a Dunce.
Chiefly a Dialogue. Concerning Some Difficulties of a Dunce. by Louisa Sarah Bevington, published 1895. Copy from Victorian Women Writers Project.
Little girls
An account written in 1895 by Zo d'Axa of the 1891 trial of two teenage anarchist girls, Maria Roda, 15, and Ernesta Quartirola, accused of encouraging attacks on the police during an anarchist demonstration.