Violence, arson, assault... and 1,300 arrests
The movement began peacefully when Millicent Fawcett founded the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897, four years after New Zealand became the first country to give women the right to vote.
But followers, including Emmeline Pankhurst, became impatient at its lack of progress, and founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903, with the motto ‘Deeds Not Words’.
The Daily Mail coined the term ‘suffragettes’ to distinguish Pankhurst’s militant followers from Fawcett’s peaceful group.
More than 1,300 women were arrested during their campaign, which included vandalism, arson attacks and assaulting politicians.
Hundreds refused to pay fines, preferring to go to jail to highlight their cause.
In 1909, Marion Wallace Dunlop became the first to go on hunger strike after she was imprisoned for wilful damage. Many other women adopted the tactic.
The government ordered they be force-fed, a brutal practice which involved the woman being held down while a rubber tube was inserted down into her stomach, which often left them with permanent injuries and ill-health.
Music hall star and militant suffragette Kitty Marion was force-fed 242 times during multiple jail terms.
In 1913, Emily Wilding Davison was hailed as a martyr after she died when she threw herself in front of King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby. Historians question whether she meant to die, and suggest that she may have been attempting to attach a ‘Votes For Women’ scarf to the racehorse.
The campaign’s marches drew huge crowds, and one held in 1908 attracted more than 300,000 protesters.
Not all women supported votes for women, and some actively campaigned against it. Queen Victoria had described the idea as ‘a mad, wicked folly’.
In 1918 the law was changed to allow women over 30 to vote, if they owned property or were married to a householder.