Emmeline Pankhurst Essay

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Emmeline Pankhurst, the daughter of Robert Goulden and Sophia Crane, was born in Manchester in 1858. Her father came from a family with radical political beliefs and his father had been at the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. Goulden took part in the campaigns against slavery and the Corn Laws. Emmeline's mother was a passionate feminist and started taking her daughter to women's suffrage meetings in the early 1870s. By the time Emmeline was born, Gouldon was the successful owner of a cotton-printing company at Seedley. Over the next few years Sophia had nine more children. Goulden had conventional ideas about education. Emmeline, who was an extremely intelligent child, later recalled that when she was young she overheard him saying, "What a pity she wasn't born a lad." Robert Goulden was a friend of John Stuart Mill and supported his campaign to get women the vote. These views were communicated to his children and during the 1868 General Election, Emmeline and her younger sister, Mary, took part in a feminist demonstration. According to Martin Pugh, the author of The Pankhursts (2001), she attended her first suffrage meeting in 1872, hosted by veteran campaigner, Lydia Becker. "During the late 1860s Manchester also became the scene of one of the earliest campaigns for women's suffrage, and at fourteen Emmeline returned home from school one day to find her mother preparing to attend a suffrage meeting addressed by Lydia Becker in the city. Jane Pankhurst had no hesitation in agreeing to Emmeline, satchel in hand, accompanying her to hear the arguments." After a short spell at a local school, Emmeline was sent to École Normale Supérieure, a finishing school inParis in 1873. "The school was under the direction of Marchef Girard a woman who believed that girls' education should be quite as thorough as the education of boys. She included chemistry and other sciences in the

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