In the mid-1900s, the Women's Social and Political Union, founded by Emmeline Pankhurst the previous year, was intensifying its campaign of public agitation for women's suffrage, moving from polite lobbying toward the direct-action tactics — heckling politicians, chaining themselves to railings, and courting arrest — that would define the movement over the following decade.
Emmeline Pankhurst had grown impatient with decades of failed constitutional appeals for women's suffrage, and in October 1903 she founded the WSPU with the motto "Deeds, not Words." By 1905, her daughter Christabel and fellow activist Annie Kenney had begun the confrontational tactics that would earn WSPU members the nickname "suffragettes" — a term originally coined mockingly by the Daily Mail.
Their escalating civil disobedience — interrupting political meetings, hunger strikes in prison, and eventually property destruction — shocked Edwardian society and split even the suffrage movement itself, with more moderate suffragists favoring peaceful lobbying.
The militant campaign would continue for nearly a decade, marked by imprisonments, forced feedings, and the death of Emily Davison under the king's horse at the 1913 Derby, before British women over 30 finally won the vote in 1918, followed by full equal suffrage in 1928.
Key people: Emmeline Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst