Votes for Women

When, as a researcher, I was asked to take part in the Historical Association’s Suffrage Resources project and to populate the database for it, I jumped at the chance. Who wouldn’t? It offered the opportunity to delve into the archives, reaching back in time to the symbolic beginnings of the organised women’s suffrage movement in 1866, when almost 1,500 women signed a petition for female suffrage, presented to Parliament by Liberal MP John Stuart Mill, and to work on government records listing suffragettes arrested between 1906 and 1914, over 40 years later. In this workshop I’d like to share that research journey with you, navigating through some of the difficulties and discoveries, realities and diversities of suffrage lives featured in the database, and often ‘hidden’ from popular suffrage histories.

This lecture took place at the Historical Association Annual Conference in May 2019.