Why was millicent fawcett so important

She was the eighth of eleven children, only four of whom survived infancy. Like her older sisters Louisa, Elizabeth and Agnes, Millicent went to boarding school in Blackheath, London from the age of 11 to 15 years. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. She opened her own medical practice a year later and then a surgery for women and children in a poor area of London.

Elizabeth married in and became Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. She continued working while having three children and set up a training hospital for women doctors in Louisa and Elizabeth were involved in a group that organised a petition for votes for women in The petition in is largely credited with being the first organised campaign for votes for women in England.

Women at the time had few rights. He added: "Londoners are going to love it. They will be blown away. Click next arrow to proceed. Westminster Council has not ruled out a statue of Ms Pankhurst in the square at some stage - provided campaigners move an existing statue of the suffragette leader that stands in nearby Victoria Gardens first.

There have also been calls for a statue of Britain's first woman prime minister, Lady Thatcher, in the square, but the plan was rejected by Westminster Council. Parliament Square statue of woman backed. First woman statue in Parliament Square. Image source, Getty Images. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Plaque unveiled for suffragist Fawcett Suffragists or suffragettes - who won women the vote?

Suffragette tributes shared online Reality Check: Where are all the statues of women? Image source, Reuters. Labour's leader and deputy leader were among politicians at the official unveiling. Members of the public also attended the ceremony. Who was Millicent Fawcett? Caroline Criado-Perez: 'If she were a man she'd have hundreds of statues'. Born in , she was a pioneering feminist, intellectual and union leader who campaigned for women's right to vote She was a suffragist - not a suffragette She shared the same aims as the suffragettes - the more radical group led by Emmeline Pankhurst - but favoured non-violent protest In she formed the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies She also played a key role in the founding of Newnham College, the second Cambridge university college to admit women In , she led an all-female investigation into the appalling conditions in British concentration camps in South Africa, during the Boer War Dame Millicent died in , a year after women were granted the vote on equal terms to men.

The Suffragists — were first to organise, forming local societies in the s. The Suffragettes — were active for just 10 years after splitting from the Suffragists in Suffragists — focused on middle-class women. As a result, Fawcett is a half-forgotten giant of British reform. Millicent Garrett was born at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, in England, on June 11, , one of the younger children in a large, middle-class family.

She had a close relationship with her admiring and independent-minded father, but she rejected her mother's rigidly evangelical religion. Although Milly, as she was known to family and friends, obtained very little formal schooling, she benefited from a supportive family that expected much of her. Her older sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson set an example by becoming Britain's second woman physician. In , the year-old Millicent Garrett married Henry Fawcett who had previously proposed to her sister Elizabeth and to the prominent feminist, Bessie Rayner Parkes.

Already committed before her marriage to liberal principles in politics and economics, Millicent Garrett Fawcett fully shared the interests and convictions of her husband and served for several years as his secretary. A Liberal Party member of the House of Commons, he had been blinded in a shooting accident ten years earlier. As she read what he had to read and wrote what he had to write, she acquired a political education, along with one in economics, the subject which he taught at Cambridge University.

She also learned from her husband's friends, including John Stuart Mill, the most influential liberal thinker in mid-Victorian Britain. As a young woman, Fawcett pursued many interests.

Along with a novel, she wrote two books on economics, one in collaboration with her husband; worked to promote higher education for women, particularly Newnham College at Cambridge where her daughter eventually studied; and, most important, enlisted in the campaign to provide women with the vote, in her opinion the key to equality between the sexes.

She also joined the first organization advocating votes for women, the London Women's Suffrage Committee. After her husband's sudden death in , leaving her a widow at age 37, she made the cause of women's suffrage her life's work. Following the death of the longtime suffrage leader Lydia Becker in , Fawcett emerged as the most influential figure in Britain's small band of suffragists.

When the organizations united in as the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, she became the first president and served until her retirement in Although most suffragist women supported the Liberal Party, Fawcett broke with the Liberals in out of opposition to Irish Home Rule, a proposal that Ireland enjoy political autonomy but not independence.

She was active in the new breakaway Liberal Unionist Party that cooperated closely with the Conservative Party, but she never put political party over her principles.

For instance, in the mids, she offended many important men in the Conservative-Liberal Unionist alliance when she tried to hound out of politics a Conservative who had seduced a young woman and then failed to marry her. In , her prominence in Liberal Unionist affairs earned her an appointment to head an investigation of conditions at interment camps for Boer civilians during the South African war.

Some old friends accused her of collaborating with brutal imperialism. In , she broke with the Liberal Unionist party because she could not support its leader Joseph Chamberlain in his new policy of tariff reform.

Fawcett remained loyal to the midth-century principles of free trade and laissez-faire. The problems confronting the suffragists were complex. Although some women could vote in local government elections and hold office , none could vote for members of the national legislature.

Influential newspapers scoffed at the notion of women voting in parliamentary elections which might deal with questions leading to war and feared the political role of women i. A majority of the House of Commons, particularly Liberal Party members, probably sympathized with women's suffrage in principle, but this did not mean voting for a bill that would enfranchise women.

Part of the problem was the personal opposition of turn-of-the-century Liberal leaders William Gladstone and Herbert Asquith. Another part of the problem was the absence of universal male suffrage. If the vote went only to those women who met the existing requirements for men, the change would likely benefit the Conservative Party by enfranchising prosperous widows but not married women. Moreover, some politicians tried to entangle the enfranchisement of any women with the more controversial reform of universal male suffrage.

Finally, women's suffrage never became the central question for ordinary voters and politicians in the way that, for instance, Irish Home Rule did. Fawcett struggled to keep her cause alive when prospects for success seemed remote.