Emmeline Pankhurst
(1858-1928), Suffragette leaderSitter in 17 portraits
Leader of the militant wing of the suffragists' movement for the enfranchisement of women, Emmeline founded the Women's Social and Political Union with her eldest daughter Christabel in 1903. Another daughter, Sylvia, designed the members' card and painted the 'Votes for Women' banners. All of them were imprisoned in Holloway Prison on numerous occasions between 1908 and 1913, and released after hunger strikes. During the war Emmeline and Christabel observed the militants' truce. Partial enfranchisement came in 1918 to men aged twenty-one and women over the age of thirty, after a war that had relied on women to fill the place of men at work. Universal suffrage had to wait another decade.
More on Emmeline Pankhurst: The Icons trail: discover the people who shaped the 20th Century
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