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Why did a campaign for women’s suffrage develop in the years after 1870
The reason women’s suffrage appeared was men were getting the vote and women weren’t, The first person to try and change this was John Stuart Mill an MP for Westminster during the debates of the second reform act.
Not much progress was made, but in 1868 women were given the vote in municipal elections, 1870 women could be voted onto school boards, In 1888 women could vote on county councils and finally in 1907 women had the right to be voted into local offices themselves. Women’s rights changed dramatically over 40 years yet they were still not allowed to vote for MP’s.
At that period in time many people believed all classes of men should have the right to vote before women got the vote. So the Great Reform act of 1832 entitled 500,000 more men. Middle class men and landowners could vote, 1/5 of the population. The second reform act 1867 gave the vote to 2.5million men they had to be householders and not rent one. Finally in 1864 the third reform act allowed an estimated 5 million men to vote (2/3 male pop), the ‘working class’ man could now vote. Now very few men could vote they were criminals, servants who lived with their masters and the mentally disturbed. Women were still not given the vote after all of these reform acts, this made the female population angry.
Developments of organisations for women suffrage began to creep up everywhere (1867 J.S Mill), places such as London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Bristol all had suffrage societies and in 1872 merged into the National Society For Women’s Suffrage, they organised speakers at rallies, and between 1870 and 1884 nine bills were sent to parliament, none made any difference. At this period in time there were many educated women around who were interested in their rights. There had been many protests throughout the century, non-conformists, Quakers, Unitarians. So many campaigners for women’s rights came from rebellious backgrounds; also many came from radical political backgrounds especially liberals.
J.S Mill wrote a book called ‘The subjection of women’ (1869) it raised many political questions such as can men really look after the interests of women and if there are no women in parliament they have no affective defence of their interests.
Women had achieved a number of things such as rights to vote in local politics education and in professions (Elizabeth Garnet Anderson first female doctor) women had a positive affect on all these subjects what’s to say they couldn’t do the same if they got the vote nationally.
Women had made some progress on some singular campaigns such as 1850’s divorce law reform and protests against violence against women in marriages. When campaigning, the suffragettes had gained many other things for women by the following, 1847 factory act (not to work more than 10hrs a day), the married women’s property act(allowed to keep £200 of their earnings), Newnham and Cambridge college were founded and admitted women, many other acts were past to improve the lives of women but [next page]