One of the most important and far-reaching campaigns in the later part of the 19th century was also one of the most unexpected: the agitation against the Contagious Diseases Acts which dramatically minism
exposed the cruel hypocrisies of the double sexual standard. The Fe
first of the Acts had been passed in 1864; in certain ports and garrison towns, police were given the authority to arrest any woman who was merely suspected of being a prostitute, subject her, sometimes brutally, to an internal examination, and if there were any signs of venereal disease, to confine her to hospital. There were extensions to the Act in 1866 and 1869. Women soon began protesting; they included Elizabeth Garrett, Florence Nightingale, and Harriet Martineau, who argued that ‘the regulation system creates horrors worse than those which it is supposed to restrain’.
By 1869, a Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts had been set up, a number of eminently respectable women forming the first real, and effective, pressure group. In the first instance, their campaign launched an attack on specific laws that bore very brutally on prostitutes or suspected prostitutes; but they soon extended the argument to dramatize the workings of the double sexual standard, with its disastrous effects 64
on both men and women all through society. Josephine Butler soon became the group’s leader. The well-educated daughter of a Liberal family, she was beautiful, devout, and eminently respectable – hence a superbly effective propagandist for what many people regarded as a highly unrespectable cause. She had already begun working with prostitutes when, after the tragic death of their only daughter, she and her husband moved to Liverpool. ‘I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own’, she remarked. She took some unhappy ‘fallen’ girls into her own home, and raised money to establish a small ‘House of Rest’ that would care ‘for dying Magdalenes’.
Th
e lat
Butler had already displayed a keen interest in the problems facing e 19th centur
women. A pamphlet on The Education and Employment of Women, published in 1868, made the argument, familiar by then, for better education, and also – given the number of unmarried women in England – for adequate training to enable them to support y: ca
themselves. In 1869, she and other sympathetic women formed a mpaignin
Ladies National Association; Butler made a superbly effective figurehead and leader. Her speeches and writings effectively g w
combine cool, clear argument with passionate feeling. In a om
pamphlet written in 1871, and based on her own experience with en
prostitutes, Butler argued that the Contagious Diseases Acts amounted to a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. They ‘virtually introduce a species of villeinage or slavery. I use the word not sentimentally but in the strictest legal sense.’ The issue, and her protest, kindled the imagination and feelings of women all through the country. In an 1870 letter to the Prime Minister, a member of the Ladies National Association had insisted that there is not one of the mothers, wives, sisters, or daughters whom you cherish with proud affection who dare safely assert that, had she been born in the same unprotected, unfenced position, in the very jaws of poverty and vice . . . she, too, in the innocent ignorance of her unfledged girlhood, might not have slipped, like them, into that 65
awful gulf from which society at large has long done its best to make escape hopeless.
Josephine Butler and her rapidly growing band of highly respectable supporters soon became a remarkably effective pressure group; their campaign exposed, dramatically, a brutal double sexual standard that long custom had made virtually invisible. And, crucially, they argued it was a double standard that oppressed, not just prostitutes, but most women, in all kinds of subtle ways, that spread through almost every aspect of their everyday domestic and working lives. Later, giving evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee, Butler pointed out the indirect but disastrous effects of the Act on men as well as women. When she had visited Chatham, ‘I saw there evidence of the degradation of the young soldiers who first join the army . . . There were boys who appeared to be not more than thirteen . . . it was as solemn as hell itself.’ The real villains, the real exploiters, were in her view the pimps, the people who made money by ‘setting up a house in which minism
women are sold to men’.
Fe
In the 1880s, Annie Besant tackled a different, and perhaps even more urgent, form of exploitation. Discovering the truly terrible conditions in which women worked at the Bryant and May match-making factory in East London, she sent a deeply, and effectively, emotional letter to the many shareholders who happened to be clergymen:
let there rise before you the pale worn face of another man’s daughter . . . as she pulls off her battered hat and shows a head robbed of its hair by the constant rubbing of the carried boxes, robbed thereof that your dividends might be larger, Sir Cleric . . . I hold you up to the public opprobrium you deserve . . .
Her charges were widely publicized, and aroused great public concern. The match girls led sizeable protest marches in London, and were eventually allowed to form their own union.
66
Progress on all these issues facing women was now underway. But women – as well as a few male champions like Thompson and Mill
– had been arguing for votes for women all through the century; in its closing decades, the demand would become urgent, and suffragists – and later, militant suffragettes – would take centre stage.
Th
e lat
e 19th centur
y: campaignin
g w
omen
67
Chapter 6
Fighting for the vote:
suffragists
In the course of the 19th century, the vote gradually became central to feminist demands. It was seen as important both symbolically (as a recognition of women’s rights to full citizenship) and practically (as a necessary way of furthering reforms and making practical changes in women’s lives). But winning the vote proved a complicated struggle, and one that lasted for decades. The determination and the persistence with which women argued, and increasingly demonstrated, for the right to vote makes an inspiriting story; all the more so given the equal determination, and at times the virulence, with which their claims were opposed. And opposed, often, by women as well as men.
There had been some early demands for women’s suffrage: William Thompson, influenced by Anna Wheeler, had eloquently made the case for their representation as early as 1825. Marion Reid, writing in 1843, dismissed current clichés about woman’s proper ‘sphere’, as well as the notion that woman’s supposed influence over man gave her everything she needed. She went on to stress the importance, not just of the vote, but of even a token presence in parliament.
Perhaps ‘a few women among the constituents of members of parliament’ might induce that body ‘to pay some little attention on the interests of women’. In 1847, an elderly Quaker, Anne Knight, issued a pamphlet arguing for women’s right to be represented.
Harriet Taylor, who became John Stuart Mill’s wife, argued for ‘The 68
Enfranchisement of Women’ in the Westminster Review in 1851; while in 1869, Mill himself made the case eloquently and at some length in The Subjection of Women. Women, he conceded, are not likely to differ from men of the same class; but ‘if the question be one in which the interests of women as such are in some way involved’, then they ‘require the suffrage, as their guarantee of just and equal consideration’.
There was, of course, nothing like complete male suffrage at this period. Even as late as the 1870s, only about one-third of adult men could vote, and though the Reform Act of 1884 increased that number, still only somewhere between 63% and 68% of men were enfranchised. But, ironically, the legal position of women had actually worsened with the Reform Act of 1832, which specifically Fightin
excluded women by substituting ‘mal
e person’ for the more inclusive and general word ‘man’, which, it could be argued, might g for th
be interpreted as meaning ‘human being’. In the same year, a radical known as ‘Orator’ Hunt was asked to present parliament with a e v
o
petition (which had been drawn up by a wealthy Yorkshire spinster te: su
called Mary Smith) arguing that ‘every unmarried female ffr
a
possessing the necessary pecuniary qualifications’ should be gists
allowed to vote. The petitioner, Hunt pointed out, paid taxes like any man; moreover, since women could be punished at law, they should be given a voice in the making of laws, as well as the right to serve on juries.
But the struggle for the vote was only beginning, and it was never straightforward. There were divisions between those arguing for adult suffrage, and those who wanted to campaign simply on behalf of women. And amongst the latter, there was disagreement about which women should be enfranchised. Many early demands for women’s suffrage concentrated on spinsters; Frances Power Cobbe, for example, argued the case for women property owners and taxpayers. These limited demands were partly a matter of tactics (if some women won the vote, it would at least set a precedent, which might later be more easily extended), but it was often assumed, 69
dismissively, that a wife’s interests were identical with her husband’s, and that giving her a vote would simply mean handing a second one to the man of the household. Some women believed that the passing of a married women’s property act would prove more immediately useful to them than the vote. On the other hand, Mrs Humphrey Ward expressed her anxiety that, if spinsters were allowed to vote, it would mean that ‘large numbers of women leading immoral lives will be enfranchised, while married women, who, as a rule have passed through more of the practical experiences of life than the unmarried would be excluded’. One member of parliament remarked sarcastically that if spinsters were enfranchised, it would be rewarding ‘that portion of the other sex which for some cause had failed to be womanly’. Other opponents of female suffrage argued that only a man might be called upon to fight for his country, and that ‘gives him a claim of some sort to have a voice in the conduct of its affairs’.
The debate offers some odd and revealing glimpses into attitudes minism
towards women. Thus in 1871, the political philosopher Thomas Fe
Carlyle remarked that
the true destiny of a woman . . . is to wed a man she can love and esteem and to lead noiselessly, under his protection, with all the wisdom, grace and heroism that is in her, the life presented in consequence.
And a great many women, as well, accepted the notion that by nature and God’s decree, women were different to men. God meant them to be wives and mothers; if they deserted their proper sphere, it would lead to ‘a puny, enfeebled and sickly race’.
Progress, perhaps inevitably, proved very slow. Indeed, very many prominent women dismissed the vote as relatively unimportant, insisting, sometimes a shade disingenuously, that they, personally, had never suffered any disabilities from its lack. Florence Nightingale announced in 1867 that ‘in the years that I have passed 70
in Government offices, I have never felt the want of a vote’, and though she later conceded its importance, she always felt there were other more urgent problems facing women. The successful writer and journalist Harriet Martineau insisted that ‘the best friends of the cause are the happy wives and the busy, cheerful satisfied single women . . . whatever a woman proves herself able to do, society will be thankful to see her do’.
Beatrix Potter attributed her own ‘anti-feminism’ to ‘the fact that I had never myself suffered the disabilities assumed to arise from my sex’. The Liberal Violet Markham came up with an evasive paradox: many women are clearly ‘superior to men, and therefore I don’t like to see them trying to become man’s equals’. By 1889, the popular novelist and journalist Mrs Humphrey Ward was claiming that ‘the Fightin emancipating process has now reached the limits fixed by the physical constitution of women’. Queen Victoria was sometimes g for th
hailed by suffragists as an example of what a woman was capable of; Barbara Leigh Smith, for example, pointed out that ‘our gracious e v
o
Queen fulfils the very arduous duties of her calling and manages te: su
also to be the mother of many children’. But Victoria notoriously ffr
a
exclaimed in horror against the ‘mad wicked folly of women’s gists
rights’.
The Langham Place circle around Barbara Leigh Smith played an important part in the long struggle for the vote, as in so many other campaigns. Early in 1866, they organized a suffrage petition, with 1,499 signatures, which argued that ‘person’ should be substituted for ‘man’, and that all householders, without distinction of sex, should be enfranchised. Emily Davies, who had worked so effectively for women’s education, formally handed the petition to John Stuart Mill, whose book The Subjection of Women had just been published, and he presented it to parliament in June 1866. It was – as they had expected – defeated, by 194 votes to 73; but even this was welcomed as an encouraging start. Its effectiveness was perhaps confirmed by the number of hostile responses it attracted.
The Spectator, for example, sneered that no more than twenty 71
women in the country were politically capable; women in general made political discussion ‘unreal, tawdry, dressy’.
In October 1866, Leigh Smith and a group of friends met at Elizabeth Garrett’s home in London to form a suffrage committee, which, the following year, became the London Society for Women’s Suffrage. They organized petitions which brought together more than 3,000 signatures. Leigh Smith also produced a pamphlet on
‘Reasons for the Enfranchisement of Women’; several establishment papers, including the Cornhill and the Fortnightly Review, refused to print the argument for women’s votes. Around the same time, a woman called Lydia Becker formed a similar society in Manchester; she had been drawn to the cause after hearing a paper given by Leigh Smith; she formed a local Women’s Suffrage Committee, and in 1870 founded the Women’s Suffrage Journal. Pro-suffrage groups soon followed in Edinburgh, Bristol, and Birmingham; they proved important in keeping the issue alive through the decades ahead, and keeping up pressure minism
on parliament. Public meetings were arranged, particularly in Fe
London and Manchester. Richard Pankhurst, who was involved in the Manchester group, had founded the Englishwoman’s Review in 1866, and this helped publicize the suffragists’ cause.
It was perhaps inevitable that the suffragists were at times plagued by disagreements, particularly about tactics; Barbara Leigh Smith soon withdrew from any formal participation in the London committee – she disagreed with John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, who insisted that it was useful to have men on the committee – though she later served as its nominal secretary. For all his early support, Mill shrank back nervously from later developments and more aggressive tactics; he disapproved, particularly, of the ‘common vulgar motives and tactics’ of some women in Manchester. And the campaign to win the vote was to prove more difficult, and much longer-drawn-out, than its early supporters could have predicted. The issue was debated in 72
parliament (and defeated) year after year, all through the 1870s.
One Tory remarked in 1871 that women – who were sensitive and emotional by nature – should be protected ‘from being forced into the hurly-burly of party politics’. Woman’s proper sphere was the home; her duty – and her deepest pleasure – to be a good wife, or sister, or daughter. Moreover, if women had much influence in parliament, it would lead to ‘hasty alliances with scheming neighbours, more class cries, permissive legislation, domestic perplexities and sentimental grievances’. The largest vote in favour of women’s enfranchisement came in 1873, with 157 men in agreement.
Fightin
Suffrage abroad
g for th<
br />
At the same time, British suffragists (and their opponents) e v
watched developments abroad with interest. One woman ote
remarked that ‘scarcely anything does more good to wom-
: su
ffr
en’s suffrage in England than seeing those who speak from agists
personal experience’. In fact, Antipodean examples seemed particularly encouraging. In New Zealand, women could vote from 1893; in Australia, state after state granted women the vote during the 1890s, until in 1902 women could finally vote in Federal elections. A conservative (male) professor remarked, darkly, in 1904, that ‘I think Australia is doomed’. (On the other hand, Australian Aboriginals, male or female, could not vote until the late 1960s.) In America, the states, one by one, enfranchised white women; by 1914, women could vote in 11 states, though they had to wait until 1919 for the national vote.
Denmark enfranchised women in 1915, and the Netherlands in 1919.
73
It is hardly surprising, given contemporary beliefs about a woman’s role, that, for decades, suffragists achieved only small and undramatic victories, though, in the long run, these would prove very important in winning over public opinion. But, in the face of rejection and ridicule, they persisted. At the same time, many women were gaining experience and confidence by taking increasingly active roles in local government and other public bodies; they served on school boards and poor-law boards. And they were learning to speak in public; as the suffragist Lady Amberley once remarked, ‘people expressed surprise to me afterwards to see that a woman could lecture and still look like a lady’. Moreover, the campaigning women emerged from every political persuasion, with Conservatives like Frances Power Cobbe and Emily Davies as committed to the cause as Liberal and Radical women.
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