Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867-1954), written by Jane Grant

Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (nee Pethick) was born in 1867 into a large, prosperous evangelical  family in Bristol. They later moved to Weston-super-Mare where Emmeline went to school.  Nervous of being trapped at home with no prospects except marriage Emmeline volunteered in 1890 to join the Sisterhood of the West London Mission where she met  one of its founders Mark Guy Pearse and her co-organiser, and lifelong friend, Mary Neal.  Both women were influenced by the socialist views of Kier Hardie and Edward Carpenter.

In 1895 Mary and Emmeline decided to break away on their own to found the Esperance Working Girls’ Club, a dressmaking business called Maison Esperance (with exemplary working conditions) and a holiday hostel for working girls in Littlehampton.  Through a performance of the Esperance Club Emmeline met Fred Lawrence, down from Trinity College Cambridge and also working in the mission field, as well as editing a newspaper, the Echo and later the monthly Labour Record and Review (Fred was even better off than Emmeline but just as high-minded).  They married in 1901 and thus began a devoted lifetime feminist partnership, symbolised by the fact that they unusually put their names together to make Pethick-Lawrence.

By 1906 Fred and Emmeline were living in a flat in Clements Inn, off the Strand. with a country house ‘The Mascot’ near Dorking, partly intended as a holiday home for poor London children.  In that year (the year of Labour’s electoral success) Kier Hardie introduced Emmeline to Emmeline Pankhurst as ‘a practical and useful colleague who could develop in London the new society she had founded in Manchester – the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) – to fight very militantly for the vote.  Emmeline was soon drawn into the ideology and the establishment and growth of the WSPU (the suffragettes, as they came to be called) in London and became its treasurer and, in effect, its business manager, attempting to give a solid basis to Mrs Pankhurst’s guerrilla method of political activity.  She developed a strong relationship with Emmeline Pankhurst, with the younger Annie Kenney, and with Mrs Pankhurst’s daughter Christabel, who for five years shared Fred and Emmeline’s flat in Clement’s Inn.  (This flat, and an expanding set of rooms adjoining it, also became the headquarters of the WSPU).  Emmeline became virtually Mrs Pankhurst’s ‘right hand woman’, participating in public demonstrations, going on delegations, writing leaflets and other rationales of the suffragette cause and speaking at suffragette events large and small, including in Trafalgar Square and in 1909 at the Royal Albert Hall. She had a flair both for fund-raising and publicity and in 1908 chose the iconic colours purple white and green to be the suffragette colours

Fred followed Emmeline into the WSPU, sharing the role of treasurer and using his money in effect to bank roll the organisation, including standing bail for individual suffragettes who had been arrested.  In 1907 Fred and Emmeline co-founded and co-edited Votes for Women.  They were both imprisoned for taking part in various WSPU demonstrations and in 1912 Emmeline was subjected to force-feeding in prison.  It was at this point, when both could hardly have been more deeply embedded in the work of the WSPU that the split came.

The causes of the split, engineered by Mrs Pankhurst, are still contested. Received wisdom is that Fred and Emmeline objected to the increasing violent tactics of the WSPU including property damage and arson, and Mrs Pankhurst could not brook opposition. But there was also an issue that Fred’s wealth, having been a massive asset to the WSPU, was now becoming a liability since in the face of hostile government action Fred would become a weapon with which to damage the movement as ruining him would weaken it.  Whatever the reason, Fred and Emmeline found themselves ejected from the WSPU and WSPU headquarters were moved from Clements Inn to Lincoln’s Inn.