Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst, born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, was a British political organiser who led the campaign for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. Raised among politically active parents, she married the radical barrister Richard Pankhurst and worked within existing suffrage societies before founding the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. The WSPU adopted militant tactics under the slogan "Deeds, not words," including demonstrations, window-breaking, and hunger strikes; Pankhurst was arrested repeatedly. During the First World War she redirected the organisation toward the war effort. In her later years she spent time on the French Riviera and then several years in Canada, working and lecturing on social hygiene, before returning to England in the mid-1920s. She died in London in 1928, weeks before the Representation of the People Act extended the vote to women on equal terms with men.