But these were respectable women – nurses, teachers, mothers – who were campaigning for their right to vote. And this cruelty was just the start. As the campaign intensified, suffragettes endured imprisonment, hunger strikes and force-feeding. Many carried the scars, physical and mental, for the rest of their lives.

From 1905 onwards the Suffragettes’ campaign became more violent. Their motto was ‘Deeds Not Words’ and they began using more aggressive tactics to get people to listen. This included breaking windows, planting bombs, handcuffing themselves to railings and going on hunger strikes.

Lobbying. The suffragists believed in achieving change through parliamentary means and used lobbying techniques to persuade Members of Parliament sympathetic to their cause to raise the issue of women’s suffrage in debate on the floor of the House.

Traditional lobbying and petitioning were a mainstay of NWP members, but these activities were supplemented by other more public actions–including parades, pageants, street speaking, and demonstrations. The party eventually realized that it needed to escalate its pressure and adopt even more aggressive tactics.

The Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, commonly referred to as the Cat and Mouse Act, was an Act of Parliament passed in Britain under H. H. Asquith’s Liberal government in 1913.

Women won the vote because of the work they did in the war. It is a familiar refrain, usually used to insist that campaigning does not work; that all women needed to do was demonstrate their patriotism and willingness to work in a munitions factory in order to win the right to vote.

The government sought to deal with the problem of hunger striking suffragettes with the 1913 Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act, commonly known as the Cat and Mouse Act. This Act allowed for the early release of prisoners who were so weakened by hunger striking that they were at risk of death.

‘ The term ‘cat and mouse game’ is an English-language idiom dating back to 1675 that means “a contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes.” So many couples seem to construct their relationship around this very dynamic of pursuit, near capture, and flight.

The nickname of the act came about because of a cat’s habit of playing with its prey (a mouse) before finishing it off. Research does indicate that the act did not do a great deal to deter the activities of the Suffragettes. Their violent actions only ceased with the outbreak of war and their support of the war effort.

Emmeline Goulden was born in Manchester, England, on either July 14 or 15, 1858. Goulden, the eldest daughter of 10 children, grew up in a politically active family. Her parents were both abolitionists and supporters of female suffrage; Goulden was 14 when her mother took her to her first women’s suffrage meeting.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The term “suffragettes” originated in Great Britain to mock women fighting for the right to vote (women in Britain were struggling for the right to vote at the same time as those in the U.S.). Some women in Britain embraced the term as a way of appropriating it from its pejorative use.

But as time wore on, some suffragist began to become frustrated and began pursuing more militant tactics, eventually splitting the suffrage movement into two major groups: suffragists and suffragettes.

In 1903 she, along with her daughters Sylvia and Christabel, founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Emmeline Pankhurst is remembered for her hard work with the WSPU in the fight to help get British women the right to vote.

Emmeline Pankhurst’s speech, “Why We Are Militant,” convinces the audience that the militant element is necessary to persuade the representative government of England.