Millicent Garrett Fawcett - The Fight for Votes for Women

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24 October 2024

Adorned with a blue plaque, 2 Gower Street, London, is a place of striking significance for British political history. When Tessa Blackstone moved in during the late 1980s, she was delighted to discover that a previous tenant had been Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

Millicent dedicated her life to securing the right to vote for women. She led the suffragists, who were distinct from the more well-known suffragettes because they campaigned within the law and disapproved of violence. But Tessa struggled to find a recent biography of this impressive woman and so began her detailed research into uncovering Millicent’s life story.

Growing up in a family of ten children in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, Millicent and her sisters challenged Victorian views about the role of women. Getting married at twenty did not deter her from becoming a writer and feminist campaigner. Her husband, Henry Fawcett, a blind academic and Liberal politician, shared her views and encouraged her. Devastated by his early death, her grit and determination kept her going.

Millicent was a leader who inspired her followers by her capacity to carry on in spite of prejudiced rebuttals and political deception. She was a trooper and her unusual story needs to be read by anyone interested in the lives of women and in the history of our democracy and equal rights.