Organisations proliferated across Britain to pursue the parliamentary vote on the same terms as men. National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Crown copyright, National Records of Scotland, B15/6 p27īetween 18 a debate on women’s suffrage took place almost every year in parliament, and the movement grew as more women committed to the cause. These circulars sought to solicit support for a bill extending the parliamentary franchise to women, 6 March 1886. At this time the first women’s suffrage society in Edinburgh, the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS), was constituted and began to campaign in earnest.Ĭircular letter from Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage.
This was also unsuccessful, but proved to be the catalyst for organised campaigning. He proposed an amendment to the Second Reform Act 1867 to enfranchise all householders regardless of sex. In 1866 a mass women’s suffrage petition bearing 1,521 signatures was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill. In 1832, the first petition on women’s suffrage was presented to Parliament by Henry Hunt MP on behalf of Mary Smith, a wealthy woman from Yorkshire. Suffragists pursued the parliamentary vote through constitutional means such as peaceful protests, petitions and lobbying MPs to raise the issue in the House of Commons. The pursuit of female enfranchisement began long before, with the suffragists. However, militant suffragism was actually relatively short-lived. Thanks to the public and press attention they received, these few years (1905-1914) have come to dominate much of the discourse on women’s suffrage. Today we tend to associate the women’s suffrage campaign with the suffragettes – those women who used militant means to protest their lack of representation in government. You can explore this online resource here. An online resource has been created from this exhibition which features: profiles for the women represented in NRS records a timeline of women's suffrage selected transcriptions from 1911 census returns and images of the complete files relating to those women who championed the cause of women's suffrage. To celebrate, the National Records of Scotland (NRS) presented ‘Malicious Mischief? Women’s Suffrage in Scotland’, an archive exhibition reflecting on the actions of those who agitated for the vote: the suffragettes and suffragists. 2018 marked the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which granted some women the parliamentary vote.
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