The Sleeping Sword by Brenda Jagger Page B

Dr. Richard Marsden Pankhurst, a man so devoted to the many facets of social justice that he had declared his intention of remaining unmarried the better to pursue them. But the law had declared Miss Tighe’s claim to be invalid, maintaining in effect that although the right to vote depended on the amount of property one possessed, that right—like most others—was automatically rendered null and void by the sorry accident of having being born a woman.
    Miss Tighe had been present in 1868, immediately after the passing of the Second Reform Bill, at the first public meeting of the newly formed Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, and had since then associated herself closely with Miss Lydia Becker and those male champions of the suffragist cause, the Quaker politician Mr. Jacob Bright and the lawyer Dr. Pankhurst. Nor had they contented themselves with public meetings, having agreed—in the very appropriate setting of the Free Trade Hall—to adopt the tactics of the Anti-Corn Law League which a quarter of a century ago had done successful battle against import controls and had given us Free Trade.
    It was the aim of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, Miss Tighe went on, to attract attention to the female cause by presenting regular petitions to Parliament as the Anti-Corn Law League had done, Miss Lydia Becker herself having produced a pamphlet entitled ‘Directions for Preparing a Petition to the House of Commons’which Miss Tighe would be glad to distribute among us. In 1869 alone, she said, without once referring to any notes or figures, two hundred and fifty-five petitions, requesting the vote for women on the same terms as it had been granted to men, had been presented. The flow of these petitions would continue, the flow of Private Members’Bills must be encouraged to flow with it. Mr. Jacob Bright having introduced such a bill two years ago which had passed its second reading in the House before being annihilated by that great enemy of the Women’s Cause, the leader of the Liberal Party, Mr. Gladstone, who like numerous others believed female suffrage to be a serious threat to family life.
    Mr. Gladstone, it was very clear, believed in the concept of woman as domestic angel, his reluctance to burden her with electoral responsibilities stemming from his oft-expressed fear that her fine and gentle nature might be damaged, the delicate structure of her mind distracted from her rightful worship of hearth and home. And if it had occurred to him that the population of England numbered rather more women than men, which would—if enfranchised—make the female a mighty power to be reckoned with, he had not said so.
    But the Women’s Cause had few other champions in high places. The Conservative leader, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, had expressed cautious sympathy in his younger days when speeches on controversial issues had been very much his style. But once he had taken office and had no need of controversy to get himself noticed, little more had been heard from him on the matter. Nor could the movement rely overmuch on the support of famous women, the great Florence Nightingale having heartily condemned her own sex as being narrowminded, uncooperative and unsympathetic, while it was no secret that Queen Victoria, although a reigning monarch, enjoyed nothing better than the domination of the male, having always insisted in private—during her husband’s lifetime—on regarding herself as his ‘little wife’. And so strongly was she opposed to the notion of women’s rights that she believed any lady—titled or otherwise—who spoke openly in their favour deserved a good whipping, presumably by a dominating male hand.
    Women, in Miss Florence Nightingale’s opinion, were too feeble. In Queen Victoria’s view they could not be feeble enough. What did Miss Mandelbaum think, or Miss