Image credit: Alfred Pearse for WSPU, The Modern Inquisition (1910). Source: Museum of London, image no. 001313′. LSE Library; Museum of London Picture Library. Searchthe official reports of proceedings in the House of Commons and the House of Lordsfrom the late 19th andearly20th centuries for reference to the women’s suffrage movement. 3.7 Women in The National Archives Chloe: The struggle to protect the rights of women and girls is ongoing around the world. Womankind works with groups like the Federation of Women Lawyers-Kenya (FIDA), which trains Kenyan community health workers, police officers, and local government officials to help prevent gender-based violence and female genital mutilation. FGM is a particularly pressing issue in Kenya, and FIDA is also actively pressing for legal reform surrounding the issue. While the issues championed by the women’s movement in Kenya and the UK may be different, the tactics used at a national level are often the same, like protest marches and political campaigns.

While there was a lot of support and sympathy for women’s rights in the late 19th century, particularly within Government, public opinion took a nasty turn when militant feminist groups started taking more extreme measures – resentment spread.In an article that appeared in The Times on 27th February, 1909, Ward wrote: "Women's suffrage is a more dangerous leap in the dark than it was in the 1860s because of the vast growth of the Empire, the immense increase of England's imperial responsibilities, and therewith the increased complexity and risk of the problems which lie before our statesmen - constitutional, legal, financial, military, international problems - problems of men, only to be solved by the labour and special knowledge of men, and where the men who bear the burden ought to be left unhampered by the political inexperience of women." Anti-suffragette postcard (1909) Susila Bonnerjee and Nolini Bonnerjee were active in the Church League for Women’s Suffrage seen in the the bottom right of this photograph from 1913 Pro-suffrage men

Have any of the documents in this selection surprised you, or altered your original perception of the suffragette movement? It is unknown why Phillips sent the posters to Cambridge. The Sanskrit scholar C.M. Ridding, Girton graduate and member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, was working at the Library at the time – the first woman to be employed there – and may have encouraged the delivery. Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the Census, Jill Liddington (Manchester University Press, 2014) Rise Up Women! : The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes’ (Published by Bloomsbury, February 2018)

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act, Cambridge University Library is exhibiting its striking women's suffrage poster collection.

While opposition to the female vote was strong, public sentiment warmed to the suffragettes as police brutality began to push women into a more favorable, if victimized, light. Many other records of suffrage organisations and activities will be held at local or specialist archives some of which are mentioned in section 6. 2. Overview of our collection 2.1 What you might find The leaders of the Anti-Suffrage League claimed that the vast majority of women in Britain were not interested in having the vote and that there was a danger that a small group of organised women would force the government to change the electoral system. 320,000. Girls I Didn’t Marry (1911)