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ABSTRACT
62 Nelson Street possesses is an almost mythical status in the history of British feminism. Home to Emmeline Pankhurst and her family between 1898 and 1907, in 1903 its parlour famously hosted the first meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant wing of the women’s suffrage movement. It is now home to the Pankhurst Centre, housing a museum to the history of the Pankhurst family and to women’s activism more generally, and to Manchester Women’s Aid. Despite its prominence in British history, however, supporters and curators have faced a constant battle to sustain the Pankhurst house in the face of limited funding and redevelopment. This reflection on public engagement work undertaken with the Pankhurst Centre through an AHRC Networking grant, 2019–2022 (Ref AH/S010289/1) sets out some of the reasons why engaging the public with the Pankhurst home remains crucial. It argues that the house itself presents a more inclusive history of feminism than is often acknowledged or associated with the Pankhurst family and that it is a useful case study that brings together important yet relatable links between homes and activism that can engage a range of publics and visitors to the house.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 ‘Bulletin’, The Guardian, July 18, 1989, 21.
2 Naseem Khan, ‘A Woman’s Place’, New Statesman, March 6, 1987, 34. As quoted in, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa and Vera Mackie, Remembering Women’s Activism (Routledge: London, 2019), 37.
3 The Pankhurst Trust (Incorporating Manchester Women’s Aid) Report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2020, p. 5. Via https://pankhursttrust.org/annual-reports Accessed July 25, 2022
4 Laura King and Gary Rivett, ‘Engaging People in Making History: Impact, Public Engagement and the World Beyond the Campus’, History Workshop Journal 80, no. 1 (2005): 223.
5 Tracey Loughran, Kate Mahoney, and Daisy Payling, ‘Women’s Voices, Emotion and Empathy: Engaging Different Publics with “Everyday” Health Histories’, Medical Humanities (2021): 2, Published Online First: 25 May 2021.
6 John Tosh, ‘Public History, Civic Engagement and the Historical Profession in Britain’, History 99, no. 2 (2014): 212.
7 See, David Olusoga and Melanie Backe-Hansen, A House Through Time (Picador: London, 2020).
8 Examples include, Lucy Delap, Knowing Their Place: Domestic Service in Twentieth Century Britain (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011) and Amanda Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale: London, 2009), which both informed popular documentary television series.
9 Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick, In the Footsteps of the Brontës (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2011), 430.
10 ‘How Manchester Forged Iron Will of Suffragette Leader’, Manchester Evening News, February 6, 2018, 14.
11 https://www.womanchesterstatue.org/womens/ (accessed March 17, 2022).
12 Tony Walsh, ‘This is the Place’, https://theconversation.com/this-is-the-place-how-a-poem-gave-voice-to-manchesters-grief-78293 (accessed July 25, 2022).
13 https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/jun/22/10-best-mancunians-greater-manchester (accessed March 17, 2022).
14 Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (Eveleigh Nash: London, 1914), Kindle version, n.p.
15 Ibid., n.p.
16 June Purvis and Maureen Wright, ‘Writing Suffragette History: The Contending Autobiographical Narratives of the Pankhursts’, Women’s History Review 14, nos. 3-4 (2005): 414.
17 June Purvis, Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography (Routledge: Abington, 2018), 70–1.
18 See, Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Lyndsey Jenkins, eds, The Politics of Women’s Suffrage: Local, National and International Dimensions (University of London Press, Institute of Historical Research: London, 2022).
19 https://pankhurstprojects.org/rooms-of-our-own/ (accessed April 19, 2022).
20 ‘Pankhurst House is Under Threat’, The Guardian, April 7, 1980, 2.
21 ‘Suffragist Home Safe – But Future is Uncertain’, The Guardian, June 30, 1980, 3.
22 ‘Plea for Pankhurst Home’, The Sunday Times, March 7, 1982, 6.
23 ‘Pankhurst Appeal’, The Sunday Telegraph, November 29, 1981, n.p.
24 ‘Pankhurst Houses Appeal’, The Sunday Telegraph, December 14, 1980, n.p.
25 ‘30,000 Grant for Pankhurst Appeal’, The Financial Times, May 19, 1982, 11.
26 Lucy Delap, ‘Feminist Bookshops, Reading Cultures and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Great Britain, c. 1974–2000’, History Workshop Journal 81, no. 1 (2016): 171–96; Sue Bruley, ‘Consciousness-Raising in Clapham; Women’s Liberation as “Lived Experience” in South London in the 1970s’, Women’s History Review 22, no. 5 (2013): 717–38.
27 ‘Rubble Rousers’, Daily Mirror, March 10, 1980, 13.
28 Sarah Browne, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2014); Natalie Thomlinson, Race, Ethnicity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1968–1993 (Palgrave: London, 2016); Sue Bruley, ‘Women’s Liberation at the Grass Roots: A View from some English Towns, c. 1968–1990’, Women’s History Review 25, no. 5 (2016): 723–40.
29 https://pankhurstprojects.org/blog/working-in-the-pankhurst-archive/ (accessed May 31, 2022).
30 https://pankhurstprojects.org/blog/radicals-in-writing/ (accessed May 31, 2022).
31 Jess White, ‘Child-centred Matriarch or Mother Among Other Things? Race and the Construction of Working-class Motherhood in Late Twentieth-century Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwac005.
32 https://www.racerootsresist.com/; https://www.racearchive.org.uk/ accessed May 31, 2022.
33 June Purvis, ‘Pankhurst Sisters: The Bitter Divisions Behind Their Fight for Women’s Votes’, The Conversation, February 5, 2018.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Charlotte Wildman
Charlotte Wildman is a Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Manchester. Her expertise lies in urban history with a focus on the experiences of working-class women and children. She has collaborated with Eloise Moss and Ruth Lamont on the project Friendless or Forsaken? Child Emigration from North West England to Canada, 1860–1930 since 2015. Her first monograph, Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918–1939, was published by Bloomsbury in 2016. Her new project addresses non-violent home-based offending in Britain and Northern Ireland, 1918–1979.