Emile Pankhurst is set to be honoured with a statue in Manchester after the results of a public vote were announced today.
Mrs Pankhurst won over fifty per cent of the vote in a shortlist that contain five other notable Manchester women including Ellen Wilkinson, a Labour MP, co-organised the 1935 Jarrow March and campaigned on mental health issues
The Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, Louise Da-Cocodia, the first black senior nursing officer in Manchester, Elizabeth Raffald, who compiled the first Manchester Directory and Margaret Ashton, the first woman city councillor in Manchester.
The campaign, organized by Didsbury councillor Andrew Simcock hopes to privately raise £200,000 for the statue, only the second in the city of a women, the first being Queen Victoria and for the statue to be unveiled in 2019.
Pankhurst was born in Moss Side in 1858, marrying lawyer Richard, a firm believer in the social and political emancipation of women. He would pass on ideas to his younger bride.
Together they would set up the Women’s Franchise League in 1889 and after Richard’s death in 1898, Emily would be persuaded by her daughter, Christabel, to form the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union.
Emily was arrested six times as the group rose to providence before the First World War but when fighting broke out, she urged all women to stand behind the war effort.
The franchise was given to women in 1918 and the following year she emigrated to Canada, staying until in 1926. She died in 1928, having been adopted by the Conservative Party to stand for the seat in the next year’s election.
