Lydia Ernestine Becker was a leader in the early British suffrage movement, as well as an amateur scientist with interests in biology and astronomy. She established Manchester as a centre for the suffrage movement and with Richard Pankhurst she arranged for the first woman to vote in a British election and a court case was unsuccessfully brought to exploit the precedent. Becker is also remembered for founding and publishing the Women's Suffrage Journal between 1870 and 1890.
Portrait by fellow suffragist Susan Isabel Dacre
Lydia Becker's name on the lower section of the Reformers memorial, Kensal Green Cemetery
Lydia Becker banner designed by Mary Lowndes (died 1929)
Lower section of the Reformers’ memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery, featuring Becker’s name
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win in 1918 the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Pankhurst, c. 1913
Lydia Becker was an early influence on Pankhurst and may have been enamoured of Pankhurst's father
Richard Pankhurst first caught Goulden's eye when she spied his "beautiful hand" opening the door of a taxi as he arrived at a public meeting in 1878
St Luke's Church, Pendleton