The Great Miss Lydia Becker: Suffragist, Scientist & Trailblazer

A legal loophole allowed approximately one thousand women to vote in the 1868 general election, fifty years before women gained the right to vote. This occurred through the dedicated efforts of Lydia Becker, the acknowledged though unofficial leader of the women's suffrage movement in the later 19th century. Raised as the eldest of fifteen children in a middle-class family, Becker remained single and entered the male-dominated sphere of politics, breaking from convention. Despite the social prohibition against women speaking publicly, she addressed numerous audiences on women's votes, the position of wives, female education, and workplace rights. She campaigned for academic education for poor girls and kept supporters across Britain and beyond informed through her publication, the Women's Suffrage Journal. As chief lobbyist for women's suffrage in Parliament, Becker influenced MPs in ways few had achieved before. In the 1860s, women's suffrage was dismissed in the Commons as ridiculous and unnatural. By her death in 1890, acceptance had grown that women's enfranchisement would occur. Emmeline Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett, both inspired by Becker, continued her work.