Suffrage Speeches from the Dock

This book contains highlights from the 1912 conspiracy trial of Emmeline Pankhurst, Fred Pethick Lawrence, and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence. In these speeches, Pankhurst and the other leading militant suffragists defend themselves against the charges of damaging city property in their attempt to publicize the issue of women’s suffrage. They illustrate the complexity of the issue and the ambivalence of the court, which found them guilty of damaging city property yet acknowledged the virtues of the cause for which they were fighting. The publisher, the Women’s Press, while an independent entity, played a strategic role in bringing suffrage into public discourse.