Cited by 9Historical Gender and Feminism StudiesGender Politics and RepresentationEuropean Political History Analysis

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 72 of the 75 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 90 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

THE BRITISH WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT AND THE PRACTICE OF PETITIONING, 1890–1914

Open access
MILLER, HENRY·2021·The Historical Journal

Abstract

Through an examination of the women's suffrage movement, this article reassesses the place of petitioning within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British political culture. While critical of their Victorian predecessors’ reliance on petitions, the Edwardian women's suffrage movement did not abandon petitioning, but reinvented it. Rather than presenting a polarized view of relations between suffragettes and suffragists, the article shows how both operated on a spectrum of direct action politics through petitioning. Militants and constitutionalists pioneered new, although different, modes of petitioning that underpinned broader repertoires of popular politics, adapting this venerable practice to a nascent mass democracy. The article then situates suffrage campaigners’ reinvention of petitioning within a broader political context. The apparent decline of petitioning, long noted by scholars, is reframed as the waning of the classic model of mass petitioning parliament associated with Victorian pressure groups. The early twentieth century was a crucial period for the reshaping of petitioning as a tool for political participation and expression through myriad subscriptional forms, rather than primarily through the medium of parliamentary petitions.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

The article argues that the Edwardian British women’s suffrage movement did not abandon petitioning but reinvented it, with suffragettes pioneering spectacular presentation and suffragists developing participatory signature-gathering and voters’ petitions. It reframes the apparent decline of petitioning as the waning of the classic mass parliamentary petition and the decentring of Parliament as petitions’ main destination.

Key findings

  • Between 1866 and 1890, over 13,000 women’s suffrage petitions were received by the Commons, containing almost 2.8 million signatures; the 1896 Special Appeal contained over 250,000 signatures and was exhibited in Westminster Hall on 19 May 1896.
  • Suffragettes used petitioning for spectacular, transgressive presentation: examples include attempts to present petitions to the prime minister and king, the 1909 Women’s Freedom League picket outside Parliament (July–October), and the May 1914 deputation to the monarch; courts reaffirmed the right to petition but denied a right to be received.
  • Suffragists’ January 1910 voters’ petition campaign collected petitions in 290 of 542 English, Welsh, and Scottish constituencies, with 300,000 signatures; 244 petitions containing 278,933 signatures were presented to the Commons, accounting for 4% of the registered electorate in England, Wales, and Scotland. Of 227 petitions linked to constituencies, 137 were signed by less than 10% of electors, 60 by 10–19%, 20 by 20–29%, and 10 by 30% or more; Reigate, Barnsley, and Carlisle led at 41%, 38%, and 33%.
  • The paper reframes petitioning’s decline as the waning of the classic mass petition to the Commons; by the Edwardian period petitioners increasingly addressed other authorities (prime minister, monarch, local government), and petitioning remained a widespread but largely unrecorded form of political participation after 1914.

Methods

  • Historical study of petitioning practices—drafting, signing, and presentation—in the British women’s suffrage movement, c.1890–1914, comparing militant WSPU, constitutionalist NUWSS, and WFL activity.
  • Draws on Select Committee on Public Petitions Reports (1867–1918), suffrage and national press (Common Cause, Votes for Women, Manchester Guardian), archival records (e.g., Women’s Library LSE, Manchester Central Library, Carlisle Archives Centre), and secondary literature; includes quantitative analysis of petition counts, signatures, and regional/constituency distribution.

Limitations

  • Stated: logistical problems and stretched resources prevented suffragists from achieving blanket coverage in the 1910 voters’ petition campaign; of 244 presented petitions, 227 could be linked to constituencies, and for the remainder the division of a city or county was not given, making matching impossible.
  • Stated: the paper notes that post-1920s petitioning as lobbying “remains to be examined” and that petitioning after 1914 was largely unrecorded.
  • Evident from the text: the analysis relies on surviving organizational records, press reports, and parliamentary returns, so unrecorded or unarchived petitioning activity may be underrepresented; the article is focused on Britain and the suffrage case, not a comprehensive account of all Edwardian petitioning.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/s0018246x20000035

Cites

72 of 72 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

84 Sources not found · 61 Own interpretation · 9 No basis given · 2 Own result

Show all 84 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 19
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 57
72 of 72

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

2 of 2

Citations

Cites

Show all 75 references

Research works printed but not linked: 8

  1. Porritt, 1893, The Englishman at home
  2. Leneman, 1995, A guid cause: the women's suffrage movement in Scotland
  3. Thane, 2010, Women and citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century: what difference did the vote make?
  4. Purvis, 2000, Votes for women
  5. Hume, 1982, The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, 1897–1914, 62
  6. Blackburn, 1902, Women's suffrage: a record of the women's suffrage movement in the British Isles
  7. 10.1093/ehr/116.466.368 · DOI
  8. Redlich, 1908, The procedure of the House of Commons

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Metadata

Authors
MILLER, H.
Affiliations
University of Manchester (GB)
Corresponding author
MILLER, HENRY
Venue
The Historical Journal
Published
2020-04-23
Volume
64
Issue
2
Pages
332-356
ISSN
  • 0018-246X (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-5103
OpenAlex
W3005812856
Cited by
9
References
75
Citations by year
2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1
FWCI
1.38
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • The Historical Journal (publishedVersion)
  • Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nd)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
  • Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Historical Gender and Feminism Studies
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Politics and Representation
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › European Political History Analysis
Keywords
women's suffrage movement, petitions, suffragettes, suffragists, direct action, Edwardian era, mass democracy, political participation, British political culture, late 19th century, early 20th century

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-11-11, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-11-11 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review