Peterloo’s impact on the Pankhursts

Thank you for your excellent coverage of the shameful Peterloo massacre. Although in your editorial (Our ancestors were at Peterloo. What does their story tell us today?, Journal, 16 August) you mention how the memory of this massacre was “invoked” by suffragettes, the point is not expanded and is ignored in the other contributions.

The massacre had a profound influence on the Manchester-based family, the Pankhursts, future key leaders of the campaign for women’s suffrage. Emmeline’s paternal grandfather was one of the marchers at St Peter’s Field in 1819 and narrowly escaped death. The Free Trade Hall built on the site was chosen as the location for what is regarded as the first most significant suffragette protest. On 13 October 1905 Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney, a recent working-class recruit to the Women’s Social and Political Union, asked the liberal government of the day to give votes to women. Both were roughly ejected from the hall and arrested. They chose imprisonment rather than pay a fine. The rest, as they say, is history.