Glossary

lower middle class

Historians debate who belonged to this class, but generally it included clerks, white-collar workers, schoolteachers in all but the best public schools, small shopkeepers and publicans (see also class; middle class).

NUWSS

National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

reincarnation

The rebirth of a soul in another body.

suffragette

A term used to describe activist suffragists who were determined to get the vote for women whatever the cost. The term was first used by Charles E. Hands in the Daily Mail to describe members of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The activists embraced the description, saying that the term ‘SuffraGETtes’ [sic] implied not only that they wanted the vote, but also that they intended to get it. The suffragettes only adopted militant tactics from 1912 onwards.

suffragists

A general term for supporters of suffrage movements, whether male or female, radical or conservative, peaceful or militant. Thus, Ada Nield Chew and Emmeline Pankhurst were both suffragists although their standpoints were very different. Commonly, to avoid confusion, historians use ‘suffragette’ to describe the radical and later militant female suffragists.

WSPU

Women’s Social and Political Union.