Women’s Suffrage Bill Defeated

Westminster, 5 May 1913 - The debate on the Representation of the People (Women) Bill took place in the House of Commons. Although enthusiastically watched by a crowd of suffragettes in the Common Gallery, only forty MPs mustered themselves to listen to the debate. The proposer of the bill, Mr Dickinson, said that while this vote might be lost, the emancipation of women was inevitable. He said opponents could not ‘go on prohibiting women’s meetings forever, they could not make forced feeding part of the nominal prison system. The real remedy was to remove the grievance’.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]