Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/150

 sowing which has brought forth so bountiful a harvest for the womanhood of Great Britain.

The modern woman suffrage movement in this country apparently dates back to the year 1867, but its real beginnings were in 1819. In that year occurred the great event of the campaign for the extension of the franchise, conducted by the Radicals. A meeting was held in St Peter's Fields in Manchester to demand adult suffrage. A large and orderly crowd collected from every part of the county to hear the great leader of the people, Orator Hunt. Those responsible for law and order, fearing a riot, had sent down the Lancashire and Cheshire Yeomanry with orders to stop the meeting and arrest the speaker. The soldiers lost their heads, and charged the unresisting people, with the unhappy result that many men and women were seriously wounded by the soldiers' bayonets, or trampled upon by the feet of the crowd. Six or seven people were actually killed. In the Manchester Reform Club is to be seen to-day a picture of the scene of the massacre, which is dedicated to 'Henry Hunt, Esq., and the Female Reformers of Manchester and the adjacent towns.' The picture shows women exposed to every risk, and suffering the same horrors as their male colleagues.

In response to this wild and strenuous agitation for electoral reform, the Reform Act of