Millicent Garret Fawcett
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Dame Millicent Fawcett GBE |
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| Born |
Millicent Garrett 11 June 1847 Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England |
| Died | 5 August 1929 (aged 82) Bloomsbury, London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Feminist, suffragist, union leader |
| Parent(s) |
Newson Garrett Louisa Dunnell |
Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, GBE (11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English feminist, intellectual, political and union leader, and writer. She is primarily known for her work as a campaigner for women to have the vote.
As a suffragist (as opposed to a suffragette), she took a moderate line, but was a tireless campaigner. She concentrated much of her energy on the struggle to improve women's opportunities for higher education and in 1875 co-founded Newnham College, Cambridge. She later became president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS), a position she held from 1897 until 1919. In July 1901 she was appointed to lead the British government's commission to South Africa to investigate conditions in the concentration camps that had been created there in the wake of the Second Boer War. Her report corroborated what the campaigner Emily Hobhouse had said about conditions in the camps.
Millicent Fawcett was born on 11 June 1847 in Aldeburgh to Newson Garrett, a warehouse owner from Leiston, Suffolk, and his wife, Louisa (née Dunnell; 1813–1903), from London.
The Garrett ancestors had been ironworkers in East Suffolk since the early seventeenth century. Newson Garrett was the youngest of three sons and not academically inclined, although he possessed the family’s entrepreneurial spirit. When he finished school, the town of Leiston offered little to Newson, so he left for London to make his fortune. There, he fell in love with his brother's sister-in-law, Louisa Dunnell, the daughter of an innkeeper of Suffolk origin. After their wedding, the couple went to live in a pawnbroker's shop at 1 Commercial Road, Whitechapel. The Garretts had their first three children in quick succession: Louie, Elizabeth, and their brother (Newson Dunnell, who died at the age of six months). In 1839 the family moved to 142 Long Acre, where they were to live for two years, whilst two more children (Louisa (b. 1835) and Elizabeth (b. 1836)) were born and her father moved up in the world, becoming not only the manager of a larger pawnbroker's shop, but also a silversmith.
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