First Woman in House of Commons

Date: October 13, 1908 • Location: London, United Kingdom

British suffragette Margaret Travers Symons became the first woman to speak in the House of Commons when she escaped from her escort into the chamber and shouted at the assembly. A suffragette was a member or supporter of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an activist women's group agitating for votes for women, which in the early 20th century broke away from the much larger, peaceful and longer lasting National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), whose supporters were known as suffragists. Both organisations campaigned for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. However, the Women's Social and Political Union, a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, engaged in direct action and civil disobedience as a result of what they saw as slow progress towards universal suffrage.