MANCHESTER-born Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst is to become the first woman to get a public statue in Manchester in over 100 years following a public vote.
Pankhurst gained 56% of the 5,301 votes
Started by by Didsbury councillor Andrew Simcock, the WoMAnchester Statue Project will see a £200,000 privately funded statue unveiled somewhere in Manchester on International Women’s Day in March 2019.
Of all the city centre's public statues, Queen Victoria in Piccadilly Gardens and Enriqueta Rylands in the John Rylands Library are the only females.
Pankhurst, born in 1858, was founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union and campaigned tirelessly for women’s right to vote. Her home in Chortlon-on-Medlock is now a museum of suffragette history and can be visited on Thursdays from 10am to 4pm.
Pankhurst gained 56% of the 5,301 votes cast for the WoManchester campaign, whose shortlist also included:
- Elizabeth Gaskell, the Knutsford-based novelist whose works includes Wives and Daughters and Cranford
- Elizabeth Raffald, Housekeeper at Arley Hall and author of the bestselling Experienced English Housekeeper
- Ellen Wilkinson, a Labour MP who co-organised the 1935 Jarrow March and campaigned for mental health
- Louise Da-Cocodia, anti racism campaigner and former Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Manchester
- Margaret Ashton, suffragist and the first female councillor of Manchester
