Born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk in England’s East Anglia
on 11th June 1847, Millicent’s parents were Newson and Louisa
Garrett (nee Dunnell). Millicent’s
parents were wealthy – her father was a ship owner and merchant.
The Garretts had six daughters and four sons –
Millicent’s sister Elizabeth became the first woman in doctor in the UK and her
sister Agnes became a successful interior decorator.
The Garrett children were all educated at a progressive
private boarding school in Blackheath, London, which was run by Robert
Browning’s aunt – Louisa Browning.
When Millicent was twelve years old, her sister
Elizabeth went to study medicine in London and Millicent went frequently to
visit her sister. In 1865
Millicent heard a speech by John Stuart Mill on the subject of women’s rights,
following which she began to support his work. It was Mill who introduced Millicent to Henry Fawcett,
the Liberal MP for Brighton, fourteen years her senior and a former suitor of
Elizabeth Garrett. Fawcett had
been blinded in a shooting accident. The pair married in 1867 and had one child – Phillipa
Fawcett who was born in 1868.
In 1868 Millicent joined the London Suffrage
Committee and began to speak at meetings.
When her husband died in 1884, Millicent and her daughter went to live
with Agnes. Millicent became leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies,
a post which she held until 1919 when women were granted the right to vote.
One of Millicent’s main focuses was the campaign for
the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, which required that women who were
prostitutes be examined for sexually transmitted diseases, while their male
clients were not. If a
prostitute was found to be infected, she was imprisoned. Poor women at that
time could be arrested and imprisoned merely on suspicion of being a prostitute
and women could also be imprisoned if they refused to submit to the painful,
invasive examination.
Millicent believed that the double moral standards of the age would
never be changed until women were properly represented in public life.
Millicent wrote under the name of Millicent Garrett
Fawcett and wrote three books and many articles about her various campaigns,
which included the education of women.
She was a co-founder of Newnham College, Cambridge.
She also went to South Africa in 1901 during the Boer
War to help Emily Hobhouse with her work among women and children in
concentration camps.
When the First World War broke out, Millicent
concentrated all her efforts on campaigning for support of the war.
Millicent died on 5th August 1929 and an
inscription added to the monument of Henry Fawcett in Westminster Abbey relates
that Millicent ‘ won citizenship for women’.
Source:
Wikipedia
