Mr Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m053q4t
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Fate has been Kind (1942)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3203/what-were-the-suffrage-campaigners-fighting-for
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3228/men-in-the-suffrage-movement

Family information: Married Emmeline Pethick in 1901.

Additional Information: Frederick met his wife Emmeline through mutual work among the working class poor in London. Both shared an interest in socialism and social reform. He became, with his wife, embroiled in WSPU activity, stepping into her role as WSPU treasurer when she was in prison and lending his business acumen and legal advice, as well as his own money to put up bail for many of its key members. Frederick helped to co-found and edit ,with his wife, the WSPU newspaper Votes for Women, and coined the phrase 'Cat and Mouse Act' to describe the government's 'Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act', which was passed so that imprisoned suffragettes who went on hunger strike could be temporarily released, before being rearrested and put back in prison once their physical health had recovered. The 'Cat and Mouse' term for the act became widely used ? even by the government's Home Office itself. Frederick was arrested for 'conspiracy' after WSPU acts damaging property increased. He was imprisoned and forcibly fed after a hunger strike in protest that not all suffragette prisoners were being held in the first division 'political prisoners' wing. He shared with his wife the dismay at Christabel Pankhurst's determination to increase attacks on property, including arson, which he viewed as a tactic that would turn public opinion against the votes for women cause. Christabel ousted Frederick and his wife Emmeline from the WSPU over this difference. In Frederick's case, it may also have been because of his gender. Christabel had begun to think in terms of presenting the WSPU as a 'women-only' society and that having men too closely associated with it undermined its cause. Frederick accepted the decision and joined the United Suffragists (US) with his wife in 1914. The two still retained the Votes for Women newspaper that they had started and edited for the WSPU, and so gave it to the US. Frederick wrote many articles for the women's suffrage movement and published his autobiography, Fate has been Kind,in 1942.

Other Suffrage Activities: Frederick worked with his wife for peace during the First World War. After her death in 1954, he married former WSPU member Helen Craggs and, despite Christabel Pankhurst's treatment of him, organised the inclusion of a memorial to her on her mother Emmeline's statue near Parliament.