Since the beginning of the women's rights movement, women who devoted their lives to reform often were middle and upper class women. ... Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was among the first suffragists to recruit working women to support suffrage.

Did the suffragette movement work?

Women win a partial victory

In 1918 the Representation of the People Act extended the vote to all men over 21, and to some groups of women over 30. ... It had the added advantage of taking the heat out of the female suffrage movement. Yet more than half of women still did not have a say in electing their government.

What did the suffragettes do that was illegal?

By 1912, the suffragettes were banned from attending Liberal Party meetings and banned from holding their own. Denied legitimate means of protest, a minority of the women engaged in damage to private and public property - mass window smashing, firing empty buildings or destroying mail in postboxes.