Catholics and the Campaign for Women's Suffrage in England

Abstract

Narratives about women and religion in Victorian and Edwardian society seldom addressed the world of the Catholic laity, leaving the impression that Catholics were unimportant in English history. Pushed into anonymity, they were easily misunderstood because of their religious sensibilities and loyalty to a church governed not from London but Rome. This was a church long subject to various forms of disability in England and with a membership of roughly 5 percent of the population around 1900. By then, objections to the Catholic Church as a foreign institution had lessened, but critics still labeled Catholics “a people apart,” viewing them as too disinterested in their neighbors' welfare to play a vital part in public life. So commonplace was this particular point of view that it obscured Catholic participation in social causes such as the hard fought campaign for women's suffrage. As often as journalists, suffragists, and members of Parliament debated enfranchisement in the years before and after the First World War, very little is known today about the role Catholics played in the struggle for women's rights.