Quotes from Jane Robinson

A Birmigham suffragette called Bertha Brewster, writing to the Daily Telegraph in February 1913, did not pull her punches: Everyone seems to agree upon the necessity of putting a stop to Suffragist outrages, but no-one seems certain how to do so. There are two, only two ways in which this can be done. Both will be effectual. 1. Kill every woman in the United Kingdom. 2. Give women the vote.

Then, a female was politically classed with infants, idiots, and lunatics, as 'naturally incapacitated… and therefore… so much under the influence of others that [she] cannot have a will of her own'.3 That is why there were such strict regulations governing her behaviour at university (and beyond), not only to protect her moral and physical welfare, but to defend good men, such as undergraduates and lecturers, from temptation and involuntary folly.