Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (née Garrett; 11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English political activist and writer. She campaigned for women's suffrage by legal change and in 1897–1919 led Britain's largest women's rights association, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), explaining, "I cannot say I became a suffragist. I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government." She tried to broaden women's chances of higher education, as a governor of Bedford College, London (now Royal Holloway) and co-founding Newnham College, Cambridge in 1871. In 2018, a century after the Representation of the People Act, she was the first woman honoured by a statue in Parliament Square.
Early life
Fawcett was born on 11 June 1847 in Aldeburgh, to Newson Garrett (1812–1893), a businessman from nearby Leiston, and his London wife Louisa (née Dunnell, 1813–1903). She was the eighth of their ten children.
According to Ray Strachey, "The Garretts were a close and happy family in which children were encouraged to be physically active, read widely, speak their minds, and share in the political interests of their father, a convert from Conservatism to Gladstonian Liberalism, a combative man, and a keen patriot."
As a child, Fawcett's elder sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who became Britain's first female doctor, introduced her to Emily Davies, an English suffragist. In her mother's biography, Louisa Garrett Anderson quotes Davies as saying to her mother, to Elizabeth and to Fawcett, "It is quite clear what has to be done. I must devote myself to securing higher education, while you open the medical profession to women. After these things are done, we must see about getting the vote." She then turned to Millicent: "You are younger than we are, Millie, so you must attend to that."
