s under the Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Second Reform Act of 1867. Mary Wollstonescraft with her Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792 and William Thompson, believed to be a pseudonym for an Irish widow named Mrs. Wheeler, with his Appeal in 1825 had called for the emancipation of women but they were well before their time. By the 1860s and 1870s, economic and social changes had taken place in the position of middle class Victorian women which Lewis described as follows:
As land gradually ceased to be a major source of middle class wealth, and as salaries became more important, so marriage ceased to be an essentially dynastic settlement between two kin groups and it became possible to grant women more freedom, both emotional (to marry whom they wished) and legal, within marriage
Under the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 women gained legal control over their earnings and separate property, respectively. The other property of the married couple remained, however, under the control of the husband. From the very first proposals for women's suffrage advanced by the Quakers in the 1840s through the formal proposal presented on their behalf by John Stuart Mill in Parliament in 1867 and thereafter, women suffragists asked only that they be granted the same rights as men with respect to the vote. The failure of the suffragists to press earlier for universal suffrage may have limited their appeal to Liberal and later Labour Party leaders who saw their demands as likely to increase the influence of the Conservatives.
From the time she and a number of other middle class women and men formed the Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage in 1866 and until her death in 1890, Miss Lydia Becker led the movement. Her tactics were intellectual and peaceful, journal articles, petitions to Parliament, and public meetings. The movement succeeded in winning the franchise for women to vote in municipal elections and to serve...