The suffragettes had struggled for years to see this long-overdue basic human right materialize.

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The collection includes the wills of WWI soldiers, suffragettes and people who perished on the Titanic.

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Education, and the money to buy it, have been the sometimes overlooked driving forces of suffragettes and their feminist successors.

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It did find that the spirit of the suffragettes lives on with women becoming involved in demonstrations, signing petitions and backing single issue campaigns.

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We are standing on the shoulders of the senators and suffragettes, civil rights activists and founding mothers, who have been the backbone of this great country.

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The tableau of Britain at the opening ceremony included suffragettes, hundreds of dancing nurses, a strident Mary Poppins banishing multiple villains and even a shot of the first lesbian kiss aired on prime-time television.

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Biggs says the hunger strikes by suffragettes in Britain "similarly gained media attention and enhanced the commitment of supporters" but the vote came later and arguably owed more to women's service in World War I.

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The British suffragettes, who often exchanged battle tactics with their American cousins, were led by clever middle-class women such as Christabel Pankhurst (1880-1958), who gained a first-class law degree, but was barred from practising in all-male courts.

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