FAWCETT, DAME MILLICENT GARRETT, G.B.E. (1847-1929) the eighth child of Newson Garrett, merchant ship owner of Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Educated at a private school, she married at 20 Professor Henry Fawcett M.P., afterwards post master-general. Her husband's blindness and the perfect sym• pathy between them led to the closest interdependence of their activities. Under his inspiration she wrote an elementary manual on political economy. Since his death in 1884 she has lived in London with her sister Miss Agnes Garrett and her daughter Philippa, who like her father achieved the distinction of being Senior Wrangler at Cambridge.
Her best known work is that begun immediately after marriage and continued for so years, as a leader—after the first few years the chief leader—of the constitutional movement for women's suffrage. The changes it wrought in women's status are typified by the fact that in 1867, after her first speech at the first meeting advocating women's suffrage, she and another were referred to in parliament as "two ladies, wives of members of this House, who had disgraced themselves" by speaking in public. Yet the quality of the supporters whom the movement immediately secured is shown by those who spoke at the same meeting—J. S. Mill, Charles Kingsley, John Morley, Sir Charles Dilke, James Stans feld, Professor Fawcett.
The work that ensued put a heavy strain on Mrs. Fawcett's predominant qualities—her invincible tenacity of purpose, un faltering faith in ultimate victory combined with sagacious appre ciation of present difficulties, and unfailing humour. Practically every session for 5o years, save when the nation was at war, a Woman's Suffrage bill was introduced into parliament, occasionally to achieve a second reading victory, but always to be talked out, blocked or defeated. Every year's work meant a growing volume of meetings, petitions, processions, press campaigns, etc. After 1905, when the militant suffrage campaign began, this army be came divided into two main forces, which fought separately with out turning their arms against each other.
Mrs. Fawcett was always passionately patriotic. During the South African War, the Government sent her to investigate the concentration camps for Boer women and children. The report she produced vindicated (her opponents said white-washed) their administration. The outbreak of the World War was the heaviest blow of her political life. Immediately the whole strength of her organization was turned to efforts for "sustaining the vital forces of the nation." In Jan. 1918, the national change of heart towards women's claims for which her patient work had paved the way, was consummated by the passing of the Representation of the People Act, enfranchising about six million women. A year later, her National Union of Women Suffrage Societies having become the National Union for Equal Citizenship, she retired from active leadership. She wrote The Women's Victory and After (1919), and What I Remember (1924). The order of D.B.E. was conferred on her after the war, and she was given the G.B.E. in 1925. She died in London, Aug. 5, 1929. (E. F. R.)