Museum celebrates ‘radical’ Manx mother of Emmeline Pankhurst

A museum inside the former home of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst is paying tribute to her mother’s roots on the Isle of Man by ditching Halloween in favor of an ancient Celtic tradition.

The Pankhurst Museum in Manchester is celebrating Hop Tu Naa in honor of Sophia Goulden, who was born on the island in 1833.

Hop Tu Naa is the oldest unbroken Manx tradition and is celebrated on October 31, when many others celebrate Halloween, to mark the transition from summer to winter.

The museum’s Hannah Priest said marking the Manx celebration rather than Halloween this year was a way of recognizing the integral role Goulden played in her daughter’s life.

Mrs. Goulden married on the Isle of Man before moving to Manchester, where her 11 children were born.

Ms Priest said displays and information explaining her importance to the suffragette movement, as well as the history of women’s voting rights in the Isle of Man, had been set up as part of the Hop Tu Naa event.

The island became the first nation in the world to grant women the right to vote in 1881, 37 years before Westminster.

During the festival the museum, and the only former home of Emmeline Pankhurst that is open to the public, has been decorated with turnip lanterns rather than pumpkins.

Ms Priest said: “In Manchester at the moment we are the only turnips in a sea of ​​pumpkins.”

Sophia Goulden, née Craine, was born on the Isle of Man in 1833 and married Robert Goulden, from Manchester, at the age of 18.

Their daughter Emmeline was the oldest of 10 children.

Manx Museum curator Katie King said when the family moved to the north west of England they were “very much part of the radical elite of Manchester, so really quite revolutionary politics”.

Mrs Priest said the museum was a family home on Nelson Street, but also a “site of political history”.

Ms King said Emmeline’s “radical childhood and upbringing” laid the foundation for her becoming the leading British suffragette.

Her sisters and her daughters were also “leading suffragettes”, Ms King added.

Sophia took her 14-year-old daughter Emmeline to a suffragette meeting in Manchester, where she saw one of the leaders of the early British suffragette movement, Lydia Becker, speak.

Ms King said: “For Emmeline it set off a firework in her brain – and from that moment she was a committed suffragette”.

While Emmeline’s story is much more well known, for her mother Sophia, the Isle of Man remained her home.

Sophia and her husband returned to live on the island in retirement, which is where she died in 1910.