Millicent Fawcett (June 11, 1847 – August 5, 1929) was a British suffragist (as opposed to a suffragette, who were usually militantly violent) and an early feminist.
She was born Millicent Garrett in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and in 1867 she married the economist Henry Fawcett, who was a Radical MP for Brighton. As a suffragist, she took a moderate line, but was a tireless campaigner, concentrating much of her energy on the struggle to improve women's opportunities for higher education. In 1871, she co-founded Newnham College, Cambridge. She later became president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS ), a position she held from 1897 until 1919.
She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1924, and her memory is still preserved in the name of the Fawcett Society .
Millicent Fawcett was the sister of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first English female doctor, and the mother of Philippa Fawcett, who famously came above the senior wrangler in the Cambridge University mathematics examinations.
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