Henry Fawcett F.R.S. and Mrs Fawcett

Postcard with black and white photographic reproduction of a painting by Ford Madox Brown of Henry and Millicent Fawcett. Completed in 1872, the painting is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. The painting was bequeathed to the gallery in 1911 and the caption on the postcard confirms it was published post 1911.
Millicent Garrett (1847-1929) married Henry Fawcett (1833-1884) in 1867. Fawcett was a radical Liberal politician and the first blind man to be elected to Parliament. He was interested in women’s causes and in favour of female suffrage. In the same year as she married, Millicent Garrett Fawcett joined the executive committee of the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage. She frequently spoke in public in favour of women’s suffrage. In 1897 Garrett Fawcett helped to set up the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and became its president in 1907. As a leading constitutional non-militant suffragist, she actively campaigned for political change, wrote books and pamphlets, and took part in processions and demonstrations, but was against taking militant action.