claimed before the revising barristers in 1868 to be placed upon the Parliamentary register. Under the able leadership of Miss Lydia Becker 5346 women householders of Manchester made this claim, 1341 in Salford, 857 in Broughton and Pendleton, 1 lady in S.E. Lancashire, a county constituency, 239 in Edinburgh, and a few in other parts of Scotland. The revising barristers in most of these cases declined to place the women's names on the register; and in order to get a legal decision, four cases were selected and argued before the Court of Common Pleas on November 7, 1868. The judges were the Lord Chief Justice Bovill, with the Justices Willes, Keating, and Byles. Sir John (afterwards Lord) Coleridge, and Dr. Pankhurst were counsel for the appellants. The case (technically known as Chorlton v. Lings) was given against the women, on the express ground that although the word "man" in an Act of Parliament must be held to include women, "this did not apply to the privileges granted by the State." This judgment, therefore, established as law that "the same words in the same Act of Parliament shall for the purpose of voting apply to men only, but for the purpose of taxation shall include women."[1]
Some women's names had been accepted by revising barristers, and were already upon the register. A question was raised whether they could remain there. The barrister in charge of this case, Mr. A. Russell, Q.C., argued that when once the names were upon the register, if they had not been objected to they must remain; one of the judges thereupon remarked that if this were so there would be no power to remove the name of a dog or a horse from the register if once it had been inscribed upon it. This was eloquent of the political status of women, identifying it by implication with that of the domestic animals. The Times, in anticipation of the Chorlton v. Lings case coming on for hearing, had an article on November 3, 1868, in which it said: "If one supposes it ever was the intention of the legis-
- ↑ Report of the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage, 1869.
