On this day on 19th July

On this day in 1876 suffragette Hilda Burkitt, the fifth of nine children, was born to Laura Clews Burkitt (1843–1909) and Reuben Lancelot Burkitt (1847–1928) on 19th July, 1876. She lived with her wealthy paternal grandparents until 1902 when she moved in with her married sister, Christobel in Birmingham.

Emmeline Pankhurst established the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in October, 1903. "We resolved to limit our membership exclusively to women, to keep ourselves absolutely free from ant party affiliation, and to be satisfied with nothing but action on our question. Deeds, not words, was to be our permanent motto."

The forming of the WSPU upset both the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). The main objective was to gain, not universal suffrage, the vote for all women and men over a certain age, but votes for women, “on the same basis as men.” This meant winning the vote not for all women but for only the small stratum of women who could meet the property qualification. As one critic suggested, it was "not votes for women", but “votes for ladies.” As an early member of the WSPU, Dora Montefiore, pointed out: "The work of the Women’s Social and Political Union was begun by Mrs. Pankhurst in Manchester, and by a group of women in London who had revolted against the inertia and conventionalism which seemed to have fastened upon... the NUWSS."

The WSPU controversially began to use violence in their campaign to win the vote. On 23rd October, 1906, Emmeline Pankhurst organised a huge rally in Caxton Hall, and a deputation went to the House of Commons to demand the vote: She later wrote about this in her autobiography, My Own Story (1914): "Those women had followed me to the House of Commons. They had defied the police. They were awake at last they were prepared to do something that women had never done before - fight for themselves. Women had always fought for men, and for their children. Now they were ready to light for their own human rights. Our militant movement was established.''

In November 1907 Emmeline Pankhurst addressed an audience in Birmingham Town Hall. Soon afterwards Hilda and her sister Christobel joined the WSPU. Hilda was in charge of advertising meetings and distributing political material, such as selling Votes for Women. In 1908 she was a WSPU paid organiser in Birmingham. "Hilda held regular evening meetings in parks and on street corners to bring the movement to attention of residents on their way home from work."

A large number of WSPU were imprisoned. On 25th June 1909, Marion Wallace-Dunlop was found guilty of wilful damage and when she refused to pay a fine she was sent to prison for a month. On 5th July, 1909 she petitioned the governor of Holloway Prison: “I claim the right recognized by all civilized nations that a person imprisoned for a political offence should have first-division treatment; and as a matter of principle, not only for my own sake but for the sake of others who may come after me, I am now refusing all food until this matter is settled to my satisfaction.”

Wallace-Dunlop refused to eat for several days. Afraid that she might die and become a martyr, it was decided to release her. According to Joseph Lennon: "She came to her prison cell as a militant suffragette, but also as a talented artist intent on challenging contemporary images of women. After she had fasted for ninety-one hours in London’s Holloway Prison, the Home Office ordered her unconditional release on July 8, 1909, as her health, already weak, began to fail".

Hilda Burkitt was first arrested in March 1909 at a demonstration in Wolverhampton. Two further arrests came in August in Hull and Leeds. In September Prime Minister Herbert Asquith arrived in Birmingham to hold a Budget Meeting at Bingley Hall. "As the meeting began, breaking glass outside signalled the beginning of the suffragette protest. Women had rented rooms around Bingley Hall and threw stones from the windows. Two women climbed onto the roof to dislodge slates and throw them at Asquith's car; they were eventually forced down by police soaking them with a fire hose."

Hilda was arrested along with Charlotte Marsh, Laura Ainsworth and Mary Leigh. They were all sentenced to two weeks' imprisonment. They immediately decided to go on hunger-strike, a strategy developed by Marion Wallace-Dunlop a few weeks earlier. Wallace-Dunlop had been immediately released when she had tried this in Holloway Prison, but the governor of Winson Green Prison, was willing to feed the women by force.

On the 20th September, 1909, Hilda declared in an official petition to the Home Office that until her political status was acknowledged, she would "refuse to take any Prison Food, & as far as is in my power I shall break all prison rules". She demanded that the Home Office "reply to my Petition at once, as if I should die through my fasting, my death will lie at your door." Hilda pointed out that she was "ready to lay down my life, to bring about the Freedom of my Sex."

Hilda refused to eat any food. "Hilda was examined in the morning by the prison doctor and one sent especially by the Home Office. That afternoon, she was taken to the prison kitchen, where four wardresses, a matron and two doctors attempted and eventually succeeded in restraining her to a chair with a blanket. Hilda shouted 'I will not take food! I refuse! I will not swallow!' and continued to resist attempts to feed her from a cup. In response, the prison doctor declared that ‘illegal or not, I'm going to use it' and proceeded to attempt feeding by nasal tube. Hilda continued to resist and coughed the tube out twice.... The doctors then gagged her and used a stomach tube to feed her through her mouth. Afterwards, Hilda repeated what she had said to the wardresses - 'I'm broken, but not beaten'. These experiences were repeated throughout her month in Winson Green as she undertook three hunger strikes, lasting 86, 91 and 24 hours respectively. Suffering great pain, she only managed sleep for four nights out of the entire month."

Mary Leigh, who went on hunger strike with Hilda, described what it was like to be force-fed: "On Saturday afternoon the wardress forced me onto the bed and two doctors came in. While I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long, with a funnel at the end; there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the right and left nostril on alternative days. The sensation is most painful - the drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I am on the bed pinned down by wardresses, one doctor holds the funnel end, and the other doctor forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down - about a pint of milk... egg and milk is sometimes used." Leigh's graphic account of the horrors of forcible feeding was published while she was still in prison. Afraid that she might die and become a martyr, it was decided to release her.

Hilda was released from Winson Green on the 18th October. Votes for Women reported that she was soon back campaigning. "Miss Hilda Burkitt released only last week from Winston Green Gaol, informs us that since her release three of her friends have promised to buy Votes for Women every week, and she hopes when she is strong enough to get about again to be able to persuade three or even six more to buy it regularly, "and so help to carry out our dear leader's wish".

Hilda and the other women who went on hunger strike were presented the WSPU's "For Valour" medal by Christabel Pankhurst. Hunger-strikes now became the accepted strategy of the WSPU. In one eighteen month period, Emmeline Pankhurst endured ten hunger-strikes. She later recalled: "Hunger-striking reduces a prisoner's weight very quickly, but thirst-striking reduces weight so alarmingly fast that prison doctors were at first thrown into absolute panic of fright. Later they became somewhat hardened, but even now they regard the thirst-strike with terror. I am not sure that I can convey to the reader the effect of days spent without a single drop of water taken into the system. The body cannot endure loss of moisture. It cries out in protest with every nerve. The muscles waste, the skin becomes shrunken and flabby, the facial appearance alters horribly, all these outward symptoms being eloquent of the acute suffering of the entire physical being. Every natural function is, of course, suspended, and the poisons which are unable to pass out of the body are retained and absorbed."

Hilda Burkitt was arrested in March 1912 for breaking windows in New Bond Street. A report of her case appeared in Votes for Women: "In addressing the jury she pointed out that anything she had done was not malicious. She said she did not think it was not much good saying anything in court, for she knew her sentence was already decided, but it was time this fight was put a stop to, they did not want to spend their lives in prison, but they did want to remove the stain and stigma on women. She refused to be bound over, saying she would consider it a disgrace to womanhood to do so." Hilda was sentenced to four months' imprisonment.

In July 1912, Emmeline Pankhurst gave permission for Christabel Pankhurst, to launch a secret arson campaign. She knew that she was likely to be arrested and so she decided to move to Paris. Attempts were made by suffragettes to burn down the houses of two members of the government who opposed women having the vote. These attempts failed but soon afterwards, a house being built for David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was badly damaged by suffragettes.

As Fern Riddell has pointed out: "From 1912 to 1914, Christabel Pankhurst orchestrated a nationwide bombing and arson campaign the likes of which Britain had never seen before and hasn't experienced since. Hundreds of attacks by either bombs or fire, carried out by women using codenames and aliases, destroyed timber yards, cotton mills, railway stations, MPs' homes, mansions, racecourses, sporting pavilions, churches, glasshouses, even Edinburgh's Royal Observatory. Chemical attacks on postmen, postboxes, golfing greens and even the prime minister - whenever a suffragette could get close enough - left victims with terrible burns and sorely irritated eyes and throats, and destroyed precious correspondence."

The WSPU used a secret group called Young Hot Bloods to carry out these acts. No married women were eligible for membership. The existence of the group remained a closely guarded secret until May 1913, when it was uncovered as a result of a conspiracy trial of eight members of the suffragette leadership, including Flora Drummond, Annie Kenney and Rachel Barrett. During the trial, Barrett said: "When we hear of a bomb being thrown we say 'Thank God for that'. If we have any qualms of conscience, it is not because of things that happen, but because of things that have been left undone." It has speculated that this group included Hilda Burkitt, Helen Craggs, Olive Hockin, Kitty Marion, Lilian Lenton, Mary Richardson, Miriam Pratt, Norah Smyth, Clara Giveen, Olive Wharry and Florence Tunks.

Hilda Burkitt's first partner was Clara Giveen. On 25th November 1913 Hilda was arrested with Clara Giveen for attempting to set fire to the grandstand at the Headingley Football Ground the property of The Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Company. The Yorkshire Evening Post reported that Clara Giveen had "escaped from the supervision of the police in Birmingham, to which town she went on Saturday, just before the expiration of her licence."

Hilda went on the run before joining up with Florence Tunks, a 22 year old bookkeeper in Cardiff, to carry out a series of arson attacks. On 11th April 1914 they arrived in Suffolk for two weeks of arson. "They then moved through Suffolk, riding bicycles across the countryside and leaving phosphorus in haystacks, which would combust a day or so after they had left."

On 17th April they bombed the Britannia Pavilion on the pier in Great Yarmouth had been reduced to "a shapeless mass of twisted girders and charred woodwork." The owner of the Pavilion received a letter bearing one word, "Retribution", and a "Votes for Women" postcard was found on the sands with comments about Reginald McKenna, the Home Secretary: "Mr McKenna has nearly killed Mrs Pankhurst. We can show no mercy until women are enfranchised."

Burkitt and Tunks then travelled to Felixstowe where they took a room at Mayflower Cottage, the home of Daisy Meadows, whose father, George Meadows, was a bathing-machine proprietor. Daisy remembered the woman arriving with six cases of luggage and a bicycle. Two days later they said they were going to the theatre in Ipswich. Daisy said in court: "I didn't see them go out and didn't see them again until about five minutes to nine next morning."

Instead of going to the theatre, Burkitt and Tunks, had carried out an arson attack on the Bath Hotel, the oldest in the town. The hotel had been built in 1839 at a time when planners were attempting to establish the Suffolk town as a spa resort. No-one was in the hotel at the time of the fire as it was closed for the season. The cost of the damage was £35,000, estimated to be the equivalent of £2.6m today. They left a few clues: labels on the bushes saying "votes for women" and there was a banner that said "there will be no peace until women get the vote."

George Meadows was near the Bath Hotel when it was set on fire. He saw "two ladies there who were laughing, one was tall and the other short." He identified them as Burkitt and Tunks and they were arrested the next morning at Mayflower Cottage. The police searched their rooms before taking them into custody. They found two boxes of matches, four candles, a glazier's diamond, four copies of The Suffragette newspaper, a lamp, a hammer and pliers."

On 26 May 1914 Burkitt and Tunks were charged with "feloniously, unlawfully and maliciously" setting fire to two wheat stacks at Bucklesham Farm, worth £340 on 24 April; destroying a stack, worth £485 on 24 April at Levington; and setting fire to the Bath Hotel in Felixstowe, on 28 April. The women refused to answer any questions in court, sat on a table with their backs to the magistrate, and chatted while the evidence against them was presented.

During their trial at Suffolk Assizes the women refused to behave in the appropriate manner. The clerk was reading the the indictment when Burkitt shouted out, "Speak up, please, I can't hear." Asked to plead she replied "I don't recognise the jurisdiction of the Court at all. I don't recognize the Judge, or any of these men." While the Jury were being sworn Burkitt shouted "I object to all these men on the jury." Both women "giggled" and loudly laughed, and cried "No surrender." Tunks commented I don't recognize the Court at all.turned her back to the Court". Tunks turned her back to the Court, but was forcibly brought back by the wardresses. Burkitt shouted: "I am not going to keep quiet: I have come here to enjoy myself. I object to the whole of the jury. I am not going to listen to anything you have got to say."

On 29th May, 1914, Hilda Burkitt was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and Florence Tunks to nine months. Hilda told the judge to put on his black cap "and pass sentence of death or not waste his breath". Tunks "vowed that she would be out of prison before long, and that victory would be hers." In prison she was force-fed 292 times.

Mary Richardson was in prison with Burkitt and Tunks and wrote a letter about them that appeared in The Suffragette. "In wing C, within calling distance is Hilda Burkitt who is very weak now. She has lost a stone. She is sick with each feeding. She has been fed four times a day for over a fortnight at nine, twelve, four, and eight o'clock. Next to her is Florence Tunks. She has lost twenty-seven and a half-pounds, has had two teeth broken, is generally exhausted, and cannot stand without giddiness for more than a few minutes."

Recently-released prison records detailed how much food was force-fed, the attitude of the prisoner, their overall health and weight and any other occurrences. "Hilda Burkett was generally in good health, apparently, despite regular complaints of chest pain at night (said to be due to indigestion). Her decreasing weight was noted. By the middle of July, her weight had gone down to 98 lbs, 16 lbs below average weight for her height".

The British government declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914. Two days later, Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the NUWSS declared that the organization was suspending all political activity until the conflict was over. Fawcett supported the war effort but she refused to become involved in persuading young men to join the armed forces. The WSPU took a different view to the war. It was a spent force with very few active members. According to Martin Pugh, the WSPU were aware "that their campaign had been no more successful in winning the vote than that of the non-militants whom they so freely derided".

The WSPU carried out secret negotiations with the government and on the 10th August the government announced it was releasing all suffragettes from prison. In return, the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities and help the war effort. Christabel Pankhurst, arrived back in England after living in exile in Paris. She told the press: "I feel that my duty lies in England now, and I have come back. The British citizenship for which we suffragettes have been fighting is now in jeopardy."

After receiving a £2,000 grant from the government, the WSPU organised a demonstration in London. Members carried banners with slogans such as "We Demand the Right to Serve", "For Men Must Fight and Women Must Work" and "Let None Be Kaiser's Cat's Paws". At the meeting, attended by 30,000 people, Emmeline Pankhurst called on trade unions to let women work in those industries traditionally dominated by men. She told the audience: "What would be the good of a vote without a country to vote in!".

As part of the deal all suffragettes were released from prison. On 6th August 1914, Hilda Burkitt became a free woman. Hilda married Leonard Mitchener in 1916, and ran a café in St Albans. However they had separated by the 1930s. Eventually, Hilda moved to Birmingham and cared for an ailing aunt, before joining her sister Lillian in Morecambe in 1948.

Hilda Burkitt died on 7th March 1955. The Morecambe Guardian reported: "The lively days of agitation for women's suffrage are recalled by the death, which occurred last week in the Royal Lancaster Infirmary of Mrs Hilda Mitchener, 48, South Road, Morecambe, at the age of 78. Ardently associated with Mrs Pankhurst's campaign, Mrs Mitchener, who was well-known by her maiden name of Hilda Burkitt helped to organize the Women's Social and Political Union, and was the victim of personal attack and even suffered imprisonment. During her imprisonment she frequently went on hunger strikes. She was a native of Wolverhampton and had been in Morecambe seven years. She is survived by her husband, Mr Leonard Mitchener, two sisters and a brother."

On this day in 1891 suffragette Florence Tunks, the eldest of four daughters of Gilbert Samuel Tunks (1863–1933) and Elizabeth Hall Tunks (1866–1947) was born in Newport. The family moved to Cardiff in 1894 where Gilbert ran a mechanical and electric engineers and oven builders.

Florence became a bookkeeper and in 1913 she joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Soon afterwards she became a member of a secret group called the Young Hot Bloods that carried out acts of arson. No married women were eligible for membership. The existence of the group remained a closely guarded secret until May 1913, when it was uncovered as a result of a conspiracy trial of eight members of the suffragette leadership, including Flora Drummond, Annie Kenney and Rachel Barrett.

Tunks joined the Young Hot Bloods. It has argued that this group probably included Helen Craggs, Olive Hockin, Kitty Marion, Lilian Lenton, Miriam Pratt, Norah Smyth, Clara Giveen, Hilda Burkitt and Olive Wharry.

Florence was paired with an experienced fire-bomber, Hilda Burkitt, who was on the run at the time after working with Clara Giveen in Yorkshire. On 25th November 1913 Burkitt was arrested with Giveen for attempting to set fire to the grandstand at the Headingley Football Ground the property of The Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Company. However, both women managed to escape and went into hiding.

On 11th April 1914 Tunks and Burkitt arrived in Suffolk for two weeks of arson. "They then moved through Suffolk, riding bicycles across the countryside and leaving phosphorus in haystacks, which would combust a day or so after they had left."

Tunks and Burkitt then travelled to Felixstowe where they took a room at Mayflower Cottage, the home of Daisy Meadows, whose father, George Meadows, was a bathing-machine proprietor. Daisy remembered the woman arriving with six cases of luggage and a bicycle. Two days later they said they were going to the theatre in Ipswich. Daisy said in court: "I didn't see them go out and didn't see them again until about five minutes to nine next morning."

Instead of going to the theatre, Tunks and Burkitt, had carried out an arson attack on the Bath Hotel, the oldest in the town. The hotel had been built in 1839 at a time when planners were attempting to establish the Suffolk town as a spa resort. No-one was in the hotel at the time of the fire as it was closed for the season. The cost of the damage was £35,000 at the time, estimated to be the equivalent of £2.6m today. They left a few clues: labels on the bushes saying "votes for women" and there was a banner that said "there will be no peace until women get the vote."

Richard White, a commander in the Royal Navy, gave evidence that he had been standing outside the Bath Hotel at ten o'clock, just hours before the fire broke out. "I had my suspicions aroused... I knew that suffragettes were about. I had it at the back of my mind that probably that's what they might be." Hilda shouted abuse at Commander White, accusing him of trying to seduce them and threw her shoes at him. In court Gilbert Tunks told the court he had no knowledge of his daughter being a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU): "She told me she was going to Belfast to assist in an office there, organising."

Mary Richardson was in prison with Tunks and Burkitt and wrote a letter about them that appeared in The Suffragette. "In wing C, within calling distance is Hilda Burkitt who is very weak now. She has lost a stone. She is sick with each feeding. She has been fed four times a day for over a fortnight at nine, twelve, four, and eight o'clock. Next to her is Florence Tunks. She has lost twenty-seven and a half-pounds, has had two teeth broken, is generally exhausted, and cannot stand without giddiness for more than a few minutes."

As part of the deal all suffragettes were released from prison. On 6th August 1914, Florence Tunks became a free woman. Tunks studied for a certificate in nursing between 1915 and 1918 at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary in Derby and qualified as a nurse in London in 1923. After her retirement Tunks is listed on the Nursing Register as living with her widowed mother in the family home at Bisham Gardens in Highgate.

Florence Tunks never married and died in Glindon Nursing Home on Lewes Road in Eastbourne, East Sussex on 22nd February, 1985, aged 93.

Florence Tunks and Hilda Burkitt at Bury St Edmunds Assizes court (May, 1914)

On this day in 1883 pioneering doctor Matilda Ayrton died of tuberculosis, aged thirty-seven, at her home, 68 Sloane Street and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. Her husband, William Ayrton, married Hertha Ayrton in 1885.

Matilda Chaplin, the daughter of John Clarke Chaplin, a solicitor, was born in Honfleur in 1846. As a young woman she decided to become a doctor. She attended classes at the London School of Medicine for Women in 1867and passed the preliminary examination for the licence of the Society of Apothecaries just before the society closed its professional examinations to candidates who had not attended regular medical schools.

In 1869, Sophia Jex-Blake was trying to be admitted to medical classes at Edinburgh University. The university court refused consent for mixed classes and was not prepared to make special arrangements for Jex-Blake alone, but conceded that special classes for a group of women might be possible. Jex-Blake advertised for women to join her and Matilda Chaplin was one of those who accepted her invitation. In October 1869 Chaplin, together with four other women, passed the matriculation examination for Edinburgh University, the first women to be fully enrolled at a modern British university.

In 1870–71 Chaplin took high honours in anatomy and surgery at the extramural examinations of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh. In 1871 attended some medical classes in Paris. She was also involved in the struggle for women's suffrage and was a member of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage.

On 21st December, 1873 she married her cousin, Professor William Ayrton. The couple moved to Japan as her husband had just been appointed professor of physics and telegraphy at the new Imperial Engineering College in Tokyo. Matilda started a school for Japanese midwives while living in the country. She also continued with private medical studies and wrote and illustrated several newspaper articles about her travels. A daughter, Edith Ayrton, was born in 1879.

Matilda Ayrton continued with her studies and after obtaining a MD in Paris she became a licentiate of the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland in 1880. She then began practice in Sloane Street, while studying diseases of the eye at the Royal Free Hospital.

Matilda Ayrton died of tuberculosis on 19 July 1883, aged thirty-seven, at her home, 68 Sloane Street and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. Her husband, William Ayrton, married Hertha Ayrton in 1885.

On this day in 1922 George McGovern, the son of a Methodist minister, was born in Avon, South Dakota, on 19th July, 1922. A highly intelligent student, in 1940 he won a scholarship to study history at the North-Western University.

McGovern's education was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. McGovern joined the United States Air Force in 1943 and flew 35 combat missions as a B-24 bomber pilot in Europe. During the war McGovern won the Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war McGovern returned to North-Western University where he obtained a Ph.D in history. He later moved to Dakota Wesleyan University where he taught history and political science. He became involved in politics and became an active member of the Democratic Party in South Dakota. In 1956 he was elected to Congress, and in 1960 to the Senate. The following year he was appointed director of the Food for Peace Program. In this position he oversaw the donation of millions of tons of food to developing nations.

John F. Kennedy described McGovern as "the most decent man in the Senate". However, Eugene McCarthy, who shared his left-wing views, once remarked: "Talking to George is like eating a Chinese meal. An hour after it's over you wonder whether you really ate anything." In 1962 McGovern emerged as one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War.

In 1972 George McGovern won the party nomination as its presidential candidate. Given little chance of winning against the Republican Party candidate, Richard Nixon, several leading politicians, including Hubert Humphrey, refused to be his running-mate. Tom Eagleton accepted but a few weeks later was forced to resign after it was leaked to the press that he had two spells in hospital for mental depression. He was replaced by Sargent Shriver.

Harold Jackson has argued: "McGovern's campaign never recovered from the shifts and turns of this incident, but an already dismal performance was exacerbated by his rash promise of a guaranteed annual income for every American family. With no consideration of financial controls, he proposed a tax credit of $1,000 a year to every citizen. He was never able to give a convincing analysis of the plan, and it served mainly to outrage blue-collar and middle-class voters unable to grasp why their tax payments should apparently be offered to layabouts."

During the election campaign there was a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate complex in Washington. Reports by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, began to claim that some of Nixon's top officials were involved in organizing the Watergate break-in. However, this was not believed at the time and Nixon (46,631,189) had an easy victory over McGovern (28,422,015).

McGovern was re-elected to the Senate in 1974 and in 1976 President Gerald Ford named McGovern as a United Nations delegate to the General Assembly. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter appointed him as a UN delegate for the Special Session on Disarmament.

McGovern, whose autobiography, Grassroots, was published in 1978, lost his seat in the Senate in 1980 to a right-wing Republican Party candidate. For the next few years he was visiting professor at several institutions including Columbia University, Northwestern University, Cornell University and the University of Berlin. He also served as president of the Middle East Policy Council (1991-1998).

Other books published by McGovern included Terry: My Daughter's Life-And-Death Struggle with Alcoholism (1997), The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time (2001) and What It Means to Be a Democrat (2011).

George McGovern died on 21st October, 2012.