Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy

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Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy

Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy (born November 30, 1833 in Eccles near Salford ; died March 12, 1918 in Manchester ) was a British feminist , women's rights activist , essayist and poet who also wrote under the pseudonyms E and Ignota . She was one of the great representatives of humanity in English history.

Early life

Elizabeth Wolstenholme was born in Manchester and baptized on December 15, 1833 in Eccles, Lancashire , where her father was a Methodist minister. She was the daughter of Reverend Joseph Wolstenholme, who died around 1843. She spent many years of growing up with her mother's family in Roe Green. Her mother Elizabeth had died when she was little and she was raised by her stepmother Mary (nee Lord). She attended the “Fulneck Moravian School” for two years, but was not allowed to continue studying or studying. Her brother Joseph Wolstenholme (1829-1891) became a mathematics professor at Cambridge University. She opened a private boarding school in Boothstown (near Worsley) and stayed there until May 1867 when she moved her facility to Congleton , Cheshire .

Campaigns

Women's education

Wolstenholme joined the College of Preceptors in 1862 because she was appalled by the sad standard of elementary school education for girls, and through this organization met Emily Davies. They fought together to ensure that girls were given the same access to higher education as boys. Wolstenholme founded the Manchester Schoolmistresses Association in 1865, and in 1866 he submitted an upbringing report to the Taunton Commission as one of the first women to give testimony on a parliamentary selection committee. In 1867 Wolstenholme represented Manchester at the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women. Emily Davies and Wolstenholme argued over how women should be tested at higher levels; Wolstenholme, who founded the Manchester branch of the Society for the Promotion of the Employment in Women in 1865, wanted a curriculum to develop professional skills, while Davies wanted women to be taught the same subject matter as men .

Women's rights

Wolstenholme founded the Manchester Committee for the Enfranchisement of Women (MCEW) in 1866 and has been a vigorous campaigner for women's suffrage in the UK for more than 50 years . She quit school in 1871 and became the women's movement's first paid employee when she was paid as a lobbyist in parliament to scrutinize laws that were unjust to women. She was nicknamed "The Scourge of the House of Commons" or "Watchdog over the Government" and took her role very seriously. When the local women's suffrage groups began to falter due to the disappointment of the fraudulent suffrage law, Wolstenholme was crucially important as they regrouped in 1867 under the name Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage, thereby keeping the Manchester Committee alive held.

Women's Franchise League and WSPU

In 1877 the women's suffrage campaign was centralized in the National Society for Women's Suffrage. Wolstenholme became a founding member (along with Harriet McIlquham and Alice Cliff Scatcherd) of the Women's Franchise League in 1889 . She left this organization and founded the "Women's Emancipation Union" in 1891, which was given up after the death of a benefactor.

Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy to right, next to Emmeline Pankhurst (1908)

Wolstenholme, who was a friend and colleague of Emmeline Pankhurst , was invited to join the WSPU's Executive Committee. She wrote an eyewitness account of the demonstrations at the "Boggart Hole Clough" (near Manchester) and the one called "White Sunday Hyde Park", where she was honored and given its own podium. She resigned from the WSPU in 1913 when the violent activities began to threaten human life. Wolstenholme became Vice President of the Tax Resistant League in the same year and supported the Lancashire and Cheshire Textile and other Workers' Representation Committee, which was formed in Manchester in 1903 and by Esther Roper was run.

versatility

Wolstenholme wasn't just an activist in one field, she wanted equality between the sexes. She was secretary of the Married Women's Property Committee from 1867 to 1882, until the last year the organization was dissolved because the campaign to pass the Married Women's Property Act 1882 was successful. In 1869 Wolstenholme invited Josephine Butler to become president of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which successfully fought for the 1886 laws to be repealed. In 1883 Wolstenholme worked for the Guardianship of Infants Committee, which successfully enforced the corresponding law in 1886.

Private life

Wolstenholme met the silk manufacturer, secularist and feminist Ben Elmy, whose father Benjamin had come from Southwold in Suffolk for a job when she moved to Congleton in 1867 and set up a "Ladies Education Society" which was also open to men. Elmy became active in the women's movement and joined his wife's committees. She began living with Elmy in the early 1870s, jointly following the Free Love movement that terrified her faithful Christian colleagues. When Wolstenholme became pregnant in 1874, her colleagues were outraged and demanded that the couple marry despite their personal beliefs. Although Wolstenholme and Elmy performed a civil marriage ceremony in front of a registry office in 1874, Elizabeth was forced to give up her job in London.

The Elmys moved to Buxton House in Buglawton and Wolstenholme gave birth to their son Frank in 1875. Although they could live comfortably by the standards of their time, the Elmys were by no means rich and Wolstenholme homeschooled their son. Wolstenholme publicly opposed the “Free Trade Law”, which ruined the silk trade in Congleton, and in 1881 he joined the “Fair Trade League”. The three factories that made crepe silk were liquidated in 1890 and Elmy retired due to poor health. The couple, who had become poor, remained married until Elmy's death in 1906.

Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy died on March 12, 1918, and her cremation took place in the Manchester crematorium.

Wolstenholme's merits and achievements were recognized throughout her life, but since then they have often only been mentioned in passing or even left out of the histories of the women's movement.

Works

An avid writer, Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy has written for the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, articles for the Westminster Review as Ignota, for Shafts and national journals. Martial arts pamphlets related to their campaigns were also published by organizations such as the Women's Emancipation Union.

The most important writings are:

  • The 'Report of the Married Women's Property Committee: Presented at the Final Meeting of their Friends and Subscribers' Manchester 1882.
  • 'The Infants' Act 1886: The record of three years' effort for Legislative Reform, with its results published by the Women's Printing Society 1888.
  • 'The Enfranchisement of Women' published by the Women's Emancipation Union 1892.

The British Library holds Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy's writings and those of the Guardianship of Infants Act and the Women's Emancipation Union.

As a poet and poet, Elizabeth Wolstenholme wrote the song 'The Song of the Insurgent Women' on November 14, 1906 and, as Ignota, 'War Against War in South Africa' on December 29, 1899.

Recognition after death

Blue plaque for Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy at Buxton House.

A blue plaque was put up for them at Buxton House in Buglawton by the Congleton Civic Society; it reads: “Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy 1839–1918 Campaigner for social, legal and political equality for women lived here 1874–1918”.

Her name and picture (and those of 58 other supporters of women's suffrage) are etched on the base of the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square , London, which was unveiled in late 2018.

literature

  • Elizabeth Crawford: The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928. Routledge 2003. ISBN 1-135-43402-6
  • Stanley Holton: Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women's Suffrage Movement. Routledge 2002. ISBN 9781134837878
  • Maureen Wright: Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and the Victorian Feminist Movement. The Biography of an Insurgent Woman. Manchester University Press 2011. ISBN 9780719081095

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Conclusion by Maureen Wright, the author of a biography on Wolstenholme.Retrieved April 13, 2019
  2. ^ Crawford, 2003, p. 225
  3. ^ Sandra Stanley Holton: Elmy, Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme (1833-1918), campaigner for women's rights. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press 2004. See also: Online edition, paid
  4. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 43
  5. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 60
  6. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 65
  7. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 55
  8. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 62
  9. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 71
  10. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 137
  11. ↑ Holton, 2002, p. 76
  12. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 157
  13. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 190
  14. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 185
  15. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 177
  16. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 251
  17. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 251
  18. ^ Wright, 2011, p. 251
  19. ↑ Millicent Fawcett statue unveiling: the women and men whose names will be on the plinth . iNews. Retrieved April 13, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Wolstenholme Elmy, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolstenholme Elmy, Elizabeth Clarke (full name); E (pseudonym); Ignota (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British suffragette, teacher, suffrage activist
DATE OF BIRTH baptized December 15, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Eccles (Greater Manchester) near Salford
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1918
Place of death Manchester