In 1838 the People’s Charter called for “a vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.” But what about women?
According to the autobiography of William Lovett, in a footnote no less, the leading Chartist wrote: ‘I may state here that the first draft of the Bill, afterwards called the People’s Charter, made provision for the suffrage of women, but as several members thought its adoption in the Bill might retard the suffrage of men, it was unfortunately left out’.
Women were no mere footnote to Chartism though. Between 1838 and 1852 there were just under one hundred Female Chartist Associations in England. Amongst these female-led groups was the Elland Female Radical Association, which was formed in March 1838 by Elizabeth Hanson, Mary Grassby and Susanna Fearnly. They agreed at their first meeting that:
“Females in all ages have been the best advocates for Liberty; for we give the first impulse in forming the infant mind; therefore, we deem it our duty, both as wives and mothers, to form a Female Association, in order to give and receive instruction in political knowledge, and to co-operate with our husbands and sons in their greatest work of regeneration.”
The Elland women, and many other female Chartists, had been driven to this cause in part by their opposition to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This established the workhouse as the only option for many seeking aid, with its enforced separation of wife from husband and children from parents.
According to a report in the Chartist newspaper, The Northern Star, Hanson said that the food provided to the poor in the workhouse ‘was calculated not to do them good, but to hasten them into eternity, and prepare subjects for the dissecting-knife’. The ‘dissecting-knife’ was a reference to the 1832 Anatomy Act which gave anatomy schools and doctors free access to corpses that were unclaimed after death, including those in the workhouses.
The Poor Law also denied relief to unmarried mothers, something the women of Elland singled out in an address to the Queen: ‘It is monstrously unjust to our daughters, particularly in the bastardy clauses, for it will of necessity drive them to commit suicide and child murder, which it has already done to an alarming extent’.
The women of Elland did more than just petition the Queen though. In March 1838 they ambushed Poor Law Guardians as they left a workhouse and ‘treated them with a roll in the snow’. One ‘stout portly man’ was so alarmed that he tried to bribe the women ‘with a gill of ale each’ if they let him escape.’ They refused.
The activities of the women of Elland were praised by the wider Chartist community. One meeting in Barnsley, so The Northern Star reported, ended with a cheer for ‘the patriotic women of Elland, who set such a noble example of resistance to the infernal New Poor Law’.
Another women who made frequent appearances in the columns of The Northern Star was Susanna Inge, founding member and secretary of the Female Charter Association of the City of London. In July 1842, Inge appealed ‘To the women of England’ to mobilise for the good of their sex and their country. She wrote of the poor treatment of women at the hands of men, who treat women ‘as an inferior creature, a slave to his pleasures and his will, and not as an equal and companion’.
‘Shall we sit still and tamely submit to a slavery against which our cheeks glow with shame and our hearts burn with indignation? No! Rouse yourselves to a sense of your merits. Assist those men who will, nay, who do, place women on equality with themselves in gaining their rights, and yours will be gained also.’
While Inge was the Secretary of the Female Chartist Association, our final female Chartist was described by The Morning Post as one of its ‘brightest ornaments’. ‘Miss Walker might say “I got up one night and made myself famous.”’ So observed a press report in October 1842.
Little is known about Mary Ann Walker, except that she achieved a high level of fame in late 1842, before disappearing from the historical record by mid-1843. At a meeting held in London to establish a Female Chartist Association in October 1842, Walker’s passionate defence of women’s right to have a role in politics even caught the attention of The Times, much to her own amazement. A flurry of public attention followed, with Punch reporting that ‘we are disposed to believe that female Chartism and Walker may be regarded as synonymous’. Her fame was such that in August 1843 attendees of Shakespeare’s Hamlet were hoaxed into believing that Walker would be performing, only to discover to their dismay that they had been hoodwinked.
Importantly though Walker spoke out not just for women’s rights. Her speeches attacked economic inequality, corruption, the wealth of the aristocracy and even the £100,000 of taxpayer’s money spent every year on the Queen Dowager. How, Walker asked, did ‘an old lady’ spend it? This raises an important point to end on. Women political activists are often caricatured as being solely concerned with women’s rights. The truth was that these women challenged injustices in every aspect of society and were vocal campaigners for the rights of all citizens.
Researched and written by Dr Katie Carpenter
Royal Holloway, Department of History.
