The production of this pamphlet marked an era in women's suffrage literature. It was impossible after this to doubt that a large body of thinking women, not the queens of society, but the women who wrote, read, thought, or worked, were in favor of having full admission to political rights and responsibilities.
The chief work of the society had now crystallized into five or six great centres. Edinburgh, under the presidency of Mrs. McLaren, assisted by Miss Wigham and Miss Kirkland, treasurer and secretary, was the recognized centre of activity for Scotland. In Ireland there was a committee in Dublin, of which Mrs. Haslam is the most active member; and the North of Ireland Committee, led by Miss Isabella Tod.[1] The three principal associations in England were those of London,[2] including the east and north-east counties; Manchester,[3] taking charge of the north of England and Wales, and Bristol[4] looking after the West. The officers of the several committees of the three kingdoms form a National Central Committee which has its headquarters in London and superintends all of the work bearing specially upon the action of parliament.
Petitions were still sent in, but no longer in such enormous numbers. It had become evident that parliament cared little for along roll of names from the unrepresented classes; they were now chiefly collected as a means of discovering how public opinion stood in any particular district. For instance, in 1879, a petition was sent from 1,447 women householders of Leicester. The total number of women householders in this town was 2,610, of 'whom only 1,991 could be applied to, and there is no reason to suppose that public opinion was more advanced in Leicester than in the majority of large manufacturing towns.
- ↑ Miss Tod gives the spirit to each movement in Ulster, which is the intellectual headquarters of Ireland. She is the pioneer in all matters of reform; she is asked to speak in churches; she instigated the efforts which led to girls participating in the benefits of the Irish Intermediate Education act, which was being restricted to boys; she has organized and has won friends and votes not only over her own district of Ulster, but in many other quarters of Ireland; and often when in England some indefinable torpor has crept over a meeting—as will happen at times—a few eloquent and heart-stirring words from her have been sufficient to raise the courage and revive the interest.
- ↑ Mrs. Peter A. Taylor, Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs. Lucas, Miss Biggs, Miss Rhoda Garrett, Miss Jessie Boucherett, Mrs. Arthur Arnold, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, Lady Harberton, Mrs. Pennington, Miss Helen Taylor, step-daughter of John Stuart Mill, Miss Henrietta Müller, member of the London school-board, and others.
- ↑ Mrs. Jacob Bright, Miss Becker, Mrs. Scatcherd, Miss Corbutt, Mr. Steinthal, Mrs. Thomasson, and others.
- ↑ Led by Mrs. Lillias Ashworth Hallett, Mrs. Helen Bright Clark, niece and daughter of John Bright, Mrs. Beddoe, Miss Snyder, Miss Estlin, the Priestman sisters, Miss Blackburn and Miss Colby. Eliza Sturge, Mrs. Ashford, Mrs. Matthews. Mrs. Ann Comen and Mrs. Alfred Osler, niece of Mrs. Peter Taylor, are the chief Birmingham and Nottingham workers.
