Emily Faithfull

Emily Faithfull (1835-1895) was an English women's rights activist, who founded "The Victoria Press" in London, in 1860. She was a member of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. She considered compositor's work (a comparatively lucrative trade of the time) to be a possible mode of employment for women to pursue. This upset the London Printer's Union, which was male-dominated and claimed that women lacked the intelligence and physical skill to be compositors. Her nephew was the actor Rutland Barrington. Amongst her friends she counted Richard Peacock, one of the founders of the Beyer Peacock locomotive company, to whom she dedicated the Edinburgh edition of her book "Three Visits To America" with the words to my "Friend Richard Peacock Esq of Gorton Hall" in 1882. She was also the witness to the marriage of Peacock's daughter Jane Peacock to William Taylor Birchenough, the son of John Birchenough another manufacturer cited in "Three Visits To America" for his treatment of women employees in his silk mill in Macclesfield, at the church that Richard Peacock built in Brookfield, Gorton.

References

*James S. Stone, "Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women's Rights". Toronto: P.D. Meany, 1994
*Emily Faithfull, "Three Visits to America". Edinburgh, 1884

External links

*Felicity Hunt, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37409 ‘Faithfull, Emily (1835–1895)’] , "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2005, accessed 11 Jan 2008
*worldcat id|lccn-n91-3361
* [http://gerald-massey.org.uk/faithfull/index.htm Emily Faithfull] biography & selected writings at gerald-massey.org.uk