Jessie Boucherett

(Emilia) Jessie Boucherett (November 1825, North Willingham near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire – 18 October 1905, North Willingham) was an English campaigner for women's rights.

A strong Conservative from a landed family in Lincolnshire, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/themes/93/93708-content.html The Langham Place group] in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online (accessed 23 March 2008)] Jessie Boucherett was the youngest daughter of Louise Pigou and Ayscoghe Boucherett, descended from French Protestants.

Boucherett's activities for women's causes were inspired by reading the "English Woman's Journal", which reflected her own aims, and by an article in the "Edinburgh Review" about the problems of the many 'superfluous' women in England during the middle years of the nineteenth century, a time when there were far more women than men in the population. [ [http://www.sptw.org/text_hist.html History of the Society] at sptw.org, the web site of the Society for Promoting the Training of Women (accessed 23 March 2008)]

With Barbara Bodichon and Adelaide Ann Procter, Boucherett helped found the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women in 1859. This developed into the present-day Society for Promoting the Training of Women.

Also in 1859, Boucherett and Procter joined the Langham Place Group. A small but determined group which campaigned for the improvement of the situation of women, it was active between 1857 and 1866.

Boucherett was a promoter of the women's suffrage movement and a strong supporter of the Married Women's Property Act. She founded the "Englishwoman's Review" in 1866, and edited it until 1870, when she founded with Lydia Becker the "Women's Suffrage Journal". [Phillips, Melanie. "The Ascent of Woman: A History of the Suffragette Movement and the Ideas Behind It." London: Abacus, 2004. ISBN 0-349-11660-1. p. 132.]

Works

*"Hints on Self-Help for Young Women", 1863
*"The Condition of Women in France', 1868
*'How to Provide for Superfluous Women', in Josephine Butler, ed., "Women's Work and Women's Culture", 1869
*'The industrial position of women', in Theodore Stanton, ed., "The Woman Question in Europe", 1884

References

*F. Hays, "Women of the Day", 1885.
*Linda Walker, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31982 ‘Boucherett, (Emilia) Jessie (1825–1905)’] , "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007