Mrs Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon

Other sources: https://www.parliament.uk/1866
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw283432/Barbara-Leigh-Smith-Bodichon?LinkID=mp00463&search=sas&sText=barbara+leigh+smith+bodichon&OConly=true&role=sit&rNo=1
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866?1928 (2001); Pam Hirsch, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel (1998)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3203/what-were-the-suffrage-campaigners-fighting-for
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3212/to-what-extent-did-women-have-different-views-aims-and
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3206/parliament-and-the-suffrage-campaign

Family information: Daughter of radical Liberal MP Benjamin Leigh Smith and Ann Longden, who were not lawfully married. This was a scandalous situation for the time and Barbara was frowned upon by some members of her extended family for being born out of wedlock. She married Frenchman Eugene Bodichon in 1857.

Additional Information: Barbara was instrumental in the organisation of the 1866 petition. When J S Mill was elected to Parliament in 1865, he made clear his intention to raise the subject of votes for women, an idea put forward by his wife publicly, if anonymously, 14 years earlier. That same year, Barbara wrote a paper for the Kensington Society, which debated all matters related to women's rights, in reply to a set question: 'Is the extension of the Parliamentary suffrage to women desirable, and if so, under what conditions?' The Society voted in favour of women's suffrage and Barbara wished to take action straight away, suggesting a petition, to which Mill and his influential stepdaughter Helen Taylor agreed. Barbara was thence a significant driving force behind collecting signatures for the 1866 petition. She was invited to accompany the petition when it was handed over to Mill at Westminster, but was ill that day so could not attend. She also gave a well received paper to the Social Science Congress, 'Reasons for the Enfranchisement of Women'. She subscribed to the Enfranchisement of Women Committee (EWC) from February 1867 and was briefly its secretary that year. Thereafter, she focused more on other aspects of the women's movement, such as education and medicine, rather than women's suffrage, although she was pleased to attend a London NSWS meeting in 1869.

Other Suffrage Activities: In 1854, Barbara was a pioneer, opening a successful secular school, and that same year wrote an incisive pamphlet entitled 'A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws of England Concerning Women'. She was also instrumental in forming a ladies committee of the Law Amendment Society, whom she persuaded to consider the position of married women. A large petition was subsequently organised and drafted by Barbara on the matter ? one containing 3,000 signatures from women and others. It was presented to Parliament in 1856. Although it had little impact on Parliament, the committee formed to organise the petition was made up entirely of women, who discussed their own rights and formed the centre of a very influential feminist network. Barbara was one of the founders of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. And, with her friend Emily Davies, Barbara spent the rest of her life founding and developing Girton College.