Mrs Isa Craig Knox

Other sources: https://www.parliament.uk/1866
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866?1928 (2001)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3217/isa-craig-knox

Family information: Only child of a hosier and glover, Isa was orphaned at an early age. She married iron merchant John Knox in 1866. Her mother-in-law Margaret Knox also signed the 1866 petition.

Additional Information: Isa moved from Edinburgh to London in 1857. She started to make contributions to the English Women's Journal and, by 1865, sat on the managing committee of the Kensington Society, helping to organise the 1866 suffrage petition, which she signed. As a result of her work, she was encouraged by others to continue with suffrage campaigning and was asked to become secretary of the London Provisional Petition Committee, which formed later that year. She did not take the job, although the reason why remains unclear. When the Enfranchisement of Women Committee (EWC) formed in the autumn, she was again proposed as secretary. She became a member of the EWC but did not become its secretary. She does not seem to have joined any other suffrage societies, but did sign the Central Committee of the NSWS's Declaration in Favour of Women's Suffrage in 1889.

Other Suffrage Activities: Isa may have been discovered by Bessie Rayner Parkes as a potential suffrage campaigner when working as a needlewoman. However, she was already writing articles for The Scotsman, she got a job with the paper, and she may have met Bessie through the Waverley Journal, to which they both contributed. She moved to London in 1857 to take a job as assistant secretary and literary assistant to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science ? a position secured for her by Bessie Rayner Parkes. In 1859, she joined the committee of the Ladies Sanitary Association; co-founded the Telegraph School (teaching women to use new technology); and won a poetry prize (50 guineas). She also had her writing about slavery published by the Ladies Emancipation Society and, in 1865, a poem published in a collection, 'An Offering to Lancashire', the proceeds of which went to help struggling Lancashire cotton workers. She published several novels and books of poems, including Esther West (1870), Songs of Consolation (1874) and several children's books. In 1862, she sat on the committee to obtain women's admission to sit university exams.