Eleanor Rathbone

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Standard Name: Rathbone, Eleanor
Birth Name: Eleanor Florence Rathbone
Indexed Name: Eleanor F. Rathbone
Feminist politician ER is called by a recent biographer the most significant woman in British politics in the first half of the 20th century.
Johnson, Richard William. “Associated Prigs”. London Review of Books, 8 July 2004, pp. 19-21.
19
She wrote books, pamphlets, and essays on the various social and political causes to which she was committed throughout her long career. In many of her texts, she blends argument about more than one of the many movements or initiatives she supported, such as feminism and state-funded family endowments.
Sepia photograph of Eleanor Rathbone campaigning outdoors. She leans forward as she speaks, her hands on a table bearing a vase of white flowers, There are trees and a banner behind her. She is wearing, apparently, a loose-fitting white summer suit, and a black hat, elaborate but compact.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Alison Uttley
At Manchester, AU lived in the women's residence, Ashburne House. Formative teachers in her life included Hilda Oakeley
Oakeley, a Somerville College graduate and a close friend of Eleanor Rathbone , had a great impact...
Friends, Associates Amabel Williams-Ellis
Her political activities kept AWE at the centre of London's socially-conscious literary circles. Guests at The Well of Loneliness tea-party included Virginia Woolf , Rose Macaulay , Vita Sackville-West , G. B. Shaw , and...
Friends, Associates Maude Royden
Courtney and Royden served together as executive members of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) , of which in 1911 Courtney became secretary. They also worked together as vice-chairs for the Women's International League (WIL)
Literary responses Sylvia Pankhurst
Save the Mothers was well reviewed. George Bernard Shaw responded enthusiastically to the book, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence expressed her pleasure at its positive reception. Vera Brittain also praised it, favourably comparing SP 's activism for...
Occupation Maude Royden
MR served as a member of the Family Endowment Committee , which was organised by Eleanor Rathbone to investigate poverty in Britain and to instigate changes in the social and financial treatment of motherhood.
Lewis, Jane. “Beyond Suffrage: English Feminism in the 1920s”. The Maryland Historian, Vol.
vi
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 1975, pp. 1-18.
10-11
Spartacus Educational. 28 Feb. 2003, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/.
under Eleanor Rathbone
Occupation Maude Royden
In 1915 she resigned from the society, which had its source in the merging in 1887 of seventeen organizations devoted to campaigning for women's emancipation. Lydia Becker , then Millicent Garrett Fawcett , had been...
Occupation Maude Royden
Once women had received the vote, MR , whose feminism stressed the differences epitomized in maternity, joined Eleanor Rathbone and Mary Stocks in arguing that the status of motherhood should be raised to that of...
Occupation Maude Royden
In June 1921, they moved the Fellowship Services to the Guildhouse, Eccleston Square, where MR continued to preach until she resigned in December 1936. She resigned because, she said, I have to choose; and...
Occupation Maude Royden
Between 1923 and January 1924, she used this position to urge the Church to revise its marriage service by removing implications of female subordination in marriage, specifically the command that the wife obey the husband...
politics Marie Belloc Lowndes
The letter challenged a recent antisuffragist manifesto, and stressed three points from Prime Minister Asquith 's statement to suffragists of 14 August. The points were that women had rendered as effective service to their country...
politics Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Yet suffrage did not cease to be her goal. She was instrumental, after the passing of the Representation of the People Act giving the vote to women over thirty in February 1918, in getting the...
politics Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Apart from the suffrage issue, MGF 's political attitudes were those of the Liberal Party of the Victorian era. Though she strongly supported education for girls, she opposed universal free education (and the family allowances...
Publishing Eva Mary Bell
In 1920 EMB was listed as a regular contributor to the Woman's Supplement of The Times.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
42568 (15 November 1920): 14
On 31 October 1929, in the continuing aftermath of Katherine Mayo 's book...
Textual Features Rosita Forbes
RF builds her conclusion from the idea of two great influences in India that we, that is English people, are ignorant of: the influence of religion, and the influence of women. The latter is immeasurable...
Textual Features Ray Strachey
In this volume contributors Eleanor F. Rathbone , MP (a very early woman member of the House of Commons), Mary Agnes Hamilton , Erna Reiss , Alison Neilans , and RS herself assess the legal...

Timeline

1867: Liverpool philanthropist William Rathbone...

Building item

1867

Liverpool philanthropist William Rathbone (father of Eleanor Rathbone ) published a book arguing the necessity of organized rather than random acts of charity.
Roach, John. Social Reform in England 1780-1880. St Martin’s Press, 1978.
178

Early 1919: The National Union of Societies for Equal...

National or international item

Early 1919

The National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship formed from the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies to continue the campaign for equal suffrage.
Hannam, June. “Women and Politics”. Women’s History: Britain, 1850-1945, edited by June Purvis, University College London Press, 1995, pp. 217-45.
235

6 February 1920: The Woman's Leader (new incarnation of The...

Building item

6 February 1920

The Woman's Leader (new incarnation of The Common Cause) began publication in London. Under its new title it became the most substantial feminist periodical of the 1920s.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
44
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

1928: Members of the British Federation of University...

Building item

1928

Members of the British Federation of University Women (later known as the British Federation of Women Graduates ) established the Sybil Campbell Libraryfor the study of the expansion of the role of women in...

30 May 1929: Labour came in twenty-six votes ahead of...

National or international item

30 May 1929

Labour came in twenty-six votes ahead of the Conservatives in the first general election with full women's suffrage: the prospect of voting by women under thirty brought the demeaning nickname of the Flapper Election....

December 1929: The Duchess of Atholl spoke in the House...

National or international item

December 1929

The Duchess of Atholl spoke in the House of Commons on the issue of female circumcision or genital mutilation among the Kikuyu people of Kenya.
Pugh, Martin. Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain 1914 - 1959. Macmillan Education, 1992.
198
A peeress, whose title was properly not her...

March 1933: The Woman's Leader (formerly The Common Cause)...

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March 1933

The Woman's Leader (formerly The Common Cause) ended publication; once again it was revived in a new form, the following month, as The Townswoman.
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
44
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Bibliographers David Doughan and Denise Sanchez give a...

1935: The Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction...

Building item

1935

The Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction was founded; its leaders included economist H. A. L. Fisher , politician David Lloyd George , and activists Elizabeth Cadbury and Eleanor Rathbone .
Oakley, Ann. Man and Wife: Richard and Kay Titmuss: My Parents’ Early Years. HarperCollins, 1996.
68

15 June 1945: Family allowances were established in En...

Building item

15 June 1945

Family allowances were established in England.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
887
Law Reports: Statutes. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1866–2024.
1945: 538-58

Earlier 1981: Merseyside county councillor Margaret Simey,...

Building item

Earlier 1981

Merseyside county councillor Margaret Simey , already an activist on behalf of poor communities, became chairman of the Liverpool police authority not long before the Toxteth race riots broke out.
Clarke, Raymond. “Margaret Simey”. The Guardian, 29 July 2004, p. 29.
29

Texts

Rathbone, Eleanor. “A Personal View of the Refugee Problem”. New Statesman and Nation, pp. 568-9.
Rathbone, Eleanor. “Changes in Public Life”. Our Freedom and Its Results, edited by Ray Strachey, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1936.
Rathbone, Eleanor. Child Marriage: The Indian Minotaur. G. Allen and Unwin, 1934.
Rathbone, Eleanor et al. Equal Pay and the Family: A Proposal for the National Endowment of Motherhood. Headley, 1918.
Rathbone, Eleanor. Falsehoods and Facts about the Jews. V. Gollancz, 1945.
Rathbone, Eleanor. Report of an Inquiry into the Conditions of Dock Labour at the Liverpool Docks. Northern Publishing, 1904.
Rathbone, Eleanor. Rescue the Perishing. National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror, 1943.
Rathbone, Eleanor. The Case for Family Allowances. Penguin Books, 1940.
Rathbone, Eleanor. The Disinherited Family. E. Arnold, 1924.
Rathbone, Eleanor. “The Remuneration of Women’s Services”. The Making of Women: Oxford Essays in Feminism, edited by Victor Gollancz, George Allen and Unwin, 1917.
Rathbone, Eleanor, and Malcolm Thomson. War Can Be Averted. V. Gollancz, 1938.
Rathbone, Eleanor. William Rathbone: A Memoir. Macmillan, 1905.