Jane Cobden

Jane Cobden
Portrait, 1890s
Born	Emma Jane Catherine Cobden (1851-04-28)28 April 1851 Westbourne Terrace, London, England
Died	7 July 1947(1947-07-07) (aged 96) Fernhurst, Surrey, England
Political party	Liberal
Spouse	Thomas Fisher Unwin ​ ​ (m. 1892; died 1935)​
Father	Richard Cobden
Relatives	Anne Cobden-Sanderson (sister)

Emma Jane Catherine Cobden (28 April 1851 – 7 July 1947) was a British Liberal politician who was active in many radical causes. A daughter of the Victorian reformer and statesman Richard Cobden, she was an early proponent of women's rights, and was one of two women elected to the inaugural London County Council in 1889. Her election was controversial; legal challenges to her eligibility hampered and eventually prevented her from serving as a councillor.

From her youth Jane Cobden, together with her sisters, sought to protect and develop the legacy of her father. She remained committed throughout her life to the "Cobdenite" issues of land reform, peace, and social justice, and was a consistent advocate for Irish independence from Britain. The battle for women's suffrage on equal terms with men, to which she made her first commitment in 1875, was her most enduring cause. Although she was sympathetic and supportive of those, including her sister Anne Cobden-Sanderson, who chose to campaign using militant, illegal methods, she kept her own activities within the law. She stayed in the Liberal Party, despite her profound disagreement with its stance on the suffrage issue.

After her marriage to the publisher Thomas Fisher Unwin in 1892, Jane Cobden extended her range of interests into the international field, in particular advancing the rights of the indigenous populations within colonial territories. As a convinced anti-imperialist she opposed the Boer War of 1899–1902, and after the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910 she attacked its introduction of segregationist policies. In the years prior to World War I she opposed Joseph Chamberlain's tariff reform crusade on the grounds of her father's free trade principles, and was prominent in the Liberal Party's revival of the land reform issue. In the 1920s she largely retired from public life, and in 1928 presented the old Cobden family residence, Dunford House, to the Cobden Memorial Association as a conference and education centre dedicated to the issues and causes that had defined Cobdenism.

Jane Cobden was born on 28 April 1851 in Westbourne Terrace, London. She was the third daughter and fourth child of

Because of his many absences from home, on parliamentary and other business, Richard Cobden was a somewhat remote figure to his daughters, although his letters indicate that he felt warmly towards them and that he wished to direct their political education. In later years they would all acknowledge his influence over their ideas. Both parents impressed on the girls their responsibilities for the poor in the local community; Jane Cobden's 1864 diary records visits to homes and workhouses. She and her younger sister Anne, at the ages of 12 and 10 respectively, taught classes in the local village school. The girls were encouraged by their father to contribute what money they possessed to relieve local poverty: "Do not keep the money ... as you have now made up your minds to give it to poor sufferers, let your own neighbours have it. Your Mama will tell you how to dispose of it, and tell me all about it".[10]

Richard Cobden died after a severe bronchial attack on 2 April 1865, a few weeks before Jane's 14th birthday.^[11] There followed a time of domestic uncertainty and financial worry, eventually resolved by a pension from the government of £1,500 a year, and the establishment of a "Cobden Tribute Fund" by his friends and followers.^[12] After their father's death Jane and Anne attended Warrington Lodge school in Maida Hill but, following a disagreement the nature of which is unclear, both were removed from the school—"thrown on my hands", their mother complained.^[13] In this difficult time, Catherine did not withdraw into seclusion; in 1866 she supervised the re-publication of her husband's Political Writings,^[12] and in the same year became one of the 1,499 signatories to the "Ladies Petition", an event that the historian Sophia Van Wingerden marks as the beginning of the organised women's suffrage movement.^[14]

In 1869 Dunford House was let. Catherine and her four younger daughters moved to a house in

During these years Jane often travelled abroad. In London, she and her sisters extended their range of acquaintances into literary and artistic circles; among their new friends were the writer George MacDonald and the Pre-Raphaelites William and Jane Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Ellen later married the painter Walter Sickert.^[10] Jane developed an interest in the question of women's suffrage after attending a conference in London, in 1871.^[18] In 1875 she made a specific commitment to this cause, although she did not become active in the movement for several years.^[1] In the meantime, in 1879, she helped to found the Cobden Club in Heyshott, close to her father's birthplace.^[10]

From the late 1870s the Cobden sisters began to follow different pathways. Anne married Thomas Sanderson in 1882; inspired by her friendships within the Morris circle, her interests turned towards arts and crafts and eventually to socialism.^[19] After her marriage to Sickert failed, Ellen became a novelist.^[10] Jane became an active Liberal, on the radical wing of the party. In about 1879 she became a member of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, which had been founded in 1867 in the wake of the 1866 "Ladies Petition".^[20] Jane joined the National Society's finance committee, and by 1880 was serving as its treasurer.^[18] That year she was a speaker at a "Grand Demonstration" at St James's Hall, London, and in the following year addressed a similar meeting in Bradford.^[18] In 1883 she attended a conference in Leeds, jointly organised by the National Liberal Federation and the National Reform Union, where she supported a motion proposed by Henry William Crosskey and seconded by Walter McLaren (John Bright's nephew), to extend the vote in parliamentary elections to certain women—those who, "possessing the qualifications that entitle men to vote, have now the right of voting in all matters of local government".^[21]

The National Society's general stance was cautious; it avoided close identification with political parties, and for this reason would not accept affiliation from branches of the Women's Liberal Federation.^[22] This, and its policy of excluding married women from any extension of the franchise, led to a split in 1888, with the formation of a breakaway "Central National Society" (CNS). Jane joined the executive committee of the new body, which encouraged the affiliation of Women's Liberal Associations and hoped that a future Liberal government would grant women's enfranchisement. However, the more radical members of the CNS felt that its commitment to votes for married women was too half-hearted.^[23] In 1889 this group, which included Jane Cobden and Emmeline Pankhurst, formed the Women's Franchise League (WFL) with a specific policy of seeking votes for women on the same basis as for men, and the eligibility of women for all offices.^[24]

In 1848, Richard Cobden had written: "Almost every crime and outrage in Ireland is connected with the occupation or ownership of land ... if I had the power, I would always make the proprietors of the soil resident, by breaking up the large properties. In other words, I would give Ireland to the Irish".

Under the

The women took their places on the inaugural council, and each accepted a range of committee assignments. Almost immediately, however, Sandhurst's defeated Conservative opponent, Beresford Hope, lodged a legal challenge against her election. When this was heard on 18 March, the judges ruled Sandhurst disqualified under the provisions of the 1882 Act. Her appeal was dismissed, and Beresford Hope was installed in her place. Cobden faced no such challenge, since her runner-up was a fellow-Liberal who had promised to support her.[35] Even so, her position on the council remained precarious, particularly after an attempt in parliament to legalise women's rights to serve as county councillors gained little support. A provision of the prevailing election law provided that anyone elected, even improperly, could not be challenged after twelve months, so on legal advice Cobden refrained from attending council or committee meetings until February 1890. When the statutory twelve months elapsed without challenge, she resumed her full range of duties.^[36]

Although Cobden was now protected from challenge, the Conservative member for Westminster, Sir Walter De Souza, instituted fresh court proceedings against both Cobden and Cons. He argued that since they had been elected or selected unlawfully, their votes in the council had likewise been unlawful, making them liable to heavy financial penalties. In court the judge ruled against both women, though on appeal in April 1891 the penalties were reduced from an original £250 to a nominal £5. Cobden was urged by Lansbury and others not to pay even this token, but to go to prison; she declined this course of action. After a further parliamentary attempt to resolve the situation failed, she sat out the remaining months of her term as a councillor in silence, neither speaking nor voting, and did not seek re-election in the 1892 county elections.^[36] Women did not receive the right to sit on county councils until 1907, with the passage of the Qualification of Women Act.^{[37][38][n 5]}

In his account of the 1888–89 election, the historian Jonathan Schneer marks the campaign as a step in what he terms "working-class disenchantment with official Liberalism",^[32] citing in particular Lansbury's departure from the Liberal Party in 1892. Schneer also remarks that this "pioneering political venture of British feminism ... provides at once an anticipation of, and a direct contrast to, the militant suffragism of the Edwardian era".^[32][39]

In 1892, at the age of 41, Cobden married

Although Cobden's views were more progressive than those of the Liberal Party's mainstream, she stayed a member of the party, believing that it remained the best political vehicle whereby her causes could be advanced. Other suffragists, including Anne Cobden Sanderson, took a different view, and aligned themselves with socialist movements.^[44] When the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) began its militant campaign in 1905, Cobden refrained from participation in illegal actions, although she spoke out for her sister when Anne became one of the first suffragists to be sent to prison, after a demonstration outside Parliament in October 1906.^[19] On Anne's release a month later, Cobden and her husband attended a celebration banquet at the Savoy Hotel, together with other WSPU prisoners. Cobden moved closer to the militant wing in 1907 when she endorsed the WSPU's new magazine, Votes for Women. That year she hosted an "At Home" meeting at which the WSPU leader Christabel Pankhurst was the principal speaker.^[18] The WSPU was split when members who objected to the Pankhurst family's authoritarian leadership formed themselves into the Women's Freedom League;^[45] Cobden did not join Anne in the breakaway movement, although she supported its associated body, the Women's Tax Resistance League.^[18]

In 1911, Cobden was responsible for the Indian women's delegation in the

Although the cause of women's suffrage remained her principal concern, at least until the First World War, Cobden was active in other campaigns. In 1903 she defended the principles of free trade, as expressed by her father, against

After 1928, Jane Cobden's chief occupation was the organisation of her father's papers, some of which she placed in the British Museum.^[1] Others were eventually collected, with other Cobden family documents, by the West Sussex County Council Record Office at Chichester.^[2] In old age she lived quietly at Oatscroft, her home near Dunford House, and following her husband's death in 1935 made few interventions in public life.^[1] During the 1930s, under Hirst's direction, Dunford House continued to preach what Howe describes as "the pure milk of the Cobdenian faith": the conviction that in Britain and in continental Europe, peace and prosperity would develop from individual ownership of the soil.^[58] Jane Cobden died, aged 96, on 7 July 1947, at Whitehanger Nursing Home in Fernhurst, Surrey.^[1] In the years following her death her papers were collected and deposited as part of the family archive in Chichester.^[2] In 1952 Dunford House was transferred to the YMCA, although its general educational functions and mission remained unchanged. The house contains numerous memorabilia of the Cobden family.^[57]

Howe depicts Jane Cobden as a formidable personality, known by her husband's publishing colleagues as "The Jane", who took a keen and even intrusive interest in the work of the publishing house. She was, Howe says, "a woman of sentiment and enthusiasm who took up (and sometimes speedily dropped) causes with a fire which brooked no opposition".^[1] In an essay on the Cobden sisterhood, the feminist historian Sarah Richardson remarks on the different paths chosen by the sisters by which to take their father's legacy forward: "Jane's activities showed that it was still possible to follow a radical agenda within the aegis of Liberalism". Richardson indicates that the main collective achievement of Jane and her sisters was to ensure that the Cobden name, with its radical and progressive associations, survived well into the 20th century. "In doing so", Richardson concludes, "they proved themselves worthy successors to their father, guaranteeing that his contribution was not only sustained, but remodelled for a new age".^[59]

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Crawford, Elizabeth (1999). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928. London: UCL Press.
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• Jackson, Patrick (2012). Morley of Blackburn: A Literary and Political Biography of John Morley. Plymouth: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
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• O'Donnell, Michael (1908). Ireland and the Home Rule movement. Dublin: Maunsel & Co.
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• Richardson, Sarah, in Howe, Anthony and Morgan, Simon (eds): Nineteenth Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden bicentenary essays (2006). You Know Your Father's Heart: The Cobden Sisterhood and the Legacy of Richard Cobden. Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.
  ISBN 978-0-7546-5572-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
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• Rogers, Jean Scott (1990). Cobden and his Kate: The story of a marriage. London: Historical Publications.
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• Rosen, Andrew (1974). Rise Up, Women!. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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• Shepherd, John (2002). George Lansbury: At the Heart of Old Labour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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• ISBN 0-14-021181-0
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• Van Wingerden, Sophia A. (1999). The Women's Suffrage in Britain, 1866–1928. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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