The Woman Who Stood For Parliament... in 1885
Almost 34 years before it was allowed.
In the UK, women didn’t get the vote until 1918… and even then, it was limited to certain women, meeting certain criteria, substantially more restrictive than the criteria applied to men at that time. But 34 years before that milestone, one woman attempted to go even further and get herself elected to Parliament. This is the story of Helen Taylor, would-be MP for Camberwell North… and also her remarkable mother. All that’s for the main feature.
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History Radar
🗣 👩🏽🏫 SPITALFIELDS: The Gentle Author has announced a new season of talks “by those from Spitalfields or about Spitalfields” at Hanbury Hall. Talks include Griff Rhys Jones on the campaign to save Liverpool Street Station (or, more accurately, its current appearance); Morris Goldstein on the Lost Whitechapel Boy; Stefan Dickers on the Treasures of the Bishopsgate Institute; and An Audience with Dame Sian Phillips. Further talks run through next year.
👧🏾 👨👩👧 BRADY GIRLS: Also in the East End, The Brady Girls' Club ran End from 1920 to 1970, and — during the war years — offered shelter and practical help to hundreds of young women and local families. The club also improved the life-chances of many impoverished immigrants in the community. At the Atrium Gallery of London Metropolitan University in Aldgate, you can see photos of the club in action.
🧵 SMALL MUSEUM: Did you know that London has a sewing machine museum? This Saturday (7 October) is its monthly open day. Head to Balham to view the collection of 600+ machines, including one which was owned by Queen Victoria's daughter.
🔥🏚 REBUILDING LONDON: Next Tuesday, Guildhall Library offers an insight into how London was rebuilt after much of it was destroyed in the Great Fire. Pete Smith discusses some of the individuals who were involved in the rebuilding and reorganisation, helping to shape the capital into what it is today. Watch for free either in person at Guildhall Library, or online.
💣 BOMBSITES: Choose your talks carefully, though, because at exactly the same time as the Guildhall lecture, London Metropolitan Archives offers a look at how the bombsites around London in the 1950s were turned into junk playgrounds, with children using waste materials as play apparatus. Hear from Professor Ben Highmore about how there came to be around 100 of these playgrounds in the capital.
👩🏽🦰 👩🏾🦱 HISTORY OF WOMEN: Then on Wednesday next week, author Annabelle Hirsch is at Stanfords Battersea to discuss her new book, A History of Women in 101 Objects, with author and broadcaster Salena Godden. Hear about extraordinary and everyday objects which tell a new story of female history.
👨🏾 🗳 BLACK HISTORY: As Black History Month continues, author and actor Paterson Joseph tells the story of Charles Ignatius Sancho, a Black man who escaped slavery and ended up in London where he met the King and became the first Black person to vote in Britain. It's an online event, hosted by the National Archives.
And now for the main feature…
The Woman who Stood as an MP… 34 Years Before the Law Caught Up
There are still Brits alive today (just about) who were born in the age of men-only voting. Women were entirely disenfranchised until 1918 and, even then, they had to be over 30 and meet certain property restrictions. In that same year, the barrier to women becoming Members of Parliament was also lifted. Constance Markievicz became the first woman MP in December 1918 (but did not take her seat), while Nancy Astor was the first to enter the Commons in December 1919.
All this is well known. Less commonly remembered is the woman who beat them to the hustings by 34 years. Helen Taylor (1831-1907), a noted South London educational campaigner, put herself forward to represent Camberwell North at the 1885 General Election. She had plenty of backing, and good reason to believe she might be successful. Her story is a fascinating one but – as with Mary Wollstonecraft and daughter Mary Shelley a couple of generations earlier – it can’t be told without first considering the groundbreaking career of her mother…
The complicated life of Harriet Taylor Mill
Harriet Hardy was born on Beckford Place1, Walworth, south London in 1808. Aged 18, she married a druggist named John Taylor. The couple must have been well off, as they soon moved to one of those stuccoed Nash terraces, just west of Regent’s Park, which are today worth millions2. Here, they brought up three children, of whom Helen Taylor was the youngest.
To outsiders, theirs was a fairly typical upper-middle class life. But Harriet wanted more than the stifling, unfulfilling role that society expected of her. “Women are educated for one single object,” she wrote in 1833, “to gain their living by marrying… to be married is the object of their existence… and that object being gained they do really cease to exist as to anything worth calling life or any useful purpose”.
She wrote those words at a time when her own marriage to John Taylor was under fatal strain. Harriet had made the acquaintance of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, and increasingly sought out his society. The pair were powerfully drawn to each other, with a long-smouldering and deeply intellectual attraction that will, surely, one day, find its way into a Hollywood screenplay. Harriet found herself caught between two Johns: run-of-the-mill versus run-off-with-Mill. She chose both.
Although Harriet and John #1 soon agreed to separate, they kept in regular contact. Harriet even moved back in to nurse him in his final months. Meanwhile, she’d go on foreign jaunts and spend long weekends with John #2, often with her kids in tow. It was all so very, deliciously scandalous, yet somehow the situation never blew up into full public disgrace. After her estranged husband’s death in 1849, Harriet Taylor married John Stuart Mill to become Harriet Taylor Mill — the name by which history remembers her — though not until two years had elapsed. Some Victorian proprieties had to be observed.
While love triangles are always fascinating, it is the intellectual side of Harriet that should really concern us here. She wrote numerous important texts, including the hugely influential “The Enfranchisement of Women” in 1851, but also took up causes such as domestic violence, women’s education and the unfairness of marriage laws.
The extent of her collaboration with Mill — widely regarded as one of the leading political philosophers of all time — is hotly debated among academics. It’s clear she played a crucial role in shaping his thoughts and writings, to the point where she can be considered his regular co-author. Mill acknowledged as much in his autobiography: “When two persons have their thoughts and speculations completely in common it is of little consequence, in respect of the question of originality, which of them holds the pen"3.
Sadly, the partnership did not have long to flourish. Harriet died in 1858 just seven years after their marriage. But another Taylor was waiting in the wings…
In her mother’s footsteps
After Harriet’s death, her daughter Helen grew closer to Mill. She began by assisting her step-father with his day-to-day correspondence but, like her mother, also forged an intellectual partnership with the renowned philosopher. Her input is suspected in many of Mill’s later works, and he clearly acknowledges Helen’s (and Harriet’s) contribution in his autobiography: “Whoever… may think of me and my work… must never forget that it is the product not of one intellect and conscience but of three, the least considerable of whom, and above all the least original, is the one whose name is attached to it.”
In 1873, it was Mill’s turn to shuffle off this mortal coil. Helen must have been devastated, but the loss freed her up to pursue her own political career. Most of her energy was ploughed into education reform. Like her mother and step-father, she believed in universal and free education, and also lobbied hard to end physical punishment in schools, and for equal pay for woman teachers. She was elected to the London School Board in 1876, representing Southwark.
By 1878, Taylor had built up a strong reputation in local politics. The papers of the time speculated that she might even run for Parliament. Actually, it was a bit more than speculation: “It is now definitely decided that Miss Helen Taylor will be a candidate for the representation of Southwark at the next election,” was one syndicated message.
Derisory opinions about the idea of a female MP were not in short supply. “What a pity it would be to see so fine a woman lost to society as an M.P.,” wrote one columnist, “when she could far better serve her country by establishing Penitentiaries in the great towns of England, where she could superintend the washing and mangling of clothes for industrial schools.” Misogynistic put-downs, it seems, have always been with us.
Helen Taylor denied she was standing. Numerous papers printed her refutation, saying that the proposal was “not only made without her knowledge or consent, but is entirely repugnant to her own feelings”. Seven years later, those feelings would be very different.
Helen Taylor stands for Parliament
Taylor finally declared her candidature, this time for Camberwell North, in the autumn of 1885, standing as an Independent Radical Democrat. Taylor was seen as a local candidate (then, as now, not always a given), having for years represented Southwark on the London School Board. Her home, however, was 13 Harrington Road in distant South Kensington.
Many argued that she was wasting her time. It was expected, and had always been the case, that those wishing to sit in the House of Commons must be men. This seemed to be backed up in legislation. The 1832 Representation of the People Act was drenched in male pronouns. Taylor and her supporters countered that “men” didn’t necessarily mean “just men”, and that plenty of other legal documents used male terminology when talking about the wider population4.
Taylor’s manifesto was radical, but also popular. She spoke up for a six-hour working day on greater wages, which would create more jobs and also make working conditions less onerous. She wanted land reforms, to better share out real estate among the populace. She advocated for free education and free justice. Home rule for Ireland! No wars that are not voted for by the people!
Taylor was keen to point out that she wasn’t just standing to challenge the no-women-in-Parliament laws, but also because she wanted to push this radical agenda. She found broad support, but also vocal critics. Press reports speak of occasionally violent scenes at her public addresses, which were received with “mingled cheers and hisses”. Chairs were thrown. People got whiney. On the other hand, influential men such as Henry George and George Holyoake (incidentally, the man who coined the word “jingoism”) campaigned on her side. She stood a real chance of election.
Still, there remained the thorny issue of the law. Taylor’s plan was to first win the vote, and then pummel Parliament into letting her into the Commons. Several precedents would have encouraged her5. In 1828, Daniel O’Connell became the first openly Catholic MP for centuries. Before he could take his seat, he had to lobby for a change in law that meant he didn’t have to swear a Protestant-flavoured oath. Similarly, David Salomons was elected in 1851 but, as a Jew, refused the Christian-biased oath. He was not permitted to take his seat until later in the decade, when another law change finally allowed him in. Helen Taylor would also have looked to Charles Bradlaugh, who’d been refused his seat in the 1880 General Election on account of being atheist (he, too, eventually got his way after years of argument). If these three could challenge establishment prejudice, then why couldn’t she?
At the end of November 1885, the time came to hand over her nomination papers, the formal bit of admin that would have got her on the ballot paper. The Presiding Officer refused to accept them. He trotted out the now familiar line about the language of electoral law only applying to men. Taylor fought her corner, but was never going to convince the official. She’d fallen at the first hurdle, through no fault of her own.
There was talk of a legal battle, though it came to nought. The newspapers, of course, kept up their sexist mockery. “The principal feature of Helen’s programme was six hours work per day for the industrial classes,” noted one syndicated column. “… a clear indication that a lunatic asylum, and not St Stephen’s [Houses of Parliament], is her proper sphere”.
After her valiant attempt on the Commons ended, Taylor gradually retired from public life. She settled first to Avignon and later Torquay, where she died in 1907. Her gravestone reads “She fought for the people”.
Both Harriet and Helen Taylor lived remarkable lives, pushing progressive agendas against an entrenched patriarchy. Neither, to my knowledge, has any kind of memorial or monument. They might be (somewhat) heartened to know that, almost 140 years on, the House of Commons now includes 223 female MPs (although that’s still only 34%). The longest-serving of them all — indeed, of all time — is coincidentally the Member for Camberwell and Peckham. She also happens to be another London-born Harriet. So, if the Rt Hon. Harriet Harman MP happens to be reading, perhaps she could look into a Camberwell memorial for her groundbreaking almost-predecessor, Helen Taylor.
Just metres from where Charlie Chaplin would be born on East Street (probably… there is a little doubt) 81 years later.
The house, at 17 Kent Terrace, still exists, if English Heritage are looking around for a worthy place for a Blue Plaque.
I’ve only space to touch briefly on Harriet’s life here. A much fuller account can be found on the harriettaylormill.com website, devoted to her life and work.
Remarkably, this argument is still alive. As noted in a recent
news snippet, London’s all-male Garrick club does not explicitly ban women, but uses “he/his” pronouns within its rules. A prominent barrister is now suggesting that “he” and “she” are “interchangeable in the eyes of the law”, which could have implications for the Garrick’s member policy.Here I must acknowledge Smith, J., (2020) “Crossing the Border of Citizenship: Helen Taylor, the Independent Radical Democrat Candidate for Camberwell North, 1885”, which goes into detail about Helen’s campaign and the near-contemporary precedents.
We hope you enjoyed this newsletter from Londonist: Time Machine. Please do leave a comment below. And feel free to contact Matt on matt@londonist.com (or @MattFromLondon on the service formerly known as Twitter) with any feedback or suggestions. And remember to tell your history-loving friends all about us. Next week: A miscellany of bizarre historical objects found in London pubs.
What an interesting read and what an amazing woman. As a London born girl I am sorry to say that I had never heard of Helen Taylor, but after reading this article about her I will try to find out more about her. Surely someone out there can put into motion a petition to institute a memorial or blue plaque as suggested .