Barbara bodichon biography

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, 1827-1891, courtesy
of the National Portrait Gallery, London

Barbara Leigh Smith, the illegitimate daughter of Benjamin Leigh Smith, a Radical MP for Norwich, and Anne Longden, a milliner from Alfreton, Derbyshire, was born on 8 April 1827 near Robertsbridge, Sussex. Although her father was a member of the landed gentry, he held radical views and was a Dissenter, a Unitarian, a supporter of Free Trade, and was a benefactor to the poor. This family background, together with gender bias, made Barbara somewhat of an outsider throughout her life despite being born into wealth. The family left to live in the United States in July 1830 and lived there for almost two years before returning to England. Her mother died of tuberculosis in 1834 at Ryde on the Isle of Wight when Barbara was only seven years old. After the death of her mother, she was brought up by her father, first at Pelham Crescent, Hastings, and then later at 5 Blandford Square, Marylebone, in London.

Her father was an advocate of women's rights and treated Barbara in the same way as her brothers. She was educated at a Unitarian secondary school in Upper Clapton in London from 1838-1841. All of the Smith children had drawing lessons and Barbara may have participated in the art classes offered by Eliza Fox held in the library of her father's home. Barbara is also known to have had instruction from William Henry Hunt, Cornelius Varley, David Cox, and W. Collingwood Smith. In 1845 Barbara met Anna Mary Howitt, who was training to become an artist at Sass's art school in London, and who was acquainted with many of the artists who would later form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In 1849 Barbara enrolled to study drawing at Bedford College, the new Ladies' College in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury, in London. Her instructor was Francis Cary who had previously taught her friend Anna Mary Howitt at Sass's Academy. From April 1848, when Barbara became twenty-one, she became financia

Primary Sources

(1) In a book she wrote in 1939, Louisa Garrett Anderson described how in 1859 a group of women under the leadership of Barbara Bodichon, began meeting at Langham Place in London.

In 1859 Barbara Bodichon had started an office in Langham Place to act as a bureau for helping women to find paid work. By 1861 Emily Davies, Elizabeth Garrett, Sophia Jex-Blake, Louise Smith, Emily Faithfull, Anne Proctor and many others met there. It was a centre of feminism. They were comrades and worked for a great end. The need felt by women for openings to paid employment was written in the office books. Louie Smith said to her hairdresser: "Surely, now, hairdressing is a calling suitable for women?' 'Impossible, madam, he said, 'I myself took a fortnight to learn it."

(2) Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women (1854)

Matrimony is a civil and indissoluble contract between a consenting man and woman of competent capacity...

A man and wife are one person in law; the wife loses all her rights as a single woman, and her existence is entirely absorbed in that of her husband. He is civilly responsible for her acts; she lives under his protection or cover, and her condition is called coverture.

A woman's body belongs to her husband; she is in his custody, and he can enforce his right by a writ of   habeas corpus.

What was her personal property before marriage, such as money in hand, money at the bank, jewels, household goods, clothes, etc., becomes absolutely her husband's, and he may assign or dispose of them at his pleasure whether he and his wife live together or not.

A wife's chattels real (i.e., estates held during a term of years, or the next presentation to a church living, etc.) become her husband's by his doing some act to appropriate them; but, if the wife survives, she resumes her property.

Equity is defined to b

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-91) was one of the founders of the women's rights movement in Britain. She was born in Whatlington, near Battle, Sussex, died at nearby Robertsbridge, and was connected to the Hastings area throughout her life.

Barbara's father, Benjamin Leigh Smith, was an MP's eldest son. One of his four sisters married into the Nightingale family and produced a daughter, Florence; another married into the Bonham-Carter family. Smith's home was 5 Blandford Square, Marylebone, London, but from 1816 he inherited and purchased property near Hastings: Brown's Farm near Robertsbridge, with a house built around 1700 (extant), and Crowham Manor, Westfield, which included 200 acres. Although a member of the landed gentry, Smith held radical views. He was a Dissenter, a Unitarian, a supporter of Free Trade, and a benefactor to the poor. In 1826 he bore the cost of building a school for the inner city poor at Vincent Square, Westminster, and paid a penny a week towards the fees for each child, the same amount as paid by their parents.

Ben's father wanted him to marry Mary Shore, the sister of William Nightingale, an in-law by marriage; however, on a visit to his sister in Derbyshire in 1826 Smith met Anne Longden, a 25-year-old milliner from Alfreton. She became pregnant and Smith took her to a rented lodge at Whatlington, a small village in Sussex. There she lived as 'Mrs Leigh', the surname of Ben Smith's relations on the Isle of Wight. The child, Barbara, was born on 8 April 1827. Smith rode on horseback from Brown's Farm to visit them daily, and within eight weeks Anne was pregnant again. When little Ben was born the four of them went to America for two years, during which time another child was conceived. On their return to Sussex they lived openly together at Brown's (left), and had two more children. After their last child was born, in 1833, Anne became ill and Smith leased 9 Pelham Crescent, which faced the

Abstract

It is impossible not to be impressed by Barbara Leigh-Smith Bodichon. Her life is interesting for its diversity, rather than for any single accomplishment, and therefore she has posed a challenge for biographers. Most accounts of Bodichon, such as Sheila Hemstein's A Mid- Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1985) and Candida Ann Lacey's collection, Barbara Bodichon and the Langham Place Group (1987), have focused on her activities as a social reformer. The first complete biography since Hester Burton's Barbara Bodichon, 1827- 1891 (1949), is Pam Hirsch's Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel. Hirsch recognizes the relative neglect of Bodichon as a consequence of her multi-faceted career: 'She did many things, and historians seem to find it easier to understand and write about a man who pursued one 'great' goal. Women's lives and women's histories often look different, more diffuse and are (perhaps) harder to evaluate' (ix). While this generalization does not describe the historical treatment of many of Bodichon's friends and collaborators, such as George Eliot, Elizabeth Blackwell or Emily Davies - known for contributions in specific areas of Victorian culture and society - it does hold true for Bodichon. Her career combined political agitation for the Married Women's Property Act, the founding of the English Woman s Journal (1858), and the campaign to establish a college for women at Cambridge, culminating in the opening of Girton College in 1873. But Bodichon thought of herself as an artist - a painter. One of Hirsch's most important contributions is to call attention to the continuity of Bodichon's identity as an artist, even as she pursued her various activities on behalf of women.

Hirsch provides a variety of historical contexts to help explain Bodichon's achievements. We receive some background on topics ranging from Unitarianism to the obs