Victorian ‘Anti-racism’ and Feminism in Britain

Abstract

Towards the end of the nineteenth century some individuals, such as the African-American Ida B. Wells, began to write about the close connections between racial prejudice and the politics of gender within the emerging civil rights and feminist movements. The historical geographies of such debates in Britain, debates that challenged racial prejudice within Britain, the British empire and in other parts of the globe, are relatively underexamined. Our knowledge of the extent to which these debates became aligned with first-wave feminist ideas is also limited. This article highlights one of the women, Catherine Impey, who was key to an emerging British discussion that critiqued racial prejudice in the British empire. Her journal, Anti-Caste, in which these discussions were aired was read by early feminists such as Wells and Isabella Ormston Ford. However, although Impey was supportive of some issues associated with the feminist movement, such as the demand for female suffrage, she is absent from feminist historiography. Through the example of the anti-caste movement, this article considers the extent to which the early feminist movement in Britain aligned itself with forms of prejudice beyond those of gender, and how the overlapping of such debates might have determined the extent to which Catherine Impey played a part in the emerging women's movement.

Keywords:

• anti-racism
• caste
• feminism
• race
• racism
• Victorian

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the organisers and those who participated in the discussion at «Feminism and History’, where a version of this article was presented. I would also like to thank Gay Edwards for her generous hospitality, and the Economic and Social Research Council, which supported the research.

Notes

¹The journal title was sometimes applied to the anti-caste movement. For example, following the death of F. Douglass, Anti-Caste supported the reprinting of his paper Why is the Negro Lynched? On the inside cover appeared a note: ‘We have felt that the most fitting tribute that we, of the Anti-Caste movement, can pay to the memory of this noble and faithful life is to issue broadcast—as far as means entrusted to us will allow—his last great appeal for justice’. Douglass, Why is the Negro Lynched?, Bridgwater: John Whitby and Sons, 1895.

²In 1895 the Gazette, which focused on issues of racial discrimination, civil rights and the political position of African-Americans, described Catherine as ‘one of our Staunchest English friends’. See Cleveland Gazette, 5 January 1895, p. 1. The Planet, founded in Virginia by a number of African-Americans, some former slaves, focused on lynchings, segregation and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

³For examples of discussions on the intersection between Quaker women and radical politics, see Heloise Brown, The Truest Form of Patriotism: Pacifist Feminism in Britain, 1870–1902, Manchester University Press, 2003; Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Kinship and Friendship: Quaker Women's Networks and the Women's Movement’, Women's History Review 14, September 2005, pp. 365–84.

⁴In this, she may have played a similar role to that of her Clark cousins; see Holton 2001.

⁵See Delap (2007) for a discussion of the importance of international connections for the formation of Anglo-American feminist ideas in the early twentieth century.

⁶For further discussion of feminism as a term that describes social and political action designed to confront interlocking class, gender and racial oppression, see Thompson (2002: 352, n7).

⁷This article uses ‘black’ in its broad context to include all ‘people of colour’.

⁸In a rare example, Catherine Impey's name does appear in the list of those who made a Declaration in favour of women's suffrage, published in 1889. Interestingly, she is found among women associated with ‘literature’, presumably in recognition of her Anti-Caste publication. Declaration in favour of women's suffrage: being the signatures received at the office of the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage, London and National Society for Women's Service Central Committee, London School of Economics Pamphlets (1889).

⁹Letter to F. Chesson, March 1886, Brit Emp S. 18 C138/163–174, Rhodes House, Oxford. Ellen Impey also appears on the Declaration in favour of women's suffrage alongside her mother under the grouping ‘women in business’: Mrs Impey, Jam Manufacturer, Somerset, Miss Impey, Seed Grower, Somerset. London School of Economics Pamphlets (1889).

¹⁰ An Appeal Concerning the Treatment of Coloured Races, MSS Brit Emp S. 20/8, Rhodes House, Oxford.

¹¹ Anti-Caste, March 1888, p. 1.

¹²Dr Muthu's biography is yet to be recovered, reflecting the need for more research to be undertaken on the black presence in Britain.

¹³Oldfield was also published in Shafts: see June 1893, p. 78.

¹⁴ Anti-Caste, March 1895, p. 8.

¹⁵ Anti-Caste, July and August 1890, p. 4.

¹⁶In the US, ‘first class’ was used by ordinary passengers, the Pulman car being the equivalent of British ‘first class’ (from Anti-Caste, March 1888, p. 3).

¹⁷Anti-Slavery Papers, MSS Brit Emp 20, Rhodes House, Oxford.

¹⁸ Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 14 April 1893, p. 4.

¹⁹The dispute was over Mayo's disapproval of Catherine's proposal of marriage to the Ceylonese doctor George Ferdinands, one of Mayo's lodgers. Wells reflected upon the events in her autobiography; see Duster 1972: 103–05. It is also discussed by Holton 2001 and Ware 1992.

²⁰ Anti-Caste itself ended with a joint issue for May and June 1893. According to an additional note made on Anti-Caste vi:5 and 6, May and June 1893 (in Rhodes House), this issue was edited by S. J. C. Edwards [Celestine Edwards] and Ida B. Wells with C. I. Brit Emp S.20 Rhodes House, Oxford.

²¹Examples of adverts and reports on Wells's talks in 1893 can be found in the Glasgow Herald (1 May, pp. 1, 2; p 1. 3, p. 6) and the Liverpool Mercury (4 May, p 1. 5, p. 6).

²² Shafts 2:15, 1894, p. 251.

²³As Ellen Impey used Shafts to advertise the farm's apples in 1893, it would seem that the sisters were aware of Shafts and its advertising potential.

²⁴For example, see Liverpool Mercury, 6 June 1894, p. 4; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 7 June 1894, pp. 4 6; Birmingham Daily Post, 7 June 1894, p. 5.

²⁵ The Woman's Signal, 19 April 1894, p. 265.

²⁶There is a reference to a ‘black worker’ named Mr Solomon in Portsmouth. He had been successful in selling numbers of Fraternity at meetings, telling audiences that the paper concerned himself and his people.

²⁷ Fraternity, August 1894, p. 4.

²⁸For example, see Wells's pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its phases, New York, 1892.

²⁹ Bond of Brotherhood, March 1894, p. 4.

³⁰This is the final issue of the journal that remains in the archive of the Library of the Society of Friends, which, to date, is the most complete original copy in the UK.

³¹ Fraternity, January 1897, p. 1.

³²When he published Lyrics of Love and Laughter in 1903, he dedicated it to Impey (Dunbar 1903).

³³From the Impey's ‘Visitor's Book’ in a private archive.

³⁴See, for example, letter to The Times, ‘The Colour Riots: Reasons For Repatriation’, 14 June 1919, p. 8; and ‘Black Men and White Girls’, The Times, 1 July 1919, p. 4.