Heroines of freethought: women of the early humanist movement

In advance of the second ever Humanist Heritage ‘wikithon’ event, focused on bringing to light the histories of the women of the humanist movement, Humanist Heritage Coordinator Madeleine Goodall writes about some of the freethinking women who made the movement and blazed a trail for humanism.

Humanist history

Humanists UK was formed nearly 125 years ago as the Union of Ethical Societies, bringing together the North, South, East, and West London Ethical Societies. One of its aims was to support local societies and, at the peak of such provision, there were over 40 individual societies across the UK, which emphasised living well without reference to supernatural punishment or reward and brought people together on that basis for the purposes of community and social action. The Union and its affiliated groups drew on a much longer tradition of freethinking people with social reform in mind. Strikingly, this was a tradition full of women, many of whom have been largely forgotten by history.

The brutal criticism faced by many early female freethinkers often focused on their sex: atheism and the rejection of traditional religious values gave rise to particular horror when expressed by women. In later years, the humanism of many women has often simply been left out of their biographies (where they have had biographies at all), even though these values underpinned lives and work focused on applying compassion, reason, and a sense of social responsibility to the betterment of society.

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‘Heroines of Freethought’

‘Heroines of Freethought’ was the title of an 1876 work by Sara Underwood that celebrated the lives of humanist women who lived and worked before the emergence of humanist organisations such as the ethical societies. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and Frances Wright (1795-1852) combined feminism and freethought in writing and lecturing for social reform. Followers of Robert Owen, who lectured widely in the name of socialism and secularism, numbered among them Margaret Chappellsmith (1806-1883), Ernestine Rose (1810-1892), and Emma Martin (1812-1851) –  all of whom drew particular ire as outspoken and ‘godless’ women.

The wave of blasphemy prosecutions in the first half of the 19th century, which famously targeted men like Richard Carlile and George Jacob Holyoake, also saw Matilda Roalfe, Susannah Wright, and Jane and Mary Ann Carlile prosecuted and imprisoned. Eliza Sharples, who became Carlile’s common law wife and took in a young Charles Bradlaugh, also believed passionately in the freedom of speech and belief, enduring poverty and hardship in their pursuit. Later, women like writer, war correspondent, suffragist, and traveller Lady Florence Dixie, further threw off the constraints of Victorian society to advance rational and empathetic reforms in everything from modes of dress to bloodsports. All of these radical freethinkers paved the way for humanist women to come.

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Women in the Ethical Societies

The UK’s first ethical society was formed in 1886 as the London Ethical Society, which aimed to formulate ‘a rational conception of human good,’ and to change society for the better. Its first lecture series, delivered at Toynbee Hall, featured mathematician and educator Sophie Bryant, and writer and feminist Anna Swanwick. Social theorist and reformer Helen Bosanquet was also an early speaker and active member. Sophie Bryant served on the society’s executive committee, and was a driving force in its becoming the School of Ethics and Philosophy in 1897. Another key figure in the LES was Derry-born Mary Gilliland Husband, an indefatigable speaker and writer for the ethical societies, whose ‘unfailing energy, sympathy, and tactful influence’ was praised – and its loss mourned – on her retirement in 1895.

Subscribers to the Cambridge Ethical Society, founded in 1888, included academic and agnostic Ellen Wordsworth Darwin, historian Alice Gardner, and pioneering Welsh teacher Elizabeth Phillips Hughes, who was the first woman at the University of Cambridge to achieve first class honours in Moral Sciences (many decades before women could officially obtain degrees). The East London Ethical Society, founded the following year in 1889, had for its aim ‘the development of good character and the promotion of right conduct on a purely human basis’. An early lecturer there was the civil servant Clara Collet, a lifelong promoter of women’s rights.

The West London Ethical Society is most often associated with its longtime leader Stanton Coit, but a major figure in its 1892 formation and ongoing operation  was Ruth Homan. Homan was an educationist, women’s welfare campaigner, and active participant in numerous societies devoted to education, women’s rights, and the welfare of the poor. Similarly significant in the long life of the society, which later rebranded as the ‘Ethical Church’, was Adela Coit, whose financial support enabled the leasing of the Bayswater building in 1909. Adela Coit was a prominent suffragist, active in the British and international suffrage movement, as well as in the life of the ethical societies. At her funeral service in 1932, Harry Snell recalled her as ‘a quiet, almost unseen, yet potent influence’, who ‘helped both to create and to sustain in others the spirit of virtue and loyalty.’

This ‘almost unseen’ but deeply felt influence recalls descriptions of Ellen Dana Conway, from whom it was said that ‘much of the best work at South Place originated’. Like her husband, Moncure Conway, who led South Place (now Conway Hall) ever closer to humanism, Ellen Dana Conway was an abolitionist and freethinker. At her death in 1897 her husband noted that ‘her beautiful life, her truth, her unwearied charities, proceeded from her own heart. They were not inspired by any thought of reward on earth or in heaven.’

Formed in the same year as the West London Ethical Society, the South London group spoke proudly of its ‘democratic sociability’. Two leading women in the society, who helped to shape its distinctive and enduringly popular character, were Florence Aspasia Law and Nellie Slous Freeman. Law was the society’s inaugural secretary, and the daughter of famed secularist speaker Harriet Law. Freeman, ‘a gentle school teacher from a free-thinking family’ and subsequent secretary of the society, was also secretary of the council of the Union of Ethical Societies for two decades, and described as being ‘devoted to [her] very last days to the work of the Movement’. Nellie Freeman gave her time to the Young People’s Group of the Ethical Movement, the Women’s Group, and the Secular Education League. She also helped to found her local branch of the Women’s Liberal Federation being, like many women in the ethical societies, actively interested in progressive social reform.

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Humanists UK’s founding women

The Union of Ethical Societies was shaped and sustained by women as well as men, a fact that has often gone unremarked or underappreciated. These women were typically activists in multiple areas of social reform, and pioneers in many fields of work, motivated by long-held and deeply felt humanist values.

The first annual congress of the Union of Ethical Societies took place on 5 July 1896, under the presidency of Mrs. Elizabeth Schwann (later Swann). Nellie Freeman, Bessie Mabbs, and May Seaton-Tiedeman were some of her successors. The Union’s inaugural Honorary Secretary (the equivalent of today’s Chief Executive) was feminist writer Zona Vallance, followed in 1900 by Florence Winterbottom, and later by Nellie Freeman. The official role of President was created in 1919, and from 1941, until her death the following year, it was held by philosopher L. Susan Stebbing.

Elizabeth Schwann was a lifelong champion of progressive causes, and a passionate advocate of women’s suffrage, trade unionism, Irish home rule, and humane social reform. Along with her husband, Liberal MP Charles Schwann, she was an early and active ethical society member.

Bessie Mabbs was a governess, teacher, and school principal, as well as extremely active in the social and intellectual life of the ethical societies. She was chair of the Executive Committee of the Union of Ethical Societies, and active in the Women’s Group.

May Seaton-Tiedeman was a tireless campaigner for changes to divorce laws. As honorary secretary of the Divorce Law Reform Union, she was motivated by long-held humanist values to address what she felt were grave injustices in the existing system. She was also involved in the Society for the Abolition of Blasphemy Laws, as well as being a longtime member of the Union of Ethical Societies and its executive committee.

Zona Vallance, who died in 1904 aged just 44, was a writer, lecturer, and organiser for the Ethical movement: the first honorary secretary of not only the Union of Ethical Societies, but also for the Moral Instruction League, which advocated for non-theological moral education in schools. She was a feminist and a socialist, who argued that ‘the very Hall-mark of Humanity is to sit in judgement upon the possible’.

Florence Winterbottom was an active part of the Ethical movement for over forty years, as well as a close friend and correspondent of Gandhi, who described her as being ‘among the rare men and women who find service its own reward’. Winterbottom was honorary secretary of the Union of Ethical Societies, and twice chaired its annual congress.

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