Month: December 2006

Ada Chew, trade unionist, ILPer and suffragist, who became paid organiser for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1912. After the war, she ran a successful mail-order wholesale drapery line. Born Audley, Staffordshire, 28 January 1870, died Burnley, Lancashire, 27 December 1945.

Catherine Barmby née Watkins, utopian socialist and feminist, writer for the Owenite New Moral World, married Goodwyn Barmby, one of the founders of the Communist Church. “Together”, says the ODNB, “the young couple travelled the streets of London in the early 1840s with a hooded cart from which they dispensed communist tracts and harangued startled passers-by”. In 1843 she issued her Demand for the Emancipation of Women, Politically and Socially, having earlier called for the People’s Charter to be amended to include the enfranchisement of women. Born in 1816 or 17, died of asthma and consumption in Topsham, Devon, 26 December 1853.

Herbert Burrows, leading propagandist for Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation, organiser (with Annie Besant) of the match girls strike of 1888, and later an active member of the Theosophical Society. Born Redgrave, Suffolk, 12 June 1845, died in London, 14 December 1922.

Ella Josephine Baker, civil rights organiser, socialist, and veteran of the YNCL, WPA, NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, MFDP, SCEF and MPOC; born Norfolk, Virginia, 13 December 1903, died New York City, 13 December 1986.