FRANCES POWER COBBE: A WOMAN OF CONVICTION
At the foot of the main staircase of Manchester College is a marble plaque depicting a formidable-looking woman in Victorian dress: Frances Power Cobbe, a social reformer and evidently someone not to be trifled with—although actually she was only formidable when confronting a politician or a scientist with whom she disagreed. Her friend the American Unitarian Louisa May Alcott described her as merry and witty, a non-stop talker with a loud laugh: wherever Cobbe went, “it was as if a great sunbeam had entered the room”. From what I have learned about her, she was larger than life, tactless, forceful and opinionated, tireless and completely unstoppable once she got the bit between her teeth.
She was born in 1822, the only daughter of a privileged, conservative Anglo-Irish family. As a child she was a voracious reader and soon developed a mind of her own; by the age of 10 she was questioning the Bible and her father’s strict Calvinist faith. It is tempting to see her whole adult life as a reaction against her father’s stern personality and his patriarchal brand of religion, which made her a passionate supporter of the weak and the powerless. As a young woman she was influenced by the writings of the Transcendentalist Unitarian Theodore Parker, and his idea of a God who was “not a King but a Father and Mother, infinite in power, wisdom, and love”. She proclaimed herself to be a Theist and denied orthodox Christian doctrines. For this heresy her father banished her from the family home – only to summon her back a year later to keep house for him until his death, at which point the family home that she had managed for many years passed to one of her brothers, and she was effectively made homeless, with only a small annuity to live on. But her father’s death proved to be her liberation, and she set off to explore Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, camping alone in the desert. In Italy she was absorbed into a circle of expatriate American and English women, writers and artists, including Mary Lloyd, the woman with whom she was to live in a loving lesbian relationship for the next 30 years.
Returning to England, Cobbe worked for a year with Mary Carpenter, the Unitarian social reformer, in her ‘ragged schools’ for abandoned children in Bristol. Then she moved to London and embarked on a life-long career in journalism, writing pamphlets, essays, and leaders and features for national newspapers on feminist themes – women’s suffrage, women’s education, married women’s property rights, domestic violence – and on animal welfare. Her crusade against vivisection began in 1863 and dominated the rest of her life until her death in 1904. Her campaigning for the rights of women was closely related to her campaign for the rights of animals, because she perceived both as defenceless victims of all-powerful men. For 40 years she kept up a constant stream of argument, using every means at her disposal to influence public opinion and change the law: pamphlets, sandwich boards, lectures, public meetings, demonstrations, petitions to Parliament. If she was alive today, she would be using emails and blogs, text messaging and skyping, to build networks of like-minded campaigners.
In 1875 she established the Society for Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection, which she ran alongside the National Anti-Vivisection Society, editing a journal dedicated to the regulation of scientific experiments on live animals. In 1898 she formed a more radical body, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. Much of her writing about vivisection is too horrific to be quoted here – although she would despise such a squeamish attitude. As she wrote in an essay entitled Illustrations of Vivisection, “Do not refuse to look at these pictures. If you cannot bear to look at them, what must the suffering be to the animals who undergo the cruelties that they represent?” She never flinched from confronting the evidence; but although she was never guilty of sentimentality, she did sometimes exaggerate statistics and sensationalise the subject. Perhaps some contemporary campaigners for animal rights are guilty of the same tendencies.
I must also admit that Cobbe was inconsistent in her arguments, because she rejected the case for vegetarianism and refused to condemn certain forms of hunting – perhaps because of her social background among the landed gentry. It must also be admitted that she was terribly quarrelsome and made many enemies – even within her own movement! But one can’t help admiring her total dedication to the causes in which she believed. Her energies were immense, and she gave unstintingly of her time and her money to those causes. She was reviled by academics and by the medical profession as a crank and a fanatic, but she didn’t care two pence for public opinion.
It pleases me that the Unitarian movement could provide a spiritual home for such a controversial figure. She earned the respect of no less a figure than Dr James Martineau, whose Sunday services she used to attend in London. They became close friends, despite the fact that in 1876, while Manchester New College was still based in London, she had led a group of women who invaded one of his lectures for male students and plonked themselves down in the lecture room. This incident led to the formal admission of women students to the college two years later.
Everything she did, she did with passion and conviction. At her funeral in 1904 the honorary secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society paid this tribute: “There are still to be found in our country women as well as men who are ready to jeopardise worldly prosperity and all things that make this life precious or even endurable, for what their consciences bid them hold even more priceless.” Whether or not you agree with her views, I hope you will salute her for her courage next time you walk past her memorial plaque.
Catherine Robinson