Emily Townshend

Emily Caroline Townshend was a British social reformer.

Early life and education

Born Emily Gibson in 1849, she was the first applicant to, and one of the first five students at Girton College, Cambridge, then in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. She studied there from 1869 to 1872, and while there met her husband, Cambrey Corker Townshend, through a fellow student, Isabella Townshend.

Social reform and activism

Emily Townshend joined the Fabian Society in 1894, becoming active in its Research Department and writing several tracts for the group. She also served a term on its executive in 1915/16. Townshend spent two years as editor of the School Child journal, and was also active on the Walham Green Juvenile Advisory Committee.
In 1907, age 57, Townshend spent two weeks in Holloway Prison for her part in a suffragette protest. In 1909, her daughter Rachel Townsend spent two months imprisoned there for similar activities.
Her daughter Caroline Townsend was a leading stained glass artist and followed her mother in membership of the Fabian Society and interest in women's suffrage.

Legacy

In November 1979 the historian, Brian Harrison, interviewed Townshend’s granddaughter, Mrs Joan Radice, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews. Joan talked about Emily’s career, household arrangements, relationship with her daughter Rachel and with the suffrage movement. Joan was the daughter of Emily’s daughter Rachel, who married social reformer Frederic Keeling in 1909. Although the couple later divorced, Keeling kept in touch with his former mother in law. After Frederic’s death in the trenches of the First World War in 1916, Townshend edited and published his letters in a 1918 volume titled Keeling Letters & Recollections, with a foreword by H. G. Wells.