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1827-1891
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an atypical Victorian woman and an unconventional and influential leader of the Victorian women’s movement.
Thanks to her father’s radical beliefs and her own skills as an artist, she had an independent income throughout her adult life, which she used to foster the causes she cared about.
Born in 1827, she was the eldest child of the reforming MP, Benjamin Smith. The Smith family was rich and powerful, but Barbara’s social position was always overshadowed by the fact that her father and mother never married.
On their coming of age Ben Smith gave all his daughters and sons a portfolio of stocks and shares. This made Barbara that most unusual of things – a single Victorian woman with independent means. For the rest of her life she was to use her income alongside her astonishing energy and enormous network of contacts to pursue four great feminist campaigns: for reform of the Married Women’s Property Act and the legal status of married women; for the right of women to work; for their right to vote and for their right to be educated.
Barbara was every bit the ‘hands-on’ philanthropist – alongside her money, she wrote pamphlets and articles, joined committees and organised petitions – activities that made the case for reform, stimulated debate and became the launch pads for the introduction of new legislation.
Her most significant financial backing – and her greatest legacy – was the money she donated to establish Girton College, the first Cambridge college to admit women. This was the culmination of a lifetime’s passionate concern for the education of women, which she saw as one of the cornerstones of “common justice to half the world”.
Very influential in her day, Barbara was quickly forgotten. Yet her work has touched every generation of women that followed. She played a vital role in opening up education, legal rights, and employment – in her social reforming zeal she opened the door for all modern women.
Susan Elizabeth has 25 years’ experience in the voluntary sector. She was Chief Executive of the Camelot Foundation 2001-2006, developing programmes to reconnect marginalised young people to the mainstream of UK life. Prior to that she was Director of Grants and Development at health think tank the Kings Fund, and Deputy Director of the National Council for One Parent Families. Susan now works as a freelance consultant, with clients in the funding and voluntary sectors. She is a Trustee of BBC Children in Need and of the Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity and is a non-executive Director of the Probation Service in Sussex.
This is an excerpt of a longer article she wrote for the Association of Charitable Foundations’ Trust and Foundation News, December 2002.
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