Anne Knight
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Anne Knight, the daughter of William Knight, a wholesale grocer, was born in Chelmsford in 1781. Anne's mother was Priscilla Allen, the daughter of William Allen, a London brewer, a well-known radical and Nonconformist. The Knight family were members of the Society of Friends and were pacifists and also took an active role in the Anti-Slavery and Temperance campaigns.
By 1830 Anne was deeply involved in the Quaker attempt to end slavery. In Chelmsford she organised petitions, distributed literature and arranged public meetings. Anne also formed a branch of the Women's Anti-Slavery Society in Chelmsford. Anne frequently travelled to London where she worked closely with Thomas Clarkson. In 1834 Anne Knight toured France where she gave lectures on the immorality of slavery. Knight argued for the immediate abolition of slavery without compensation. Later, her contribution to the anti-slavery campaign was recognised when a village for Jamaican freed slaves was named Knightsville.
Knight also became active in the Chartist movement. However, she became concerned about the way women campaigners were treated by some of the male leaders in both the Chartist and Anti-Slavery organisations. Anne was furious when there were attempts to stop some women delegates taking part in the World Antislavery Convention held in London in 1840.
The behaviour of the male leaders at the World Anti-Slavery Convention inspired Knight to start a campaign advocating equal rights for women. This included having gummed labels printed with feminist quotations that she attached to the outside of her letters. In 1847 she published what is believed to be the first ever leaflet on women's suffrage.
At a conference on world peace held in 1849, Anne Knight met two of Britain's reformers, Henry Brougham and Richard Cobden. She was disappointed by their lack of enthusiasm for women's rights. For the next few months she sent them several letters arguing the case for women's suffrage.
Knight also attacked Chartist leaders who argued that the class struggle was more important than the struggle for women's rights. In a letter published in the Brighton Herald in 1850 she demanded that the Chartists should campaign for what she described as "true universal suffrage". The following year Knight established what is believed to have been the first association for women's suffrage. Their first meeting was held in Sheffield in February, 1851.
Knight, who never married, spent the last few years of her life in Waldersbach, a small village south-west of Strasbourg. Anne Knight died on 4th November, 1862.
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(1) Anne Knight, women's suffrage leaflet published in 1847.
Never will the nations of the earth be well governed until both sexes, as well as all parties, are fully represented, and have an influence, a voice, and a hand in the enactment and administration of the laws.
(2) Anne Knight, letter published in the Brighton Herald (9th February, 1850)
It is justice that we demand for all who bear their share in the burdens of the State, and who does not pay taxes in this miserably tax-ground country? Is she exempt whose part it is to work 18 hours out of 24, to sleep little, and to be too much worn with labour to think.
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