Laura Ormiston Chant

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LOC published numerous pamphlets and speeches on social purity, temperance, and women's rights, as well as songs, a novel, and a book of poetry that includes a feminist verse novel. Her writing reflects many of the tensions characterizing feminism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
  • BirthName: Laura Ormiston Dibbin
  • Married: Chant; L. Ormiston Chant; Laura Ormiston Dibbin Chant
    LOC sometimes used on her works these forms of her married name which were, in England at least, unusual.
  • Pseudonym: Sister Sophia
Black and white photograph of Laura Ormiston Chant, seated in an ornately carved rocking chair with one elbow resting on an armrest, her arm upright and her head propped against that hand. Her other arm is outstretched so that hand can rest on the other armrest. She wears a dress with a pattern of stitched vines and buttons up the front, and her hair is pulled back.

Milestones

9 October 1848

Laura Ormiston Dibbin (later the social purity reformer LOC ) was born at Woolaston (sometimes known as Woollaston) in Gloucestershire (near Chepstow, where her father was then employed).
Donohue, Joseph. Fantasies of Empire: The Empire Theatre of Varieties and the Licensing Controversy of 1894. University of Iowa Press, 2005.
23
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1877

LOC published Verona and Other Poems, whose title piece is a maternal feminist novel in verse.
Chant, Laura Ormiston. Verona and Other Poems. David Stott, 1887.

Later 1894

At the height of her fame (or infamy) as a social reformer, LOC published her pamphlet on the theatre licensing conflict, Why We Attacked the Empire.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

16 February 1923

LOC died at her home, 41 Bloxham Road, Banbury, Oxfordshire, from cerebral haemorrhage and heart failure.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

A Difficult Youth

9 October 1848

Laura Ormiston Dibbin (later the social purity reformer LOC ) was born at Woolaston (sometimes known as Woollaston) in Gloucestershire (near Chepstow, where her father was then employed).
Donohue, Joseph. Fantasies of Empire: The Empire Theatre of Varieties and the Licensing Controversy of 1894. University of Iowa Press, 2005.
23
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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