Eleanor Rathbone

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Feminist politician ER is called by a recent biographer the most significant woman in British politics in the first half of the 20th century.
Johnson, Richard William. “Associated Prigs”. London Review of Books, pp. 19-21.
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She wrote books, pamphlets, and essays on the various social and political causes to which she was committed throughout her long career. In many of her texts, she blends argument about more than one of the many movements or initiatives she supported, such as feminism and state-funded family endowments.
Sepia photograph of Eleanor Rathbone campaigning outdoors. She leans forward as she speaks, her hands on a table bearing a vase of white flowers, There are trees and a banner behind her. She is wearing, apparently, a loose-fitting white summer suit, and a black hat, elaborate but compact.

Milestones

12 May 1872

ER was born at 14 Princes Gardens in London, the youngest but one in a large family.
Stocks, Mary. Eleanor Rathbone: A Biography. Gollancz.
23

20 November 1903

ER presented a report which next year became her first publication: Report of an Inquiry into the Conditions of Dock Labour at the Liverpool Docks.
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.

March 1924

ER issued her best-known text, a socio-economic study entitled The Disinherited Family: A Plea for the Endowment of the Family.
Pedersen, Susan. Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914-1945. Cambridge University Press.
179

January 1945

ER published another pamphlet, Falsehoods and Facts about the Jews: the latest work listed by Susan Pedersen among her principal writings.
Pedersen, Susan. Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience. Yale University Press.
380

2 January 1946

ER died suddenly of a stroke at her home, 26 Hampstead Lane, Highgate, London.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Background

12 May 1872

ER was born at 14 Princes Gardens in London, the youngest but one in a large family.
Stocks, Mary. Eleanor Rathbone: A Biography. Gollancz.
23

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