22 Facts About Emily Davies

Sarah Emily Davies was an English feminist who founded Girton College, Cambridge.

Emily Davies campaigned as a suffragist and for women's rights to university education.

Emily Davies co-founded the London Schoolmistresses' Association and the Kensington Society, which pressured for universal suffrage, although she herself believed only unmarried women and widows should gain the vote.

John D Davies had traditionally patriarchal views on education, so whilst her three brothers attended private schools and two of them studied at the University of Cambridge, Davies and her older sister Jane were not educated and instead lived at home practising needlework and philanthropy.

Andersen and Bodichon inspired Emily Davies to become a suffragist and to campaign for better education for women.

Emily Davies went to meetings of the feminist National Association for the Promotion of Social Science with Llewelyn, who had joined the group, and supported her friend Garrett Anderson in her medical studies.

In London, Emily Davies wrote for and edited the English Woman's Journal, joining the Langham Place Group, a club for women.

Emily Davies helped to set up the Victoria Magazine, later disassociating from it when Emily Faithfull was named in the Codrington divorce case, since she did not want to appear to be endorsing immorality.

Emily Davies pressed for admission of women to the universities of London, Oxford and Cambridge.

Emily Davies founded the London Schoolmistresses' Association in 1866 to discuss female education.

Emily Davies then moved the project in 1873 to the outskirts of Cambridge, where it became Girton College.

Emily Davies was keen to both keep her young female students away from men and to give them the same educational courses as their male contemporaries.

Emily Davies pressed for a curriculum equivalent to the one offered to men at the time.

The Senate rejected her proposals to let women officially sit the Tripos examinations, but Emily Davies continued to train students for them on an unofficial basis.

Emily Davies did not stand again in 1873, preferring to concentrate on Girton College.

Emily Davies served as Mistress of Girton College from 1873 until 1875, then acted as honorary secretary for three decades.

In 1896, Emily Davies published Women in the universities of England and Scotland, criticising the state of higher education in England and lauded Scottish and Welsh universities for putting female and male students on an equal footing.

Emily Davies left the London group when the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies decided to support the Labour Party in 1912 and instead joined the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association.

Emily Davies was known for opposing the militant tactics used by the Suffragettes.

In 1910, Emily Davies published a collection of her writings entitled Thoughts on some questions relating to women, with a foreword by Constance Jones.

Emily Davies moved to Hampstead in London in 1914, living near her brother Llewelyn until he died in 1916.

Emily Davies was one of the few original suffrage activists still alive to be able to vote in an election, after the passing of the Parliament Act 1918.