21 Facts About Emily Murphy

Emily Murphy is best known for her contributions to Canadian feminism, specifically to the question of whether women were "qualified persons" to serve in the Senate under Canadian law.

Emily Murphy was born in Cookstown, Ontario, the third child of Isaac Ferguson and Emily Gowan.

Emily Murphy's brother became a lawyer and another member of the Supreme Court.

Emily Murphy benefited from parents who supported their daughter's receiving a formal academic education.

Emily Murphy attended Bishop Strachan School, an exclusive Anglican private school for girls in Toronto where, through a friend, she met her future husband Arthur Murphy, who was 11 years her senior.

At the age of 40, when her children became independent and began their separate lives, Emily Murphy began to actively organize women's groups where the isolated housewives could meet and discuss ideas and plan group projects.

In 1916, Emily Murphy successfully persuaded the Alberta legislature to pass the Dower Act that would allow a woman legal rights to one-third of her husband's property.

Emily Murphy's request was approved and she became the first woman police magistrate in the British Empire.

In 1919, Emily Murphy presided over the inaugural conference of the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada, which passed a resolution calling for a female senator to be appointed.

Emily Murphy began to work on a plan to ask for clarification of how women were regarded in the British North America Act 1867, and how they were to become Senators.

Emily Murphy enlisted the help of four other Albertan women and on 27 August 1927 she and human rights activist and ex-MLA Nellie McClung, ex-MLA Louise McKinney, women's rights campaigner and author Henrietta Edwards, and sitting Alberta cabinet minister and MLA Irene Parlby signed the petition to the federal Cabinet, asking that the federal government refer the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Emily Murphy was passed over in favour of philanthropist Cairine Wilson in 1930.

Emily Murphy was among those who thought that societal problems like alcoholism, drug abuse and crime resulted from mental deficiencies.

Emily Murphy argued that people would not need as much land if there was population control.

Emily Murphy supported selective breeding and the compulsory sterilization of those individuals who were considered mentally deficient.

Emily Murphy believed that the mentally and socially inferior reproduced more than the "human thoroughbreds" and appealed to the Alberta Legislative Assembly for forced sterilization.

Emily Murphy wrote to the UFA government's Minister of Agriculture and Health, George Hoadley that two female "feeble-minded" mental patients had already bred several offspring.

Emily Murphy called it "a neglect amounting to a crime to permit these two women to go on bearing children".

Emily Murphy's legacy is disputed, with her important contributions to feminism being weighed against her racist and nativist views and her advocation of eugenics.

Conversely, Emily Murphy's defenders note that she was writing at a time when white racism was typical, not exceptional and that Emily Murphy's views were more progressive than many of her peers.

Emily Murphy lived in this home from 1919 until she died in 1933.