24 Facts About Isabella Ford

Isabella Ormston Ford was an English social reformer, suffragist and writer.

Isabella Ford became a public speaker and wrote pamphlets on issues related to socialism, feminism and workers' rights.

Isabella Ford was on born 23 May 1855 in Headingley, Leeds, in the north of England.

Isabella Ford was the youngest of eight children of Quakers Robert Lawson Ford and Hannah.

Isabella Ford's mother was a second cousin of abolitionist Elizabeth Pease Nichol and her father was a solicitor and landowner.

Isabella Ford's parents financed a night school for mill girls in the East End of Leeds, where she began working when she was 16.

Isabella Ford worked with tailoresses who were campaigning for better working conditions; she helped them to form a trade union and was involved when they went on strike in 1889.

Isabella Ford helped found the Leeds Independent Labour Party and was president of the Leeds Tailoresses' Union.

Isabella Ford's concerns were trade union organisation, socialism and female suffrage.

Isabella Ford overcame a natural shyness to become an experienced public speaker, speaking at many meetings related to socialism, workers' rights and women's emancipation.

Isabella Ford wrote many pamphlets, as well as a column in the Leeds Forward.

Isabella Ford became more involved in the national women's suffrage movement, but felt that feminism and the labour movement were equally important.

Isabella Ford was an anti-vivisectionist and was Chair of Leeds RSPCA.

In 1896, Isabella Ford signed the Humanitarian League's petition against vivisection.

The outbreak of the First World War saw Isabella Ford refocus her energies on campaigning for peace.

Isabella Ford helped to organise the women's peace rally on 4 August 1914 at Kingsway Hall, and in Leeds she set up a branch of the Women's International League and of the Women's Peace Crusade.

Isabella Ford formed friendships with Labour politician Philip Snowden, writer Ethel Snowden, Leeds educationalist Frances Lupton, socialist writer Edward Carpenter, poet Walt Whitman, Josephine Butler, Millicent Fawcett and Olive Schreiner.

Isabella Ford was one of three women on the first committee of Leeds Arts Club.

Isabella Ford was concerned with animal welfare and was a vegetarian.

Isabella Ford was an accomplished pianist and helped her sister Bessie to run free concerts of classical music for working class people in Leeds.

Isabella Ford lived most of her adult life with her sisters Bessie and Emily in Adel Grange, the Leeds home that the family moved to when she was 10.

Bessie Isabella Ford died in 1919 and her sisters moved to a smaller property called Adel Willows in 1922.

Isabella Ford died 14 July 1924 following an illness of several months and was buried at the Quaker burial ground near her house in Adel.

On 5 May 2024, it was announced that Isabella Ford would have her name engraved on a new Ribbons metal sculpture in Leeds city centre.