Agnes Pochin

Agnes Pochin (née Heap; 1825 – 1908) was an early British campaigner for women's rights. She funded campaigns, wrote one of the first tracts and was one of the three speakers at the first suffrage meeting in Manchester.

Life Agnes Heap was born in 1825 at Timperley, near Manchester. Her sister was married to the chemist James Woolley and she married his business partner Henry Pochin. The marriage took place at the Unitarian Cross Street Chapel in Manchester in 1852.

Pochin wrote in 1855 a frequently overlooked work. John Chapman published her work titled "The Right of Women to Exercise the Elective Franchise". She argues for not only equal voting rights but also equality with respect to education, divorce, ambition or social aspiration. She wrote that "Women's life in the middle classes is, and has been rendered a dull one". It was signed "Justitia", and it was not published under her name until 1873. In 1858 Pochin unsuccessfully tried to get John Bright to introduce a women's right to vote clause into his Reform Bill. Bright could see no reason to oppose such a move personally but he thought that including this clause might jeopardise the bill.

The start of the suffrage campaign

On 14 April 1868 the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage which had been formed the year before held its first public meeting. This meeting is one of the milestones that mark the start of the campaign for women's suffrage. The meeting was at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and the three main speakers were Lydia Becker, Anne Robinson and Agnes Pochin. Pochin's husband who was the Mayor of Salford chaired the meeting. Pochin was criticised for leaving her children, but it is suspected that her daughter, Lydia, was present at the meeting. She would have seen her mother propose the second motion that called on the audience to support the proposal that women who were legally qualified should enter their names on the electoral register. Over the next few years the central and Manchester committees received large sums from the Pochins.