Amy Hurlston

Amy Eliza Hurlston (1865–1949) was a British journalist, editor, social campaigner and trade unionist.

Family Hurlston was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, in 1865, and was the daughter Alfred Hurlston, a Spon End watchmaker, and his wife Emma Elizabeth Hurlston ( Deacon).

Career Hurlston worked as a journalist. She published in the monthly bicycling journal The Wheel World, from November 1884 to June 1885, contributed to the journal Womanhood, wrote to the Coventry Times and Warwickshire Journal and later became "Lady editor" of the Sheffield Weekly Telegraph. She also published a work of fiction, Played Out and Lost, in 1885. and was a Coventry Poor Law Guardian. She persuaded the Poor Law Union board to employ a night nurse for the infirmary in 1901. Hurlston raised issues women experienced in saving for their future pension provision, including: low wages, marriage, intermittent employment (for example needing to stop working due to the home duties of raising children or caring for other family members and seasonal fluctuations), and life expectancy.

Hurlston was also an early member of the Women’s Emancipation Union, and presented a paper to the annual conference held on 16 March 1893 titled The Factory Work of Women in the Midlands. She was appointed secretary of the Coventry branch in 1905.

Death Hurlston stepped back from campaigning after her marriage and died in Ledbury, Herefordshire, in 1949.