Emily Davies

Sarah Emily Davies (22 April 1830 – 13 July 1921) was an English feminist who founded Girton College, Cambridge. She campaigned as a suffragist and for women's rights to university education.

In her early life, Davies attended meetings of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science and befriended Barbara Bodichon and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. After moving to London with her mother in 1862, she wrote for and edited the English Woman's Journal and joined the Langham Place Group. She 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.

After resigning from Girton in 1904, Davies became secretary of the London branch of the National Society for Women's Suffrage, later leaving to join the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association. She died in London at the age of 91. Davies's rigid views on education were controversial during her lifetime, though historians have seen her achievements in a more sympathetic light more recently. In 2019, Baroness Hale unveiled a blue plaque jointly commemorating founders Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon, to mark the 150th anniversary of Girton College.

Early life Sarah Emily Davies was born on 22 April 1830 at Carlton Crescent, Southampton, England, to a teacher, Mary , and an evangelical clergyman, John D. Davies. The family was in Southampton because her father was covering for another priest; his parish was in Chichester. They moved to Normandy in France in 1836, then back to Chichester and then to Gateshead, in County Durham in 1839.

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. Living in Gateshead again from 1860 until 1862, she set up a local branch of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and wrote letters promoting women's rights. After the death of her father in January 1862, Davies moved to London with her mother. In 1866 she published The Higher Education of Women. During her lifetime, she was supported by some feminists and criticised by others for her rigid views on how education for women should be organised. Lady Stephen published Emily Davies and Girton College in 1927. More recently, historians have seen her achievements in a more sympathetic light, although it is still open to question whether she was a conservative reformer or she only allied herself with those in power to further her aims. A biography entitled Emily Davies and the Liberation of Women 1830-1921 was published in 1990.

Owing to the activism of Emily Davies and others, more women began to enter higher education in the UK. On 30 June 2019, Baroness Hale unveiled a blue plaque jointly commemorating founders Davies and Barbara Bodichon, to mark the 150th anniversary of Girton College. The plaque was installed on the main tower of the college.

Selected works