Emily Frost Phipps

Emily Frost Phipps (7 November 1865 – 3 May 1943) was an English teacher and suffragette, a barrister in later life, and an influential figure in the National Union of Women Teachers.

Early life The eldest of five siblings, Mary was born to Henry John Phipps, a coppersmith at Devonport Dockyard, and Mary Ann Phipps née Frost, on 7 November 1865 in Stoke Damarel, Devonport.

Career While working as a pupil teacher she studied in the evenings so that she could gain entrance to Homerton College, Cambridge. Phipps became head teacher of the infants' school attached to the college. After obtaining a first-class degree, in 1895 she successfully applied for the headship of Swansea Municipal Secondary Girls School. She left this position to return to Devonport where she worked again in an infant school. This time she studied for an external degree in Latin and Greek at London University. following an anti-suffrage meeting in Swansea which was attended by the Welsh Liberal Party politician Lloyd George. Like many other members of the Women's Freedom League, Neal and Phipps, together with two training college lecturers and a business woman, staged a boycott on the night of the 1911 Census,

Emily Phipps was an active member of the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT), which was formed as part of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in 1906, following on from the Equal Pay League. (The NUWT became an independent organisation in 1920, and remained in operation until 1961). Emily was elected President for three successive years from 1915 to 1917 and was the first editor of the NUWT journal, Woman Teacher, from 1919 to 1930, later tasked with writing the History of the NUWT (published in 1928).

The 1918 general election was the first in which women could both vote in parliamentary elections and stand as candidates, and Emily Phipps was one of the 17 enfranchised women who took the opportunity to stand, for Chelsea constituency with the backing of the NUWT. All the women candidates were heavily defeated, but she retained her deposit in a straight contest (with a low turnout) with the sitting Conservative MP, Sir Samuel Hoare. Whilst campaigning for election, she set up a model polling booth where women could practise voting. She also arranged for babysitters to look after women's babies so that they could vote, which the Sunday Mirror described as her organising 'a band of women helpers who looked after children whilst their mothers voted'.

Later life and death While still a head-teacher, Emily Phipps studied for the bar in the evenings and was admitted as a barrister in 1925. Clara Neal also resigned her own Swansea headship (she was initially head of Terrace Road School followed by Head of Glanmor Girls School from 1922) and moved to London sharing a house with Emily Phipps and former London teacher Adelaide Jones (amongst others) who had helped Phipps with her 1918 election campaign and who was full-time financial secretary to the NUWT from 1918.

A blue plaque was erected in 2013 in her honour in Swansea, located on the wall of the Orchard Centre Clinic in Trinity Place. This was the former the site of the Swansea Girl’s Secondary School where she taught.