Etheldred Browning

Etheldred Browning (17 September 1869 - 30 April 1946) was an Anglo-Irish suffragette and founder of the Women's Pioneer Housing organisation.

Early life and education Edith Anna Browning was born on 17 September 1869 in Donnybrook, Dublin to Julia Mary (nee Smart) (1841-1925) and Jeffrey Francis Browning (1832-1889). She was the third of four siblings, the only girl. Her mother was born in London, and her maternal grandfather, Henry Thomas Smart, was a professor of music. Her father was Solicitor to the Court of the Irish Land Commission. Her paternal family were of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish background and featured in Burke’s Irish Peerage. Maud Joachim was a cousin.

In 1886, she attended Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and began using the name Etheldred instead of Edith Anna. She made a presentation at the opening ceremony of the Library of the Irish Women’s Reform League. By August 1913, she was exhorting "women factory inspectors — women law makers, women police, women on the jury, women lawyers, women everywhere that is the need of our country… rise! You must free all others to be free!" in the Irish Citizen, the newspaper of the Irish Women’s Franchise League.

Shortly after the war, Browning moved to London, where she continued her activism on behalf of women.

Women's Pioneer Housing

Browning founded the Women's Pioneer Housing organisation in October 1920. The intention was to provide housing for working single women, who struggled to find decent accommodation. The WPH mission statement was ‘to cater for the housing requirements of professional and other women of moderate means who require individual homes at moderate rents’.

Funding was an initial struggle as Browning's hopes to use government funds from the post war Homes Fit for Heroes programme failed. An early financial crisis in 1921 led to Browning's plans for the Women’s Pioneer Housing to be mainly run by women being challenged. She had to accept that Committee of Management roles involving raising capital required the support of men with suitable experience in the field. Eleanor Shelley-Rolls, an investor and later President of WPH, recalled Browning's ongoing opposition to the involvement of men in the management of the organisation.

Browning was a member of the Women’s Provisional Club.

Later life Following her retirement, Browning initially lived in Eton with her cousin Dorothy Sowter, formerly her assistant at Women’s Pioneer Housing and a fellow tenant or the organisation from 1926 to 1938. In 1942, she was living at Cheltenham Terrace, and was issued a summons for causing a light after dark and was fined 20 shillings under World War II wartime restrictions. In 1945, Browning moved to Wandsworth with her niece Ruth to live in with her friends Florence Lily and Helen Carre.

Etheldred Browning died in Chelsea on 30 April 1946, aged 77.