Eugénie Collot

Eugénie Collot (1857-1907) was a French upholsterer, and an anarchist, feminist, and revolutionary syndicalist activist. Born into a working-class family, Collot became an upholsterer and, especially from the 1890s onwards, engaged in several social struggles. She became involved in French feminist and syndicalist circles; for example, she stood as a candidate in elections in 1890, was elected secretary of the upholsterers' union, which she founded, and of the Bourse du travail de Paris, which sent her as a delegate to the Second International's congress in Brussels.

An active anarchist, she played a "significant" role within the anarchist movement in France in the 1890s, notably by taking charge of the management of a number of organisations and events, such as the soup conferences or La Rénovation sociale par le travail ('Social Renovation through Work'), an organisation she founded and where she invited a number of anarchist figures, such as Élisée Reclus and Leo Tolstoy.

Despite her importance to the anarchist movement and other struggles, her memory faded into oblivion after her death.

Biography Eugénie Marie Collot was born in Paris on 3 June 1857. According to her birth certificate, her mother was Élisa Rouilly and her father Eugène Victor Collot.

In 1898, the militant relaunched L'Idée nouvelle ('The New Idea'), an anarchist society that organised conferences and had been interrupted during the repression of January and February 1894. She invited various anarchist artistic personalities, such as Laurent Tailhade, Fernand Pelloutier, Pierre Quillard, Zo d’Axa, and Adolphe Retté, to speak in favour of anarchism or against antisemitism. Théophile Steinlen gave her a drawing so that she could sell reproductions of it and thus secure the organisation's financial means.

During one of these conferences, the speakers aimed to denounce Spain's crimes during the Cuban War of Independence, and thereby to "rehabilitate history in reaction to the misleading information published in the bourgeois press".

In 1900, her organisation was renamed La Rénovation sociale par le travail ('Social Renovation through Work') and now included Eugène Carrière, Elisée Reclus, Steinlen, and even Leo Tolstoy on its executive committee. From 1902, La Rénovation sociale par le travail took a less subversive direction and focused on scientific subjects.

She continued her activism at least until 1905, when she petitioned for the creation of labour inspection in French Algeria.

Eugénie Collot died in Paris on 24 April 1907.

Legacy

Memory and oblivion Although Eugénie Collot was one of the activists with a "significant" role in the anarchist movement of her time, her memory did not pass into posterity, according to researcher Marie-Pier Tardif.

Police mugshot Her police mugshot is part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET).