Jane Taylour

Jane E. Taylour (born c.1827 – died 1905 ) was a Scottish suffragist and women's movement campaigner, and one of the first women to give lectures in public. She travelled around Scotland and northern England as a suffrage lecturer, and was a key figure in spreading the message of the women's suffrage throughout Scotland and inspiring others to join the National Society for Women's Suffrage.

Life Taylour was born in 1827 or 1828, to Maria Angus and Nathaniel Taylor. She lived in Balfour. In 1861 she moved to Saffron Walden in Essex, where in 1901 she was recorded as living with Rachel P. Robson. Her income was probably inherited from her parents' estate in Jamaica, which included enslaved people; income which enabled her to cover the cost of travelling for the National Society for Women's Suffrage.

Campaigning for women's suffrage Jane Taylour addressed the general public on the topic of women's suffrage in London, the North-East of England and in Scotland.

In 1869 Clementia Taylor asked Taylour to undertake a lecture tour, and from 1870 she gave public lectures throughout Scotland and Northeast England campaigning for women's equality and suffrage, Taylour did not believe that women were aiming to compete with men, but was aware that women could be exploited by 'wicked and unprincipled men' for example by losing their rights upon marriage. She said: We do not want to usurp anything, or do anything unseemly or out of order, but to do our proper part in helping on the world's reform – helping with a woman's power, in a woman's way, with all that is wise, elevating, humane and holy. Women's suffrage committees were formed in the Highlands and Moray towns of Tain, Dingwall, Forres, Elgin, Banff, Invergordon, Nairn and Dunkeld as a result of Taylour and McLaren's campaigns.

In one of her speeches, in Edinburgh in 1873, Taylour was putting forward the suffragists' case using

Lecture tour impact She was accompanied on some of her lecture tours in Scotland by fellow campaigners Mary Hill Burton and Agnes McLaren.

The Women's Suffrage Journal commented about one of her lectures that "Miss Taylour has all the requisites of a public lecturer. Her composition is chaste and elegant, her voice distinct and agreeable, and her manner attractive and graceful". On the centenary of the right of some women to vote, Representation of the People Act 1918, Jane Taylour featured on the Glasgow Women's Library website with an animated video on her impact as one of the first woman to lecture in public. She also was mentioned on the University of Edinburgh Information Services Celebrating 100 years of votes for women. Taylour is one of the activists included in Scotland's Suffragette Trumps and educational packs sent to Scottish schools.