Jeannette Wilkinson

Jeanette Gaury Wilkinson (19 March 1841 – 22 August 1886) was a British suffragist and trade unionist.

Born in Bermondsey, Wilkinson was privately educated in the nearby City of London. From the age of seventeen, she worked upholstering furniture, but in her spare time she studied economics, history and English literature at the Birkbeck Institute. In 1873, she won the Society of Arts prize for political economy.

Wilkinson became interested in trade unionism, and in 1875 she was elected as secretary of the London Upholsteresses' Society, a body affiliated to the Women's Protective and Provident League. She represented her union at nine conferences of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), where she made numerous speeches on working conditions for women, and called for specific legislation applying only to women to be repealed. She remained involved with these groups throughout her life, and in 1885 she moved a successful motion at the TUC in support of women's representation in Parliament. In 1885, she moved back to London, becoming an organiser with, and lecturer for, the National Society for Women's Suffrage.