Virginia Penny

Virginia Penny (January 18, 1826 – April 4, 1913) was a social reformer and an economist, being the first to study women's labor markets both in the U.S. and in Europe. Her books were an important resource for the members of the newly formed American Social Science Association. She also served as an early leader of the American women's suffrage movement before coming more involved in labor union organization and running her own employment agency for women.

Early life and publishing career The eldest daughter of Rachel Ruble and William Penny of Louisville, Kentucky, Virginia Penny was born on January 18, 1826, into a slaveowning family. Her father served as a city councilman and also co-founded the Louisville Savings Bank. Alexander - also a doctor, lived on a farm near Louisville with his mother after his father's death, Icilius - worked as a farmhand in Alton, Illinois, where he was abused and starved when his sister found him there in the 1880s Walker, Wise and Company in Boston republished it in 1863 under a new title: The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work. This version of the book was widely distributed and reviewed in scholarly as well as general literary works (see for example the review by Burwell N. Carter of Williamstown, Kentucky in The Land We Love (August, 1867)). In her preface to her 1863 book, she writes: I desire to present to those interested a clear and succinct view of the conditions of business in the United States, the openings for entering into business, the vacancies women may fill and the crowded marts they may avoid, the qualifications needed for a selected pursuit, and the pursuits to which they are best adapted; also the probable result pecuniarily of each calling honorably pursued: in short it is intended as a business manual for women.

Another reviewer in 1869 agreed that the book is a useful, practical tool for women: "Miss Penny has earned the sober gratitude of women, and men interested in the lot of women, by the labors of many years in the hardest and least remunerative fields of service. She is no orator, politician, or manager, but a delving, drudging worker ... Miss Penny's style is not especially brilliant or attractive, but is interesting; and better than all, her essays are sober, wise, and important." The book was republished many times over the years; and, in 1867, the book was adapted and translated into German.

In May 1867, Penny attended the second convention of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) where she was elected as the Kentucky representative among the vice-presidents. Her reputation for her work and ideas for women's rights had been firmly established by then and she joined a global network of activists working for women's suffrage as well as equal rights for all. She participated in union activities, including the Workingwoman's Association in New York and led protests for women's wages and living conditions. She opened an employment agency and gave public lectures to encourage women to explore the many different fields in which they could work and get paid. At one point she also worked for the U.S. Census Bureau.

Penny was a founding member of the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association when it was first formed in 1881 right after a convention of the American Woman Suffrage Association in Louisville, Kentucky. This group was the first suffrage organization to represent a state in the South.

At one point in her later life, Penny organized the funding for and managed an employment agency in the American Bible Society's Bible House located between Third and Fourth Avenues, at Ninth Street in New York City. She included as part of her services a lecture series on the jobs available to women in the city.

Decline in fortune and death Penny was in Cincinnati in the 1870s, and she wrote: "my health bad, and my means limited." Her brothers' fight over their inheritance led to an inquest in 1874, during which—for unknown reasons—the judge committed her against her will to Anchorage Asylum, a psychiatric hospital near Louisville. She became destitute by the 1880s, having lost her inheritance as well as her books' publishing rights, and regular calls for monetary support went out across the country as she traveled to different cities (see for example her 1885 broadside To the Voters of Jefferson County while she was in Louisville and a report from the New York Times in 1902 when she was living in poverty in a tenement in New York City ). Meanwhile, her brother William, a doctor and professor in Galveston, Texas, had moved to New York and opened the Penny Dispensary on Long Island. While William was living in Brooklyn, she was committed to the Manhattan State Hospital on Wards Island where she finally died nearly 20 years later.

Works How women can make money married or single, in all branches of the arts and sciences, professions, trades, agricultural and mechanical pursuits (Philadelphia, 1862); republished in 1863 in Boston by Walker, Wise & Company under the new title, The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work. Think and Act: A Series of Articles Pertaining to Men and Women, Work and Wages (Philadelphia, 1869). To the Voters of Jefferson County (Louisville, January 1885)