The Women's Printing Society was a British publishing house founded in either 1874[1][2] or 1876[3][4][5] by Emma Paterson and Emily Faithfull[4] with the company being officially incorporated as a cooperative in 1878.[1]
Involvement in the suffragist movement
The company played an important role in British suffrage movement, both through its publication of feminist tracts and in providing employment opportunities for women in a field that had previously been restricted to men.[6] The house was set up to allow women to learn the trade of printing, and provided an apprenticeship program.[2] Women worked as compositors, and as of 1904, it was one of the few houses where they also did the imposing: ordering the galley proofs so that when folded, the front and back pages aligned properly.[2] As of 1899, the company employed 22 women as compositors.[1] The manager, proof-reader and bookkeeper were also women.[1] Men held the tasks of "pressmen and feeders".[7] The women apprentices earned a wage "considering the hours (9 to 6.30), etc., this is better pay than even highly-educated women can sometimes secure."[1] Some of the initial employees came from Faithful's Victoria Press.[7]
Notable employees
The Board of Directors included Sarah Prideaux, Mabel Winkworth and Stewart Duckworth Headlam.[7] Elizabeth Yeats studied for a brief time at the Women's Printing Society, before returning to Ireland and starting the Dun Emer Press.[8]
Up to 1893 and between 1889 and 1900, the company published the reports of the Central Committee for the National Society for Women's Suffrage.[9] It published the Women's Penny Paper through 1890, but it is not recorded why the relationship ended.[6]
Selected works
Works published by the Women's Printing Society include:
- "What is women's suffrage and why do women want it" by Veritas (1883)[9]
- A Woman's Plea to Women by Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy (reprint from Macclesfield Courier) (1886)[9]
- "Home Politics: An Address" Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1894)[9]
- "Swimming and its relation to the Health of Women" Frances Hoggan (1879)[9]
- "Education of Girls in Wales" Frances Hoggan (1879)[9]
- "Women in India and the Duty of their English Sisters" Mrs. Martindale (1896)[10]
- Thomas Wilde Powell Christiana Herringham (1903)[9]
- Papers of the Society of Painters in Tempera by Christina Herringham.[9]
- Woman Suffrage and the Anti-militants by Ennis Richmond[9]
- "Choose, Ye: Darkness or Light!" Lady Melville (1922)[11]
- the exhibition catalog of the London International Surrealist Exhibition (1936)[12]