Edith Jemima Simcox
Edith Jemima Simcox was a notable figure in the late 19th century, known for her advocacy of social justice, women's rights, and labor reform. Born into a wealthy family in the mid-1800s, she received a comprehensive education, which was unusual for women of her time. Simcox recognized her attraction to women early in life, and this awareness, combined with the societal limitations faced by women, deepened her sensitivity to marginalized groups. Beginning in the 1860s, she wrote essays under the pseudonym H. Lawrenny, addressing critical issues such as gender inequities, politics, economics, and ethics. Her friendship with the renowned novelist George Eliot further influenced her work, leading Simcox to publish a memoir after Eliot's death.
Simcox was an active participant in the labor movement, advocating for the rights of both male and female workers and contributing to the formation of a union for shirt and collar makers. She presented at the Trade Union Congress, emphasizing the need for equal support for female laborers. In her writings, she called for economic restructuring to promote fairness in pay across different occupations. Additionally, she played a significant role in the London School Board as a representative of the Radical Party and co-founded a cooperative business, Hamilton and Company, that exclusively employed women. Simcox's efforts highlighted the intersection of gender and class issues in her pursuit of social reform.
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Edith Jemima Simcox
Writer
- Born: August 21, 1844
- Died: September 15, 1901
Biography
Edith Jemima Simcox, the daughter of George Price Simcox, a wealthy merchant, and Jemima (Haslope) Simcox, grew up with at least two siblings, older brothers George and William. The Simcox sons became Oxford scholars, and Edith Jemima Simcox received as thorough an education as women were allowed in the mid- 1800’s. She became aware of her attraction to other women at a young age, and this, combined with the educational limits placed upon her because of her gender, fostered in Simcox a sensitivity to groups marginalized in society.
As a young woman in the 1860’s, Simcox began writing essays, publishing them usually under the pseudonym H. Lawrenny, in order to hide her gender in publications that seldom featured women writers. Simcox’s essays dealt with matters of social justice and explored the issues surrounding politics, economics, ethics, and gender inequities. In 1872 Simcox fatefully met Marianne Evans, better known as George Eliot, the name under which Evans published her novels. Sharing similar outlooks, the two became close friends. Indeed, an admirer of Eliot’s work, Simcox also became romantically infatuated with the novelist, and after Eliot’s death, Simcox published A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot: Edith Jemima Simcox’s Autobiography of a Shirtmaker (1998).
In addition to calling for women’s rights, Simcox fought for the rights of the working class, working-class women included. Presenting a paper to the Trade Union Congress, Simcox insisted that supporters of laborers must be supporters of female laborers as well as male laborers. She joined both the Socialist Trade Union and the Women’s Protective and Provident League, and in her work with the latter group, she contributed to the founding of a union for shirt and collar makers. In the essays she continued to write, the reformer advocated economic restructuring that would move toward equalizing pay among all willing workers, regardless of their individual occupations; with Primitive Civilizations: Or, Outlines of the History of Ownership in Archaic Communities (1894), she contended that it was up to the average, middle sect of society to ensure that society, economic politics, and labor policies did not so dramatically favor the strongest and wealthiest as to injure and disadvantage the weak and poor.
Simcox also represented the Radical Party on the London School Board, and in 1875 she worked with Mary Hamilton to establish Hamilton and Company, where Simcox became a shirtmaker. Hamilton and Company was notable for its status as a cooperative that hired only women.