Florence Wallace Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton


Florence Wallace Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton was a British campaigner for dress reform.
She was born at Malone House in Belfast, the daughter of wealthy landowner William Wallace Legge, a and for County Antrim, and his wife, Eleanor Wilkie Forster. She married James Spencer Pomeroy on 2 April 1861, and in 1862 she became Viscountess Harberton when he became the 6th Viscount Harberton. They had four children, Aline Florence, Hilda Evelyn, Ernest Arthur George, and Ralph Legge.
Pomeroy became involved in the campaign for dress reform in 1880, after the death of her daughter Aline. In 1883 she became President of the Rational Dress Society, which described the attributes of "perfect" dress as:
In 1893, The Guardian mentioned her "Short Skirts League" whose members would wear skirts of at least above the ground when out walking. In 1898, she founded the Rational Dress League.
She was a keen cyclist, and one of her most celebrated moments was when the landlady of the Hautboy Inn at Ockham, Surrey, refused to serve her because she was wearing her "rational dress" of baggy knickerbockers instead of a skirt. Pomeroy sued the landlady, but lost the case because she had been offered service in an alternative room, albeit one occupied by three men. The Cycling UK says that "the case hit the national headlines, made CTC a lot of friends, led to more women's cycling groups, and was a milestone on the road to female emancipation".
In later years she took up the cause of women's suffrage. Her obituary in The Times says that she had written pieces for that newspaper to express the view that women could do more of the work currently done by men, and had also campaigned for reforms to prevent tuberculosis. It ended by saying that:
She died in Onslow Square, South Kensington, aged 67.