Helen Blackburn was a feminist and campaigner for women's rights, especially in the field of employment. Blackburn was also an editor of the Englishwoman's Review.
Life
Blackburn was born in Knightstown, co. Kerry, Ireland, the daughter of Bewicke Blackburn, a civil engineer, of co. Kerry and Isabella Lamb of co. Durham. When her family moved to London in 1859, she soon came into contact with the women of the Langham Place Group, especially Jessie Boucherett and Emily Faithfull. Over the years Blackburn and Boucherett worked together in a number of endeavours. Both were editors of the Englishwoman's Review. Together they established the Women's Employment Defence League in 1891, to defend women's working rights against restrictive employment legislation. They also together edited The Condition of Working Women and the Factory Acts, 1896. Blackburn joined the National Society for Women's Suffrage in 1872 and was secretary of the executive committee of the society from 1874 to 1880. She subsequently held similar positions in a number of related organisations. She also took opportunities to study, first in 1875, taking a class in Roman Law at University College London, and later classes at University College, Bristol. In the early 1890s, she assisted Charlotte Carmichael Stopes in her writing of British Freewomen: Their Historical Privilege by supplying her own notes on the subject, then by purchasing the whole of the first edition in 1894. She retired in 1895 to care for her aged father, though later returned to take up her work. by Elizabeth Sarah Guinness associated with the bookcases now at Girton College Blackburn inspired and funded two collections. The first was an art collection in 1885 that included pictures and work done by professional women to show the result of women's industry. She was insistent that this would not include voluntary or amateurish work but it work show the products of female professionals. This loan exhibition included portraits of leading women like Florence Nightingale and Mary Carpenter. This was donated to Bristol University, but recent enquiries indicate that this work is now lost. Her second collection was focussed on a book collection by women. The books were from her collection, friends and from second hand sources. Bookplates were commissioned and two bookcases. The bookcases were decorated with paintings of Lydia Becker and Caroline Ashurst Biggs who had been the previous chairs of the Central Committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. These bookcases were given to Girton College and are extant. In 1880 Blackburn was secretary of the West of England Suffrage Society in Bristol and was the main organizer of a large demonstration. Her long term connection with the women's movement allowed her to write her history of the Victorian women's suffrage campaign, Women's suffrage: a record of the women's suffrage movement in the British Isles, with biographical sketches of Miss Becker, finished in 1902, shortly before her death the following year, at Greycoat Gardens, Westminster, on 11 January 1903, aged 60, and was buried at Brompton cemetery. She left her archives, and the decorated book collection, to Girton College, Cambridge. Her will also made provisions for establishing a loan fund for training young women.
