Women's Printing Society

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]

References

1. The British Printer. Maclean-Hunter. 1899. pp. 184–.
2. MacDonald, James Ramsay (1904). Women in the Printing Trades: A Sociological Study. P. S. King. pp. 26–. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
3. Uglow, Jennifer S.; Hendry, Maggy (1999). The Northeastern Dictionary of Women's Biography. UPNE. pp. 195–. ISBN 9781555534219. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
4. Hartley, Cathy (15 April 2013). A Historical Dictionary of British Women. Routledge. pp. 331–. ISBN 9781135355340. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
5. A.), Fred Hall (M. (1920). The history of the Co-operative printing society, 1869-1919: being a record of fifty years' progress and achievement. s.n. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
6. Doughan, David; Gordon, Peter (3 June 2014). Dictionary of British Women's Organisations, 1825-1960. Routledge. pp. 6, 178–79. ISBN 9781136897702. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
7. Tusan, Michelle Elizabeth (2005). Women Making News: Gender and Journalism in Modern Britain. University of Illinois Press. pp. 263–. ISBN 9780252030154. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
8. Holdeman, David (1997). Much Labouring: The Texts and Authors of Yeats's First Modernist Books. University of Michigan Press. pp. 51–. ISBN 9780472108510. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
9. Crawford, Elizabeth (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. pp. 1624–. ISBN 9781135434014. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
10. Burton, Antoinette M. (1994). Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915. Univ of North Carolina Press. pp. 273–. ISBN 9780807844717. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
11. Kessel, Anthony (2006). Air, the Environment and Public Health. Cambridge University Press. pp. 79–. ISBN 9780521831468. Retrieved 8 November 2015.
12. International Surrealist Exhibition (PDF). London: Women's Printing Society, Ltd. 1936. OCLC 9735630. Retrieved 27 September 2022.