Clementina Black 1853 – 1922
Suffragist, trade unionist, social reformer.
27 July 1853 – 19 December 1922
Education
Home educated. Learned French, German and Italian.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
Gave speeches around the country and attended national and international congresses to campaign for women’s rights and the establishment of trade unions.
Translated a series on French art and German history to supplement her income.
1877 Published first novel A Sussex Idyll.
1886 Hon Sec, Women’s Protective & Provident League founded by Emma Paterson (in 1888 renamed The Women’s Trade Union League) which represented low-paid women workers.
1887 Founder a Consumer’s League in London. The League campaigned for customers to buy from ‘clean’ shops where fair wages were paid and the boycotting of Bryant and May. This provided a model for others set up nationally and internationally to boycott unethically produced goods.
1889 Founded the Women’s Trade Union Association (WTUA) organising women to campaign for legal reforms. Wrote reports on pay and conditions of working women.
1894 Most successful novel The Agitator published.
1895 Editor of the Women’s Industrial News the journal of the Women’s Industrial Council (WIC) formed after the collapse of the WTUA. Later President of WIC.
1906 Hon Sec Women’s Franchise Declaration Committee. Organised the petition demanding the vote signed by 257,000 women.
1906 Vice-President Anti-Sweating League.
1911 Vice-President National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
1912 Acting Editor The Common Cause.
1913 Vice-President London Society for Women’s Suffrage.
Issues
Carer for her disabled father and younger siblings
Many of her positions were honorary so she needed to earn her living from her writing (novels, magazine articles) and translation work.
Suffered sight loss as she got older.
Connection to Bloomsbury
From 1877 used the British Museum Reading Room for research, to study or work and network.
Women’s Protective & Provident League (The Women’s Trade Union League) office in Industrial Hall, Bloomsbury where she worked and networked.
Female networks
Her sister Constance Black.
Those she networked with at the British Museum including: Amy Levy, Annie Besant, Beatrice Potter, Dollie Radford, Eleanor Marx, Margaret Harkness, Olive Schreiner. These contacts led to wider networks nationally and internationally.
Women involved with through the Fabian Society and socialist circles.
Adele Meyer, Hilda Martindale (factory inspector).
Writings/Publications include:
Many magazine articles appearing in Women’s World, The Nineteenth Century, The Economic Journal, The English Illustrated Magazine, She argued that factory work was better for women than domestic as there women could organise trade unions and have greater control of their hours, pay and conditions.
1877 A Sussex Idyll
1879 Orlando
1907 Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage
1909 Makers of Our Clothes: a case for Trade Boards (co-written by Adele Meyer)
1915 Edited Married Women’s Work: A Report of an Enquiry undertaken by the Women’s Industrial Council.
Further reading
Oakley_AAM_factfictionpap.pdf (ucl.ac.uk) Fact, fiction and method in the early history of social research: Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness as case-studies
Clementina Black (spartacus-educational.com)
Bernstein, Susan David; Roomscape: Women Writers in the British Museum from George Eiot to Virginia Woolf. Edinburgh, 2013.