Chartist Ancestors
What did your family do in the revolution?

Millions signed the three great Chartist petitions of 1839 to 1848. Thousands were active in those years in the campaign to win the vote, secret ballots, and other democratic rights that we now take for granted.

Chartist Ancestors lists many of those who risked their freedom, and sometimes their lives, because of their participation in the Chartist cause. The names included on the site are drawn from newspapers, court records and books of the time, from later histories and other sources.

I would like to thank the many historians, researchers and the descendents of those associated with Chartism who have helped with this site since it was launched in 2003.

Mark Crail, Editor

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Chartist lives
Mary Ann Walker and Susanna Inge
Leading lights of the City of London Female Chartists Association

For a little over 12 months, two leading members of the City of London Female Chartists Association took both the Chartist movement and the popular imagination by storm as they raised the standard of women's right to participate fully in the democratic process.

This unflattering image of Mary Ann Walker appeared in Punch, and as the authors of Images of Chartism note "Punch always found the idea of women Chartists hilarious and there is no reason to suppose that this caricature bears any resembleance to its subject".

This is the story of Miss Susanna Inge and Miss Mary Ann Walker, whose interlinked but separate political trajectories from the summer of 1842 to the summer of 1843 were not merely a shock to polite society but also proved to be a democratic challenge too far for the Chartist leadership.

Little if anything is known of Miss Inge or Miss Walker beyond their political activities. Susanna Inge is first encountered writing an address “to the women of England” which appeared in the Northern Star (2 July, 1842) in which she signs herself a “Member of the Female Charter Association of the City of London”.

This literate and well written address argues that,

“as civilisation advances man becomes more inclined to place woman on an equality with himself, and though excluded from everything connected with public life, her condition is considerably improved”.

She goes on to say, however, that this is not sufficient, and that women should

“assist those men who will, nay, who do, place women in on equality with themselves in gaining their rights, and yours will be gained also”.

Such sentiments were not particularly unusual, stopping well short of a claim that the vote should be extended to women. Even William Lovett, the author of the People's Charter, would claim in later life that he had considered this idea, rejecting it only after being advised that universal adult suffrage would not gain wide enough support. Another leading Chartist, R J Richardson, wrote a pamphlet while in prison in 1840 in which he argued that women should have the right to vote.

What happened next, however, raised Miss Inge and her fellow female Chartists to a new level of notoriety.

In October 1842, a meeting was called at the National Charter Association Hall at the Old Bailey “for the purpose of forming a ‘Female Chartist Association,' to co-operate with the Male Association and for other objects connected with the ‘People's Charter'.” As was typical with many female Chartist meetings, the chair and both main speakers were men.

One speaker, a Mr Cohen, declared that he “did not consider that nature intended women to partake of political rights”. He argued that women were “more happy in the peacefulness and usefulness of the domestic hearth, than in coming forth in public and aspiring after political rights”. This created , in the words of the Northern Star's reporter a “sensation among the ladies” (Northern Star, 22 October 1842).

Perhaps foolishly, in view of his audience, he asked Susanna Inge, described by the Star as the secretary of the organisation,

“to suppose herself in the House of Commons, as member for a parliamentary borough (laughter) and that a young gentleman, ‘a lover,' in that house were to try to influence her vote through his sway over her affection, how would she act? whether in other words she could resist, and might not lose sight of the public interests?”
(The Examiner, 22 October 1842)

Though no response is recorded from Miss Inge, Mary Ann Walker was having none of it. She was, she declared, “astonished at the question”.

“She would treat with womanly scorn, as a contemptible scoundrel, the man who would dare to influence her vote by any undue and unworthy means (cheers from the men); for if he were base enough to mislead her in one way, he would in another. (Hear, hear and renewed cheers).”

Miss Walker's forthright rebuttal of the male speaker, and the remainder of her speech in which she damned the government for its treatment of Chartists in the North of England, were reported at some length in The Times, which even ran a comment article on the subject in which it held her up to ridicule. The report was repeated by local newspapers up and down the country, and helped to establish her as a lecturer on the circuit of Chartist meeting rooms.

A few days later, a second meeting was called at the National Charter Hall, where Miss Walker and Mr Cohen, were again able to debate the finer points of women's right to vote.

“Miss Mary Anne Walker presented herself on the platform, and became at once the grand attraction of the audience, in connection with the prominent place she had filled within the last few days in the public eye, as the founder, or, at least, leading personage of the Female Chartist Association. Miss Walker was habited in deep mourning, and being tall and of prepossessing countenance and figure, with much of grace and dignity of contour in her manner and action, she looked a heroine in the cause which she had taken up with so much enthusiasm. She was received with the plaudits of some, while others, ‘from the curiosity to hear a woman speak,' remained ‘silent and breathless,' that they might hear."
(The Times, 25 October 1842)

She was clearly nervous (“wan”, according to the Star), and the chairman urged the audience to remember that this was her first speech to a large audience. To the arguments she had earlier advanced in the heat of the first meeting, however, she now added a further strand drawn from the Charter's six points.

“As soon as the anxious press toward the platform had ceased, Miss Walker observed, she had a few words to say to the meeting. (Hear, hear.) ‘Wonders,' she continued, “would never cease.' (Laughter.) Who would have thought that Mr Cohen, Miss Susannah Inge and herself (Miss Mary Anne Walker), would have been so far distinguished as to be made the subjects of a “leading article” in The Times? – The Times! Yes, The Times, indeed! (Laughter.) Mr Cohen had brought all this upon them by his question – ‘Suppose ladies were in the House of Commons for a Parliamentary borough, and that a young fascinating sprig of Tory aristocracy were to try to sway their votes through an influence over their affections, how could they resist?” (Laughter from the gentlemen, and tittering among the ladies.) How ridiculous that was! (A laugh.) She (Miss Walker) would tell Mr Cohen, and The Times too, that they had got a nice little point in ‘the Charter', which would act as an antidote to that sort of ‘influence over their affections.' They would be discharged from their situation of members at the end of twelve months, should they weakly prove ‘unworthy of their trust,' and thrown out ‘on the wide world, out of place,' and ‘without a character from their last masters and mistresses.' (Laughter, and much applause from the gentlemen.)"

Mary Ann or Mary Anne Walker (The Northern Star habitually used the first, The Times the second) went on to appear at a series of further meetings. She was on the platform alongside “Miss Miles and a large number of members of the Female Chartist Association” for a “giant meeting” at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand (Northern Star, 26 November, 1842). Speakers included Thomas Slingsby Duncombe and Feargus O'Connor.

Her first lecturer as the main speaker was at a “crowded and most respectably composed meeting” on Monday 5 December at the National or Complete Suffrage Association in High Holborn on “the social evils which afflict the state, and on the People's Charter as the remedy” (Northern Star, 10 December, 1842). She recalled then how her “excited state of mind and sympathy with her poor, suffering fellow creatures” had encouraged her to intervene against Mr Cohen, and added that “if she were satisfied that her coming out had the effect of alleviating the trouble of even one poor fellow creature, she would feel herself for life repaid, and would go on in that virtuous course, let the obloquy and the consequences that would attach to her be what they might.” Emma Miles then moved and Mrs Watts seconded a vote of thanks.

The Northern Star records two further meetings, at which she spoke alongside Feargus O'Connor on the land issue in the Hall of Science, Blackfriars Road (Northern Star, 18 February 1843), and at the Political and Scientific Institute, Turnagain Lane (Northern Star, 13 May 1843). There may have been others, but after that date, with the exception of a single curious instance, there appears to be no further mention of Mary Ann Walker.

According to The Times of 17 August 1843, the Rotunda Theatre at Blackfriars Road was crowded out after placards declared that the part of the queen in Shakespeare's Hamlet was to be taken by “Miss Mary Ann Walker of Chartist celebrity”. When the queen appeared on stage and was clearly not the person expected, a cry went up of “No, no! That ain't Miss Walker.” Despite an apology and explanation from the stage manager that the placards had been a hoax, the crowd howled and laughed for the rest of the play.

Susanna (or Susannah) Inge, meanwhile, may have done less to catch the eye of the mainstream papers, but she too proved to be in demand as a Chartist lecturer, speaking on the ill-treatment of working people and on the Charter as a remedy for society's ills (Northern Star, 5 November, 1842). She too took on Mr Cohen in debate, arguing that

“woman ought to be better educated, and that, if she were, so far as mental capacity, she would in every respect be the equal of man”.
(The Examiner, 19 November 1842)

All of this played well with the Chartist leadership. But Miss Inge was not content to be a mere propagandist. She had ideas on how Chartism might be better organised, and was keen to share them with the wider movement. In one letter to the Northern Star (17 December, 1842), she suggested that every Chartist locality should have its byelaws and plan of organisation hung in a prominent place, that these should be read before every meeting, and that any officer who failed to abide by them should be called to account.

Her criticisms of Feargus O'Connor, however, were somewhat less well received. The following summer, the Northern Star reported that

“Susanna Inge has sent us a long letter to say that she ‘very much questions the propriety or RIGHT of Mr O'Connor to name or suggest to the people, through the medium of the Star, any person to fill any office whatever. It is not according to her ideas of democracy.' We dare say Miss Inge is greatly in love with her ideas of democracy; and so she ought, for we fancy they will suit nobody else...”
(Northern Star, 8 July, 1843)

Although Miss Inge continued to lecture in the Chartist cause (a meeting at the Working Man's Hall at which she was to speak was advertised in the Northern Star of 26 August, 1843), she had clearly overstepped the mark. The final mention of her name in print is a brusque note in the Northern Start of 14 September, 1844 that the editor could not undertake to publish letters he had not yet seen, “and this is a rule that even gallantry in Miss Inge's case is not strong enough to break through”.

What do we know of Mary Ann Walker and Susanna Inge?
Who were Mary Ann Walker and Susanna Inge? What happened to them after their brief spell in the spotlight? Perhaps someone will one day write at least a brief life story of these extraordinary women. But for now, there are precious few clues about their lives.

There is no shortage of young Mary Ann(e) Walkers in the 1841 census. However, excluding all those who had become Walkers on marriage, the most likely entry is for Mary Ann Walker, aged 25 and living in the parish of St Clement Dane's, Westminster. This Mary Ann lived with her mother, Mary Walker, and brother Henry, aged 10.

The elder Mary was live-in housekeeper to a curiously extended household at 14 Beaufort Buildings that consisted of: William Thompson, a 20-year-old Scottish-born surgeon; Arthur Brown, a 60-year-old man of independent means; Thomas Lucombe, an “agent”, and his wife Charlotte; Edward Moran, whose occupation is given as editor, and Margaret Moran, both of whom were born in Ireland.

I can find no record that appears to be of the same Mary Ann Walker in the 1851 census. So what happened to her? Did she marry and change her name. Did she die before the age of 35? Or are the details of her life still waiting to be uncovered in the census returns?

Of Susanna(h) Inge there is still less sign in the official record. There appear to be no even remotely likely candidates in the 1841 or 1851 censuses and I can find no matches in subsequent marriage and death records.

Both women were "young", according to the newspaper reports which mentioned anything about them; both, to judge by their use of language, were well educated. Beyond that, however, even speculation runs out of steam.

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